Biography
Stephen Plato McRae’s case is typically discussed through criminal proceedings rather than through membership in a formal activist organization, but reporting and court documents describe a political motive: investigators and prosecutors said he targeted electrical infrastructure, and contemporaneous coverage reported that he framed his conduct in anti-industrial and climate terms (i.e., as an attempt to resist or disrupt what he saw as environmentally destructive “industrial capitalism” and fossil-fuel exploitation).
In Feb. 2017, federal prosecutors announced an indictment charging him with destruction of an energy facility tied to a Sept. 2016 incident that caused a significant regional power outage; DOJ filings also note he was initially pursued through a felon-in-possession firearms case before the energy-facility charge was added. In 2019 he pleaded guilty to destruction of an energy facility, and a federal judge sentenced him to eight years in prison.