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Daniel McGowan and codefendants take non-cooperation plea agreement
We would like to inform everyone about the events in court today. After months of negotiations and consideration, Daniel, along with Jonathan Paul, Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block, pled guilty to some of the many charges. We cannot emphasize enough what an extremely difficult decision this was for Daniel and we will continue to give him our full support.
November 9, 2006 Update:
Friends and supporters,
We would like to inform everyone about the events in court today. After months of negotiations and consideration, Daniel, along with Jonathan Paul, Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block, pled guilty to some of the many charges. We cannot emphasize enough what an extremely difficult decision this was for Daniel and we will continue to give him our full support.
We do not want there to be any confusion about Daniel's plea agreement so we have posted at her http://www.supportdaniel.org/files/McGowanPlea.pdf
Daniel agreed to plead guilty with the understanding that he would not implicate or identify anyone at all other than himself. The other three remaining co-defendants entered pleas with the same terms. Daniel has done everything possible to maintain his integrity, and he wants to be as open about his agreement as possible. We have also provided Daniel's statement to Judge Aiken and Daniel's lawyers statement below.
As we already stated, we will continue to support Daniel completely. He and his family have been through an extremely difficult time and deserve to get through this with the best possible outcome.
We will be posting information shortly about how others can continue to help Daniel by submitting letters to the judge.
Please keep in mind that our fight is not over. We will still need your help and support in the coming months, in order to fight for the least possible sentence for Daniel.
Thank you for your continued support,
Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan
Download Daniel's Plea Agreement (PDF)
Daniel's Statement to Judge Aiken at the plea hearing
November 9, 2006
Your Honor,
This plea agreement is very important to me, because it allows me to accept full responsibility for my actions and at the same time remain true to my strongly held beliefs.
I hope that you will see that my actions were not those of terrorist but of a concerned young person who was deeply troubled by the destruction of Oregon's beautiful old-growth forests and the dangers of genetically modified trees. After taking part in these two actions, I realized that burning things down did not fit with my visions or belief about how to create a better world. So I stopped committing these crimes.
This last year has been a very trying time for my family and I would like to extend my deepest love, admiration and appreciation to them for standing by me through a very difficult time. I would also like to apologize to the workers of the companies I targeted. I never intended to hurt people, so when I read about things like family photos being destroyed, I felt great remorse. I am truly sorry for the harm that I caused.
Your Honor, after May of 2001, I put myself back on the path of open and positive activism. Since then I have focused on helping victims of domestic violence, campaigning for the environment, and advocating for prisoners. While my commitment to pursuing a better world has not and will not change, I have changed the way I am pursuing those goals. My agreement with Mr. Paul, Mr. Block and Ms. Zacher to come together and resolve this case by taking responsibility for what we did is an important step in moving forward to have what I hope will be a positive impact on my community. Thank you for allowing me a few moments to speak to you this morning.
Press Release
Contact: Amanda Lee or Jeffery Robinson, Schroeter Goldmark & Bender
Tel: 206-622-8000, lee (at) sgb-law.com, robinson (at) sgb-law.com.
November 9, 2006
Daniel McGowan today entered pleas of guilty in connection with two arsons in 2001 - one at Superior Lumber in Glendale and one at Jefferson Poplar in Clatskanie.
Mr. McGowan accepts full responsibility for what he did. As Mr. McGowan told Judge Aiken, after taking part in these two arsons, he realized that they did not fit with his vision or beliefs about how to create a better world. He abandoned that course.
In entering a plea agreement with the government, Mr. McGowan did not abandon his deeply held beliefs. One of his conditions was that he would not try to get a reduced sentence by implicating or identifying other people the government may seek to prosecute, either now or later. In a meeting this week with the government, Mr. McGowan gave a truthful and honest account of what he did. He did not identify or implicate any other individual. He and the other three defendants who pled guilty today helped the government close this case by coming forward together, to take responsibility. The government agrees that by doing this, Mr. McGowan and the other defendants are all eligible for a reduced sentence.
All of this is set forth in Mr. McGowan's plea agreement. The entire agreement is in the record and available to the public.
Since 2001, Mr. McGowan has focused on positive, constructive, and practical activism. He works to prevent domestic violence and to assist victims. He organizes markets in which every good and service is free to all. He works as an advocate for prisoners and encourages others to support them with letters, books and money for food and phone calls. He studies acupuncture and plans to earn a Master's degrees we can provide alternative medicine services to needy patients.
Mr. McGowan would like to apologize to the people he harmed or could have harmed the people whose family photos were destroyed in the fires, the firefighters who responded to the scene, to workers whose lives were disrupted. Harming people is never what Daniel intended, and he is deeply sorry.
Friends and supporters,
We would like to inform everyone about the events in court today. After months of negotiations and consideration, Daniel, along with Jonathan Paul, Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block, pled guilty to some of the many charges. We cannot emphasize enough what an extremely difficult decision this was for Daniel and we will continue to give him our full support.
We do not want there to be any confusion about Daniel's plea agreement so we have posted at her http://www.supportdaniel.org/files/McGowanPlea.pdf
Daniel agreed to plead guilty with the understanding that he would not implicate or identify anyone at all other than himself. The other three remaining co-defendants entered pleas with the same terms. Daniel has done everything possible to maintain his integrity, and he wants to be as open about his agreement as possible. We have also provided Daniel's statement to Judge Aiken and Daniel's lawyers statement below.
As we already stated, we will continue to support Daniel completely. He and his family have been through an extremely difficult time and deserve to get through this with the best possible outcome.
We will be posting information shortly about how others can continue to help Daniel by submitting letters to the judge.
Please keep in mind that our fight is not over. We will still need your help and support in the coming months, in order to fight for the least possible sentence for Daniel.
Thank you for your continued support,
Family and Friends of Daniel McGowan
Download Daniel's Plea Agreement (PDF)
Daniel's Statement to Judge Aiken at the plea hearing
November 9, 2006
Your Honor,
This plea agreement is very important to me, because it allows me to accept full responsibility for my actions and at the same time remain true to my strongly held beliefs.
I hope that you will see that my actions were not those of terrorist but of a concerned young person who was deeply troubled by the destruction of Oregon's beautiful old-growth forests and the dangers of genetically modified trees. After taking part in these two actions, I realized that burning things down did not fit with my visions or belief about how to create a better world. So I stopped committing these crimes.
This last year has been a very trying time for my family and I would like to extend my deepest love, admiration and appreciation to them for standing by me through a very difficult time. I would also like to apologize to the workers of the companies I targeted. I never intended to hurt people, so when I read about things like family photos being destroyed, I felt great remorse. I am truly sorry for the harm that I caused.
Your Honor, after May of 2001, I put myself back on the path of open and positive activism. Since then I have focused on helping victims of domestic violence, campaigning for the environment, and advocating for prisoners. While my commitment to pursuing a better world has not and will not change, I have changed the way I am pursuing those goals. My agreement with Mr. Paul, Mr. Block and Ms. Zacher to come together and resolve this case by taking responsibility for what we did is an important step in moving forward to have what I hope will be a positive impact on my community. Thank you for allowing me a few moments to speak to you this morning.
Press Release
Contact: Amanda Lee or Jeffery Robinson, Schroeter Goldmark & Bender
Tel: 206-622-8000, lee (at) sgb-law.com, robinson (at) sgb-law.com.
November 9, 2006
Daniel McGowan today entered pleas of guilty in connection with two arsons in 2001 - one at Superior Lumber in Glendale and one at Jefferson Poplar in Clatskanie.
Mr. McGowan accepts full responsibility for what he did. As Mr. McGowan told Judge Aiken, after taking part in these two arsons, he realized that they did not fit with his vision or beliefs about how to create a better world. He abandoned that course.
In entering a plea agreement with the government, Mr. McGowan did not abandon his deeply held beliefs. One of his conditions was that he would not try to get a reduced sentence by implicating or identifying other people the government may seek to prosecute, either now or later. In a meeting this week with the government, Mr. McGowan gave a truthful and honest account of what he did. He did not identify or implicate any other individual. He and the other three defendants who pled guilty today helped the government close this case by coming forward together, to take responsibility. The government agrees that by doing this, Mr. McGowan and the other defendants are all eligible for a reduced sentence.
All of this is set forth in Mr. McGowan's plea agreement. The entire agreement is in the record and available to the public.
Since 2001, Mr. McGowan has focused on positive, constructive, and practical activism. He works to prevent domestic violence and to assist victims. He organizes markets in which every good and service is free to all. He works as an advocate for prisoners and encourages others to support them with letters, books and money for food and phone calls. He studies acupuncture and plans to earn a Master's degrees we can provide alternative medicine services to needy patients.
Mr. McGowan would like to apologize to the people he harmed or could have harmed the people whose family photos were destroyed in the fires, the firefighters who responded to the scene, to workers whose lives were disrupted. Harming people is never what Daniel intended, and he is deeply sorry.
For more information:
http://supportdaniel.org
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Looking Back on our Lives/ Looking Forward
After the battle of Seattle the corporate media descended on Eugene, Oregon and began a circus show to highlight the 'eugene anarchists'. It spent a lot of time focusing on the philosophies of certain bio-privitimists like John Zerzan.
The corporate elite does not do anything by accident. It was an intentional move to both create fear in the middle class towards 'ecological radicals' and to simultaneously give 15 seconds of fame to certain radicals and anarchists who had been in Seattle. By giving this drug of fame to people, some who gave their 'real' names to the cameras, was a carefully calculated game of cat and mouse in the psychic labyrinth of the materialist world. It made the anarchists feel more powerful and important than they really are/were to the struggle in Seattle and elsewhere. It also provided a tool in beginning the dismantlement of a movement that had the potential to shift the power relations in the ecotopian bioregion and possibly spread beyond.
The occupations at Warner Creek, and Redwood Summer in 1990 brought together direct action activists and old time union organizers and old school loggers. It was a fear of a fusion of these currents in an economy that was on a dead-end road of clearcuts, the potential of real human solidarity and effective organizing tactics and strategy that caused the FBI to bomb Judi Bari and Darryl Cherny's car. It wasn't because they were eco-saboteurs, it was because they were effectively uniting people who were natural allies in the war against big timber. This was a far greater threat to the power establishment than the occasional forest service headquarters going up in flames. Yet to this day how many up and coming forest defenders have read Judi's Timber Wars as compared to reading Green Anarchy or some of Zerzan's rantings against all civilization? This is not by chance, this is a deliberate result of the power structure looking at the threat of the radical envionmental movement uniting with the labor movement and other currents of the peace and justice movement that actually took place on the streets of Seattle. The deliberate attempts by the state and corporate media to drive wedges between the steelworkers and the spokes council direct actioners began immediately and continues to this day, some might say culminating in the streets of Miami during the FTAA protests when the lack of solidarity between the unions and direct action faction was so painfully evident.
The system wanted/s us to believe that it is extreme tactics that make us radical, that score us cool points with our companeras/os. They wanted us to believe that it was the sound of breaking glass that shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle. This is patently not true. What shut down the WTO meeting was a coordinated and international effort of unions and NGO along with intense bravery of direct action tactics. Don't get me wrong, I love a good fire, I love the thought of going up against the police in the streets if we have the numbers to pull it off, but tactics do not a revolutionary strategy make. Revolutionary strategy requires an infrastructure to be built that can sustain and move foward. Tactics minus strategy is suicide. In the face of eco-cide, suicide is often an honorable option, in fact all of us should have our hats off to the defendants in these cases. But we should also find ourselves culpable in not creating an effective movement that was/is as attractive to young radicals as the fires that were started.
We need to stand with these defendants, stay in touch with them, all of us constantly learning from eachother and preparing the infrastructure that will be alive and growing when they are released/freed from their maximum security installations back into the minimum security prisions of our cities. We stand at a incredibly critical time for our planet and our social movements. Anarchy is not chaos, nature is not chaos, it is highly organized and interdependent, outwardly spiraling and relational to its core. Long live the blockade, long live the barricade, long live the warriors who have been caught in the cages, and long live the intelligent mind of all species to adapt, change, transform.
After the battle of Seattle the corporate media descended on Eugene, Oregon and began a circus show to highlight the 'eugene anarchists'. It spent a lot of time focusing on the philosophies of certain bio-privitimists like John Zerzan.
The corporate elite does not do anything by accident. It was an intentional move to both create fear in the middle class towards 'ecological radicals' and to simultaneously give 15 seconds of fame to certain radicals and anarchists who had been in Seattle. By giving this drug of fame to people, some who gave their 'real' names to the cameras, was a carefully calculated game of cat and mouse in the psychic labyrinth of the materialist world. It made the anarchists feel more powerful and important than they really are/were to the struggle in Seattle and elsewhere. It also provided a tool in beginning the dismantlement of a movement that had the potential to shift the power relations in the ecotopian bioregion and possibly spread beyond.
The occupations at Warner Creek, and Redwood Summer in 1990 brought together direct action activists and old time union organizers and old school loggers. It was a fear of a fusion of these currents in an economy that was on a dead-end road of clearcuts, the potential of real human solidarity and effective organizing tactics and strategy that caused the FBI to bomb Judi Bari and Darryl Cherny's car. It wasn't because they were eco-saboteurs, it was because they were effectively uniting people who were natural allies in the war against big timber. This was a far greater threat to the power establishment than the occasional forest service headquarters going up in flames. Yet to this day how many up and coming forest defenders have read Judi's Timber Wars as compared to reading Green Anarchy or some of Zerzan's rantings against all civilization? This is not by chance, this is a deliberate result of the power structure looking at the threat of the radical envionmental movement uniting with the labor movement and other currents of the peace and justice movement that actually took place on the streets of Seattle. The deliberate attempts by the state and corporate media to drive wedges between the steelworkers and the spokes council direct actioners began immediately and continues to this day, some might say culminating in the streets of Miami during the FTAA protests when the lack of solidarity between the unions and direct action faction was so painfully evident.
The system wanted/s us to believe that it is extreme tactics that make us radical, that score us cool points with our companeras/os. They wanted us to believe that it was the sound of breaking glass that shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle. This is patently not true. What shut down the WTO meeting was a coordinated and international effort of unions and NGO along with intense bravery of direct action tactics. Don't get me wrong, I love a good fire, I love the thought of going up against the police in the streets if we have the numbers to pull it off, but tactics do not a revolutionary strategy make. Revolutionary strategy requires an infrastructure to be built that can sustain and move foward. Tactics minus strategy is suicide. In the face of eco-cide, suicide is often an honorable option, in fact all of us should have our hats off to the defendants in these cases. But we should also find ourselves culpable in not creating an effective movement that was/is as attractive to young radicals as the fires that were started.
We need to stand with these defendants, stay in touch with them, all of us constantly learning from eachother and preparing the infrastructure that will be alive and growing when they are released/freed from their maximum security installations back into the minimum security prisions of our cities. We stand at a incredibly critical time for our planet and our social movements. Anarchy is not chaos, nature is not chaos, it is highly organized and interdependent, outwardly spiraling and relational to its core. Long live the blockade, long live the barricade, long live the warriors who have been caught in the cages, and long live the intelligent mind of all species to adapt, change, transform.
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