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Most Popular, Periodicals
Live Wild or Die #1-3
05.05.11 | Permalink | Comments Off on Live Wild or Die #1-3Live Wild or Die # 1-3 (Published in various locations along the west coast of the United States, 1989-1990s?)
Edited by rotating teams of anarchists and espousing an anti-civilization perspective a decade before the rise of Eugene’s primitivists, Live Wild or Die was the most radical environmental journal of its time, and perhaps, of all time. Featuring articles with names like “The Eco-Fucker hit list,” which “wise use” guru Ron Arnold later erroneously claimed to have inspired Ted Kaczynski’s choice of targets, LWOD presented an uncompromising vision of a future without industrialism and domestication brought about by train hopping tree spikers, nomadic punk hunt saboteurs, and feral warriors. It was exciting, naive, inspiring, and sometimes a little bit stupid. Still, flipping through it’s over-sized, busily decorated pages you can not help but feel the optimistic spirit of that era. Earth First!ers and animal liberators, monkey wrenchers and black clad messengers run wild across the pulp, heralding a revolution to free the world of exploitation, drudgery, brutality and boredom. Cries for the destruction of corporate property vie for attention alongside snarky comic strips, screeds against new age pseudo resistance, and now un-distributable diagrams for building incendiary devices. The authors believed in their hearts that something better was on the horizon if they could fight hard enough to get there. That deep and passionate longing for utopia is all but dead nowadays, washed away by delusions of “Hope” and “Change” at the ballot box and a green consumerism that only takes us deeper into the pit of shallow lives and dying eco-systems. But somewhere out there I am betting that there are a few young people who pine for a planet that is joyous and just, and I hope they smile, conspiratorially, when they see what the generation who made LWOD was planning.
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Most Popular, One-off publications
Memories of Freedom
Memories of Freedom (1997? Tucson, AZ. USA)
This was the most inspiring publication I read in the early days of my activism, and remains a gorgeously written account of a small number of young people fighting from underground to make a change. The stories contained herein have become legend, and that sadly is the worst thing about this otherwise classic text.
Originally credited as being written by anonymous members of the “Western Wildlife Unit,” Rod Coronado later admitted being the author. The story was told from his perspective, and while he passionately believed his version of events, there were facts that he was unaware of during the time that the book was written. His recollections are also through a lens of spirituality which bears mention here. Religious fervor tends to skew memory so that events reflect belief rather than reality.
Since the publication of Memories of Freedom, a more journalistic study of the events described in the book has been completed. Ultimately, that study became the book Operation Bite Back by Dean Kuipers. After extensive research and interviews, it became clear that some of the events described in Memories were less spectacular than originally perceived by the author. For example, one raid at the USU Predator Research Facility is portrayed as a heart-warming victory wherein the raiders speak to the coyotes and are assisted in entering the building by the noise raised by the animal they came to save. In reality, the coyotes were highly domesticated and territorial. After being released many of them attacked each other, and required veterinary attention. One was shot, and another killed in the fighting. All survivors were recaptured, and the damage done to the research was minimal.
Memories of Freedom remains the best insider picture of the Animal Liberation Front, but it, like all propaganda, should be read with a critical and skeptical eye. While the stories are beautiful and told from the honest memories of Rod Coronado, they are incomplete in the way that all auto-biographies are. We can only learn from our errors when we are honest about them, and I hope that young activists will look further when they research these and other old publications.
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Most Popular, Periodicals
Stronghearts
In 1995, Rod Coronado was serving a prison sentence for conspiracy charges related to an arson at Michigan State University. During his incarceration he produced four issues of a wonderful cut and paste style zine called Strong Hearts.
I was a young anarchist living in Portland at the time, and obsessed with the writings of Alexander Berkman. Most notably, I was intrigued with his secretly produced prison publication known as Prison Blossoms. Written on various scraps of paper and clandestinely distributed to both prisoners and the outside world, there were no known copies available. One day, while discussing what treasures might have been held on those random bits of smuggled pulp, someone told me about Strong Hearts. I picked up a copy of the first issue at Reading Frenzy and felt like this time around I hadn’t missed out.
Rod’s writing was passionate and avoided much of the juvenile machismo that was endemic to the militant animal rights movement at the time. He bristled at single issue politics, and the magazine covered a spectrum of analysis, news, and tactics in the struggles for wilderness, wild life, women, and indigenous peoples. He was a prisoner, but the cluttered pages of Strong Hearts shined with the cheerful beauty of his intelligence and attitude. As each new issue came out those of us on the outside got a clearer picture of the author. We knew he was a warrior in the best sense of the word, and life behind bars had not yet taken his spirit of resistance.
Time has marched on, and whereas most of the old AR zines from this era seem dated, Strong Hearts largely holds up. The first hand accounts of the sinking of whaling ships, liberations of captive animals, and other direct actions are timeless, and when I fault much of anything about the rest of the writings, it is foremost their legibility. Most issues and articles managed to be inspiring without being fanatical, educational without being preachy, and accessible without being simplistic. Typically I would spend more time analyzing a zine like this, but Strong Hearts speaks for itself. I hope it brings as much to your life as it brought to mine.
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Bite Back, Most Popular, Periodicals
Bite Back #1-5
Bite Back is one of the only publications on Conflict Gypsy that is still operating. (Please support them by buying issues on their web site, DirectAction.info!) We’re posting the first five to give you a taste of their early years. Here’s an introduction from their publisher:
“Bite Back was formed in 2002 to give voice to activists who choose to break the law to help animals, and to feed an animal rights movement hungry for news about non-violent direct action. Our goal was to produce a magazine that was professional looking, creative and exciting.
In the years since our first issue, we’ve shipped the magazine to activists around the world, posted close to 4,000 reports of actions on our website, fought back lawsuits by some of the largest corporations in the world, and raised thousands of dollars to support animal rights prisoners of conscience.
Bite Back reports news often not found anywhere else. We hope our work is both inspirational to those who seek a more humane world, and unnerving to those who seek profit through exploitation and terror.
Bite Back is an all-volunteer organization.”
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Most Popular, Periodicals
Eat Me
EAT ME (1997-1998 New York, NY USA.)
Before the term snacktivist became derogatory, several amazing publications such as Soy Not Oi and Raggedy Anarchy promoted veganism and protest alongside recipes for tasty food. One much more obscure publication, EAT ME, was written by best selling vegan cookbook author Isa Moskowitz. Although the content doesn’t match the focus of most of our site, there is certainly a fun archival nerd collector value to seeing one of the most prominent faces of veganism during her radical youth. And yes, each issue contains a recipe. We are happy to have a new introduction to these newsletters from Isa herself.
“I made these as newsletters for the Anarchist Women’s Potlucks in 1997/1998. It was weird timing, because people had email and stuff but it was still a real privilege to have internet at home, so everything was done word of mouth. If you read a few issues, you can see that we used voicemail to let people know when they next one will be. So we were kind of cutting edge technology for the 90s, if only we had a beeper! I wrote them on a word processor, then cut and paste and just filled in some of the art with pictures of lips or whatever. I would love to try some of the recipes now, I was a pretty shitty recipe writer back then. So many awesome things came out of those potlucks, including Bluestockings Books which is still standing today. It was really the end of an era! Pre-internet activism, where you kinda had to know everyone face to face. There is definitely something valuable in that. I love seeing these because they seem so innocent, even though I felt jaded back then.”
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TALON is a soon to be rebranded archive of animal and earth liberation publications. This site is currently being maintained but please expect to see the collection at a new home soon.
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| The Talon Conspiracy is an online archive preserving the history of protest movements for animal rights and environmentalism. Its owners, contributors, and designers are not responsible for actions taken by third parties which may be harmful or unlawful to the individuals or entities named in archived publications. This web site is provided for the purpose of historical research and analysis, and is not intended to incite, encourage, or condone any criminal action on the part of its readers. Finally, The Talon Conspiracy does not necessarily agree with any of the views expressed in the publications in our archive, but aims to provide a thorough collection of the history of eco direct action. All opinions expressed in our archives are those of their original authors only. |