Biography
Chelsea Dawn Gerlach was a member of the Eugene-area Earth Liberation Front cell during its most active period in the late 1990s, taking part in actions including the 1998 Vail ski resort arson and the 1999 toppling of a Bonneville Power Administration high-voltage transmission tower near Bend, Oregon. She was arrested December 7, 2005 in the Operation Backfire sweep, pleaded guilty in 2006 to 18 charges, and cooperated with federal prosecutors against her co-defendants. On May 25, 2007, Judge Ann Aiken sentenced her to 9 years (108 months) in federal prison with the terrorism enhancement applied.
Operation Backfire was the multi-agency federal investigation that, between 2005 and 2008, prosecuted approximately a dozen members of the small Eugene-area ELF/ALF cell known to investigators as 'The Family,' which had carried out roughly twenty arsons and acts of sabotage in five western states between 1996 and 2001. After the December 2005 arrests, the defendants split into two groups: those who cooperated with the federal government — testifying against their co-defendants in exchange for substantially reduced sentences — and those who did not (Daniel McGowan, Marius Mason, Joyanna Zacher, Nathan Block, Jonathan Paul, Briana Waters, Joseph Dibee, Justin Solondz, Rebecca Rubin, and the late William 'Avalon' Rodgers). This entry is for one of the cooperating defendants. The Earth Liberation Prisoners support network has consistently distinguished between cooperating and non-cooperating defendants, and many in the radical-ecology movement do not consider cooperators political prisoners. They are included here because they served meaningful federal prison time.
