NOT MY COMRADES, a photo by suzy_ex on Flickr.

Alleen Brown and John Knefel’s recent story at the Intercept, on the FBI’s attempts to get activists reportedly assaulted and abused by the animal rights activist Rod Coronado, glossed over some of the critical facts and material shared with them over the last six months. Three situations, in particular, require further elaboration. I and others close to the case decided to make this information public, to bring clarity to some of the incidents mentioned in the Intercept’s piece.

1/ There is extensive documentation on the compassionate efforts made to hold Coronado accountable the summer and fall of 2014, which ultimately failed. The Intercept references an email sent out by Toby Fraser in February 2015, which was the culmination of efforts initiated by Wendy and Laura (not her real name), two women with ties to Earth First!. We provided the Intercept with emails sent between July 2014 and February 2015, which assert that Coronado had been predatory towards younger women in the radical environmental scene, as well as detailing troubling behavior against Chyrsta. The Intercept also interviewed Wendy, a friend of Coronado’s ex Chrysta Faye, about these accountability efforts, although they do not quote her in the article.

Wendy was working with another woman, Laura, to address Coronado’s behavior in the summer and fall of 2014. Although Wendy did not approach the Earth First! Journal about Rod’s behavior, she felt that doing so was an essential first step. According to her, the EF! Journal had been “giving Rod a lot of attention, and portraying him as a ‘good guy,’” so she felt the Journal should stop such publicity while focusing on holding Coronado accountable. In the late summer and fall Wendy, along with Panagioti and Toby, two Earth First! activists made multiple efforts to engage Coronado in an accountability process. Wendy says the ideal outcome of such a process would be one that informed people about Coronado’s reportedly abusive behavior. She also hoped the process would include him “prioritizing his mental health and not just going on with life.” She clarified that, ideally, Coronado would be invested in this process. She had hoped he would initiate a plan with a third party accountability group. For Wendy, there was a desire for a course of action that “minimize[d] harm” and wouldn’t “suck out a ton of emotional energy and time.” She recalled wanting to avoid a call-out because she knew such an action could have have been “emotionally intensive and time-consuming,” and met with hostility from older Earth First! activists. However, Coronado didn’t cooperate with these efforts. Wendy recalled feeling that Rod “normalized and minimized his behavior and did not grasp the gravity of his behavior or the terror it caused for women.”

2/ Julie asked people to share her statement claiming Rod Coronado had assaulted her on social media and Earth First! email listservs in the spring of 2015, as the Intercept reported. It’s also important to state that the Earth First! Journal did not share it publicly on their newswire, as she wanted. Her statement was sent out semi-privately over email instead. The EF! Journal published an interview with her the following summer, and her original statement finally made it onto the Newswire in November 2016.

3/ The Intercept was correct to report that Lauren Regan, the executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene, Oregon had voiced suspicion about activists who share call-outs of abusers and rapists publicly. The summer of 2016, after Julie’s interview went up on the EF! Newswire, an interview with Regan was published in Black and Green Review and then put online at It’s Going Down. In the interview, carried out by Lilia, an activist associated with Coronado’s group Wolf Patrol, Regan voiced suspicion over the sources of public call-outs on social media, because, according to her, it makes it easier for government agencies to monitor and infiltrate environmental movements. An essential addition to The Intercept’s reporting is that Regan had made similar claims a year earlier when Julie’s account of Coronado’s assault was circulating on Facebook.

Brett, ne of the activists quoted in the Intercept’s article told Brown and Knefel about an email he reportedly received from Regan on March 23, 2015, which was also shared with me. In the email, Regan accused Brett of “posting extremely inflammatory, confidential, allegations on Facebook,” a response to his sharing of Julie’s statement. She says he “should know better” than to provide the government and enemies of the movement with so much information. She also suggested that “such disclosures over Facebook are the equivalent of snitching on those activists and individuals because you should know that the FBI directly monitors all FB activity — particularly of indigenous animal rights activists who have been imprisoned by the feds multiple times.” In The Intercept piece, Regan states that her critique of public call-outs was not a response to particular incidents. We felt it was important to share Regan’s email here, to push back against her past efforts to discredit Julie and her supporters.

The culture of silence in activist culture represses information that people (especially women and non-binary folks) need to keep themselves safe. Had Julie had information about Coronado’s history of abusive and predatory behavior she may have decided to distance herself from him or taken other precautions (not that she or anyone else should have to). Regan and many others’ hostility towards survivors and survivor supporters creates a toxic culture fueled by lies that survivors are FBI informants and uses the threat of the FBI to protect perpetrators.

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