Q&A
JOSH HARPER: The "terrorist" next door

BY NICK BUDNICK
nbudnick@week.com

At age 26, baby-faced Josh Harper is a good-natured, likeable guy, someone you'd pick for your ultimate Frisbee team.

But that might get you some unwelcome attention from the authorities--because Harper is what the government calls an "ecoterrorist."

Years ago Harper, a founding member of Portland's Liberation Collective, moved beyond organizing demonstrations and became a full-time animal-rights monkeywrencher. In 1999, the U.S. Coast Guard arrested him for using a Zodiac boat to disrupt the Makah whale hunt off the Olympic peninsula.

Last year, like Portlander Craig Rosebraugh, Harper was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Portland about the activities of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. Harper refused and was charged with contempt of court. WW spoke with him Feb. 23, just hours after he'd learned that the U.S. Attorney had decided to drop the charges.

Willamette Week: Why do you think the charges were dropped?

Josh Harper: I've said all along I don't know who's responsible for these actions, and while I applaud them, I think it would be crazy for someone who's underground to have any relationship with anyone who's been as vocal as I have. The government tried everything they could to incriminate me, and in the end they had to admit that I was right.

I've got an email in which you say you see a "spark of hope" in broken windows, minks running free, etc. Isn't that proof that you were working with these people?

No, not at all. I don't think anywhere in that statement it says I know who was responsible. It just says I have an appreciation for their passion. For the fact that they're willing to risk so much to make changes in the world. To see people come forward and actually fight and struggle and try to physically remove the problems that are facing us...I see that as being beautiful. My statement was just to try expressing my solidarity with those who were responsible.

Don't you think that these sorts of acts turn people against the environmental movement?

I don't see that. People always say, 'Well, you're alienating people.' The fact of the matter is that throughout history people have used militant tactics far more extreme than what the ALF or ELF have used to stop oppression. Look at Hitler, Mussolini, Ceaucescu. In the end, people had to put a bullet through their heads or drop bombs on their embassies. And no one will dispute that that was a righteous act. Hardly anyone would say, 'Oh my God, you killed Hitler-you're a terrorist!' I think what really matters to people is the righteousness of the cause and not the tactic.

Tell me about how you got into this.

I guess I first became politicized around the time of the Gulf War. I was living in Eugene; my parents were hippies, that sort of thing. I just remember seeing the images of the bombings on TV and just thinking about the massive amount of power that was being wielded by so few people at the cost of so many lives, and I wanted to get involved. So I began doing demonstrations in Eugene against the war.

What kind of demonstrations?

At that time I bought into everything that liberals had tried to sell me: that non-violence is the only path and that pacifism was the cure-all for every problem. However, I met a few other people who were more militant, and I would always argue with them.

What would you say?

Oh, 'We've got to be passive,' and 'Eventually the government will the see we're right, and change their ways'...the typical naive crap that Gandhi and nonviolence theorists spout.

And when did you change?

Shortly afterwards, when I was about 17, I just felt like there was overwhelming evidence against those views and that, historically, those tactics had never worked on their own. There have been so many movements that have been hijacked by pacifists and turned into self-defeating, absolutist, non-violence...they've been basically a joke in my mind. So when I was about 17, I was caught breaking out windows of banks that were supporting the war effort and giving money to arms builders such as GE and so forth.

Did you spend any time in jail?

No. I was a juvenile. Actually, I'm pretty sure that it all was expunged off of my record. But that was really my introduction to militancy. I'd considered myself an anarchist for some time. I'd read the works of a lot of pacifist anarchists like Tolstoy and Ammon Hennacy and so forth. But when I was about 17 or so I began reading the works of more militant anarchists, and that definitely influenced me as well.

Who were the most influential?

It's hard to say. I was really touched by Alexander Berkman a lot. Not only because he was so willing to fight for what he believed in, but also because he refused to be bottled into this single-issue politics. He published his own magazine called The Blast, and he stood up for gay liberation and against fascism. He published some of the earliest articles in this county on the rights of women and on radical women's liberation.

As I recall, you were ordered to get a job. What's that about?

When I was finally arrested-I was put in federal jail for three days-when I was bailed out, the judge put certain conditions upon me for my pretrial release. One of those is that I had to find a full-time job, which I still have not.

And was that at the prosecutors' request?

Yes.

What do you think their reasoning was?

I think they felt that if I was working full-time that I couldn't be struggling in any way for the causes that I believe in. And I think that's certainly true of a lot of middle-class Americans. It's not that people don't care. They're just so busy trying to pay rent, trying to buy food and pay bills that a lot of people can't get involved. And I kind of think that the government wanted to impose that same trap on me.

So, they're hoping you'll get married, have kids?

They're hoping that-essentially, in their minds they see it as, they hope that I'll grow out of it. But, I think it's a little late for that. I just turned 26, and I got no plans to stop it.

What jobs did you apply for?

I applied for a lot of jobs, but it's difficult for me to get work. For a long time, I believed in voluntary arrest, so I've got a very extensive arrest record. And because I've been so active, I've always tried to work the least amount possible. So I don't exactly have a great employment history. Basically no one wants to hire me. But I've continued to do volunteer work and I have been out job-hunting.

Are you working at all?

No. Not right now.

How do you live?

Several ways. Our society produces so much waste that at time it's easy to live off of it. I've done all sorts of things. Like dumpster food. I'm part of a network of people that share food, that grow food and so forth. And I've been lucky to have a lot of friends in this movement who have been very generous with me. When I've been facing this court case, I've had some of their help paying rent.

Do you have any source of income?

When I was younger, I was a comic-book collector. Over the years I gathered thousands of the damn things, and I've been selling them off slowly, and that's been paying the bills a lot.

Who are your favorite comic book heroes?

I liked Grendel a lot. But I was mostly into the Dadaist, absurdist comics like Flaming Carrot, Mystery Men, things like that.

Grendel. That was kind of like a bleak, misshapen, hideous superhero?

No. Not really. Don't really wanna discuss comic books. Sorry.

Some people are going to read this and say, 'My God, you're not working, you're a slacker, you're able to mooch all this food off people to live. When are you gonna face up to doing what everyone has to do, and that is make a real living?'

Well, first of all, I think that that reality is something that's imposed upon us. I don't think that anyone wants to trade away 40 hours of their life a week. And I don't think anyone prefers to live by a clock or to punish their desires and not go to bed when they want to, not eat when they want to, not be able to use the bathroom when they want to because their boss won't allow them to. And I think that most people, if they thought about it, would realize that they would probably rather be doing what I'm doing. But I'm not a lazy person. I have worked a lot in my life.

What kind of jobs?

I've worked at underwear factories. I've done the most terrible temp jobs that you could imagine. I've done graveyard manager at Plaid Pantry. I used to work at the Mallory Hotel in the parking garage in Portland. I have struggled to get by. But I do try to work the smallest amount possible. As far as mooching food off of people, it hasn't been that way at all. It's been a collective effort. We work together-me and my community-to feed each other, to provide for each other. And I think that's the way things should be. We've become so isolated from each other. It's absolutely sickening. No one knows their neighbors anymore. I've tried to change that to some degree-to make connections with the people around me and to share and to provide for each other.

What's been the funniest part of this whole thing for you?

What thing? The trial?

All of it. Of the last two years?

Oh gosh, there's been so much. I was very amused at my bail hearing in Seattle. The prosecutor up here was just rabid and insisting that I not be given bail. He had this nasally voice and he kept saying things like, 'Mr. Harper, who has advocated things such as arson, fire-bombing, and attacking people's property, will most surely run if he's given bail....' And he kept saying that I was a fugitive. It was funny seeing how the system looks at me. Because really, I'm just this mild-mannered kid, ya know. I'm not some foaming-at-the-mouth terrorist like the government wants to portray me. And it was just really funny that they really think I'm this dangerous, militant leader or something. .

What was the weirdest thing?

Oh, gosh. You know, you always see movies of people being arrested by feds, and actually having it happen was a pretty insane event. I'd just spoken at a high school about animal rights and about wilderness, and I walk outside with one of my friends and we're getting into his car, and all of a sudden this truck, this SUV, pulls up in front of us and blocks our path. I heard a siren go off and I laughed. I was like, 'Oh, someone's getting arrested.' I had no idea that it was me. And next thing I know, federal marshals and FBI agents are rushing our car, screaming, 'Hands where we can see 'em, Josh, hands where we can see 'em!' And when I realized all of this was for me, that was pretty crazy. Especially since the only thing I'd been accused of at that point was missing a court date.

Were you scared?

I was certainly scared. But I also was angry. I started actually yelling at them, kind of insulting them. One of them, he had on like Ray-Bans and this super-nice suit, he looked like he was trying to be on X-Files and I was like, 'This isn't the fucking X-Files, Mulder!' I kind of told them off a bit and then of course that came up in my bail hearing.

Have police been staking you out?

Oh, yeah. One incident happened just right before the grand jury date. I had to report to a pretrial services office a minimum of once a month, and as I was leaving the pretrial services office, I got about a block away and I heard someone say, "Oh, look, it's Josh Harper." And I looked over-there's a guy, ya know, in a tie and nice slacks, nice shoes. And he's got a camera, and he starts taking my picture. And I was just like, Oh, they're trying to provoke me, ya know, so I mess my case up or something. I kept walking, and I looked back at him. He had his jacket open so I could see his gun, his holstered gun.

He was holding it open?

Yeah. He was holding his jacket like open so like I could tell that he was armed. I've been photographed going into a radical bookstore up here. I've had different agents basically repeat back to me, verbatim, conversations that I've had with friends, to suggest that-to basically let me know that my phone has been tapped, that the home that I live in has been bugged. I don't know. But I've come to expect it and I live and deal with it because I feel that what I'm doing is important.

If you believe in direct action and not Ghandi-ish teaching, what are you doing to pursue that goal?

Right now I'm setting up a media project with a few of my friends to produce videos to talk about things like green anarchism and to advocate strategies that go beyond psuedo-pacifism that Americans have used thus far. I continue to be active with groups opposing whaling, and I continue to write articles for magazines like Earth First! Journal and No Compromise. That's sort of the activism that I can do right now. Especially since I have so many restrictions upon me. Like I said earlier, I think it would be pretty crazy for someone like myself to go beyond that at this point seeing as how the government is already aware of who I am. I think if anything were to happen, I'd become an immediate suspect.

You said you have a pretty extensive arrest history. You were down in Orange County, for example. What happened there?

I traveled down as a member of Liberation Collective, which I was one of the founding members of way back in the day. And we were there to protest a conference being put on for the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, and at that conference, at one point, we saw boxes that were labeled "Live Animals" being brought inside. We began to hear rumors that they were going to be doing experimentations on rabbits and rats and stuff inside. And I just couldn't let it happen. And so there was a massive police line. There was basically no way into the building. But I thought that if maybe someone sparked it off, that if someone started trying to get through the police line, perhaps another group would. So I was subsequently charged with multiple accounts of assault and battery on officers, a bunch of ridiculous charges like trespass with intent to vandalize. The entire thing was on videotape, and I had my hands above my head, I was walking forward very slowly into the police line, never made contact with the officers because whenever I would get anywhere close they'd just grab me and shove me, throw me to the ground. And so I didn't exactly get very far. I represented myself at trial, and I was found not guilty of all the things that I was charged with.

What other kinds of stuff have you done?

Oh gosh, I could go on forever. Most of it I'm not exactly proud of anymore because I feel, considering what we're up against, it was far too timid. But, I was arrested at Legacy Good Samaritan several times, in Portland.

For what?

Trespass. I did a lot of civil disobedience there. With Craig Rosebraugh, actually.

What about?

Over their testing on cats. We had the "Free the Cats at Good Sam" campaign going for a while before it was transferred to OHSU.

What else?

Umm...been arrested against fur in San Francisco. Against primate experimentation in Berkeley and in Davis.

What did you actually do to get arrested?

In almost every case it was either trying to rush through a police line or just a lockdown or a sit-in or something of that sort. I don't really consider those tactics to be all that effective, though. The Makah whale hunt was probably the thing that I feel proudest of. Because that day, we definitely directly intervened to save a life. And I didn't consider it a voluntary arrest. We evaded the Coast Guard for several hours, which was pretty intense. They were pointing shotguns at us and demanding that we pull over. And finally, when they turned their entire fleet after our little Zodiac boat, we decided to turn ourselves in. But I don't know-I don't think that when I went out there I had any intention of getting arrested, of allowing myself to be arrested.

Anarchists talk about how they see a "spark of hope in every torched police car." But the police are not the people that are destroying the planet. Arguably they're pawns, but they're not the ones that are creating the problems.

I disagree. First and foremost, even if the police aren't responsible for the destruction of the planet, they're responsible for plenty else and plenty of the other evils that are going on. And the police beat and kill people every day and they do it with impunity. The police harass people everyday. The police alienate people every single day-from their desires. Alienate people from each other. And they create a system of hierarchy that's damaging to our freedom, that's damaging to, ya know, even our image of our self. Because we're constantly being told that it's okay for someone else to have power over us, to have more power than us, to beat us, to abuse us, to do whatever they want to us-that harms us on a social level. It also harms us, though, on the environmental level.

How so?

Because these are the protectors of those responsible. We can't get to the people who are causing this massive destruction of the wild, who are slaughtering these billions and billions of animals, because we have their enforcers in the way. Essentially when you have a target like...pick any target-say, logging companies and so on. They have no concern for us. They have no concern for human life, human community, the environment. Any of that. And we are trying to get to them. If you put something in our way, we need to get it out of the way. We need to realize that our enemy's friend is our enemy. In that way, I see it's very important to target the police and indeed to target all establishments of authority. Because they are responsible. They are the enforcers of capitalism. They're the people who perpetuate this system.

So when you say "any establishment of authority," does that include this paper?

I don't see WW as being necessarily an establishment of authority. I mean more along the lines of government agencies. You know, the FBI, the CIA, the police and so forth.

Why can't you just be a normal environmentalist like all these other Sierra Club-type people?

Because they're not effective. Because those people aren't concerned anymore with doing what it takes to actually stop these things. They are concerned with preserving their privilege. I think just about anyone knows the quickest way to stop something is to physically stop it. But they also know that there's a tremendous risk that comes with that. You have all these allegedly radical environmentalists who, instead of physically trying to stop things, are going of these long roundabout ridiculous ways of 'Well, ya know-if we just draw enough attention to it." Really what they're trying to do is preserve their own privilege, keep themselves out of jail, keep themselves out on the street, be able to move on, have a family, move into a house. That's what they're concerned with. They're not concerned anymore with actually stopping this massive violence towards wilderness.

Where did you grow up?

I was born in San Diego. Which is actually probably one of the biggest reasons I care about wilderness, because my parents moved to Eugene when I was 10. I went from being surrounded by nothing but concrete to finally seeing trees and mountains and this incredible amount of wildlife and biodiversity. It was just shocking to me. I just felt like I had been missing out on something my entire life. Like something had been kept from me. From 10 to 19, I grew up in Eugene and I started seeing-even in that nine-year period-just this massive destruction of the ecosystems around me. When I was 19, I moved to Portland and became involved with Liberation Collective about two years after that. From there, my activism just took me all over, from everywhere from Portland to Syracuse New York.

The past couple years, though, you've been working out of Seattle. Why the change?

It's just easier to do the whaling stuff up here. Frankly, I think a lot of the activists up here are just a lot more open to the idea of militant tactics, and I just felt I could do more good up here.

What's next for you?

Right now, I want to start working on a video to talk about the effects of industrial civilization on animals, wilderness and human community. Hoping to tour with that and just show it to as many people as I can. Craig and I have talked about doing a West Coast speaking tour together, and hopefully that'll come together. I don't know. I'm just going to go wherever my passion guides me and fight as hard as I can.