Your radical roots are showing!

Anyone who has closely followed the battle over biotech crops in Maine knows the opponents of genetic engineering in the state are, well, different. You can spot them easily at hearings with their knit caps and casual, some would say slovenly, dress. Long hair, long beards and long skirts are de rigueur.

Politically they occupy the far left end of the spectrum. When Rob Fish and Meg Gilmartin came to Maine from Vermont to set up GE Free Maine, they arrived with the backing of the Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont. The ISE, it turns out, had its roots in the American Communist movement. ISE's founder, Murray Bookchin (now deceased), described himself as a "red diaper baby" (a child of American Communists) and a Trotskyite. GE Free Maine received in-kind and financial support from the Institute for Social Ecology until it folded in 2006 after Bookchin's death.

On September 29, two members of the anti-biotech movement were arrested revealing yet another dimension of the crusade -- radical roots. Meg Gilmartin, one of GE Free Maine's founders, was arrested in Augusta during a protest of the Land Use Regulatory Commission's decision to approve Plum Creek's plans for development in the Moosehead Lake region. Also arrested was Kyla Hersey-Wilson, one of the four people who purchased the plot of land in Thorndike that houses Food for Maine's Future (GE Free Maine's new identity). Gilmartin and Hersey-Wilson locked themselves to two other women with bicyle locks and refused to leave LURC's offices. All four women were arrested for trespassing.

Another familiar face turned up at the fracas -- Logan Perkins -- , though she was not arrested. The women were identified in news stories as members of Maine Earth First! In 1984, Earth First! gained noteriety and were labeled as "ecoterrorists" when they introduced tree spiking. By driving spikes into trees they impeded the logging process as chainsaws incountering the spikes were destroyed. In 1992, according to the FBI, the violent Earth Liberation Front, was founded by Earth First! members. In a news story photograph, Logan Perkins is seen confronting officials in front of the LURC offices.

In retrospect, the radical underbelly of the anti-biotech movement should come as no surprise. In August of 1999, a group calling itself "Seeds of Resistance" destroyed a plot of genetically engineered corn being grown by University of Maine researcher John Jemison. Shortly thereafter, stands of poplar trees in northern Maine were destroyed under the mistaken impression that they too were genetically engineered.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that the anti-biotechnology crusaders have hounded legislators and, more recently, town officials in their effort to pass laws and ordinances banning the planting of biotech crops. But when it comes to obeying laws, well . . .