A Little is Enough: A zine by antarctic sailors (2012/2013. The Southern Ocean)
Although our site started as an effort to preserve animal and earth liberation history, we are slowly incorporating more contemporary DIY projects. One of our favorite zines from the last year was written by the crew members aboard the Sea Shepherd vessel M/Y Bob Barker. This is the side of Sea Shepherd that people do not see on Whale Wars: the dedicated crew members who see Animal Planet executives as “prodouchebags,” who discuss issues of race and gender with each other on long, icy nights, and who remain (or become) quite radical despite the mainstreaming of SSCS. Plus, SODUKU!
Do you make a zine about direct action for non-humans or wilderness defense? Tell us about it HERE.
…
Inside the Cages (2013. South London, England)
Back in the early 2000’s I was invited to speak at World Day for Animals in Laboratories in Cambridge. It was my first time out of North America, and I was excited to meet our British counterparts in the movement for non-humans. Originally my trip was planned for two short weeks, but shortly after my arrival I got some news that ended up extending my stay: my house was raided by a Joint Terrorism Task Force. “Don’t fly back until we know what’s going on,” my attorney warned. Since I was stranded abroad I figured I may as well get some activism done. Introductions were made, and soon I found myself going out on office invasions and event disruptions across England and Germany.
One of the people I met during those hectic months was a young anarchist named Lewis. He was smart, daring, and had a contagious smile that appeared whenever mischief was being discussed… or carried out! Lewis was no adventurist though, his motivations were sincere and his work ethic solid. By the time I left Europe to face the situation awaiting me in the U.S. I had developed a deep respect for his fighting spirit.
Like so many of the people I respect, it wasn’t long before Lewis found himself on the “wrong” side of the law. After being charged for carrying out ALF actions, Lewis refused to turn informant and was sentenced to prison time and supervised probation. “Inside the Cages” is his account of that experience. The final chapter, which details Lewis’ interactions with the probation system is highly recommended.
…
Hidden Crimes (1986. Pasadena, CA)
The animal liberation movement has seen some bewildering strategies come and go over the years. One of the weirdest was the idea that animals should be removed altogether from the vivisection debate. As far back as the 1970s there were groups and individuals who insisted (often with religious zeal) that the issue with animal experimentation was one of scientific fraud, and that humans were too selfish to care about animals. These anti-vivisectionists thought that if the general public could be convinced that vivisection did not work, people would be outraged by the waste of their tax dollars and would demand that the practice ended.
The idea that the public would revolt if they saw their tax dollars wasted on “scientific fraud” is absurd. How many people living in the United States are already aware of ways in which their tax dollars are abused and how many are rioting as a result? How many of those involved in the fight against vivisection would fight with the same force for money instead of lives? Furthermore, since this who strategy relied on the idea that “Vivisection is Scientific Fraud,” what percentage of the public is qualified to debate science with scientists? Finally, if vivisection were to be defeated using this strategy, where does that leave animals killed for fur, food, and entertainment? Were they to be abandoned since the selfishness of humanity is all we had to appeal to?
Despite these obvious weaknesses in their argument, groups like SUPRESS, and their founder Javier Burgos, made several documentaries promoting the idea. The first by SUPRESS was called “Hidden Crimes,” and despite its message that fraud is more of an issue than animals, graphic imagery of animals being mutilated is prominent throughout the film. Much of this footage was obtained by the Animal Liberation Front, who notably fight vivisection because of their concern for non-humans, rather than bad science or mis-spent tax dollars.
Hidden Crimes promised to be the start of a new movement which would swiftly abolish vivisection. If failed to keep that promise, but for all of its faults, it was seen by tens of thousands of people upon its release and remains an important part of our movements history.
…
Grand Juries: Tools of Political Repression. (1998, Portland. OR)
The United States government, like all repressive states, will not stand for any challenge to their authority. Abroad, they maintain their power with a diverse selection of tactics that range from the killing of journalists, to drone assassinations. Here at home their methods are also broad, but to maintain the illusion of democracy they usually only resort to murder as a last option. (And they do resort to murder. From Fred Hampton to Judi Bari, the FBI has repeatedly proved their willingness to take lives.) So, how does the state keep social control while still pretending to welcome dissent? First and foremost, dissent is only allowed so long as it is impotent to create change. Hold your signs, cast your ballots, and say whatever you like- so long as it doesn’t threaten the ruling class. Once you step past that boundary the gloves come off as fast as the illusion of constitutional protections.
Right now there are several secretive grand juries running in the United States. They are investigating (and attempting to disrupt) animal liberation and anarchist communities under the guise of solving crimes. This is not a new phenomenon, throughout the history of this country these shadowy tribunals have been used to great effect to slow revolutionary movements. The use of grand juries against environmentalists and radical vegans became especially epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, most notably with the frequent subpoenaing of people doing purely legal support work for underground direct action groups. One activist in particular, Craig Rosebraugh, was subpoenaed a total of eight times to various grand juries.
After his first few subpoenas, Craig wrote the essay Grand Juries: Tools of Political Repression. Originally intended for a university class, the essay was eventually reprinted in pamphlet format by Liberation Collective. The tone of the publication is a little heavy handed, academic, and politically naive, but the information contained inside is crucial for those wanting an overview of grand juries.
After you read this publication, we would like to encourage you to show solidarity with activists imprisoned for refusing to comply with grand juries. A good first step is to write them a letter. All three people listed below are being held without ever having been convicted of a crime, and all are being kept in solitary confinement. A letter of support from a stranger will go a long way towards brightening their day- so break out your pens and paper!
Katherine Olejnik #42592-086
FDC SeaTac,
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA 98198
Matthew Kyle Duran #42565-086
FDC SeaTac
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA 98198
Matthew Pfeiffer #42421-086
FDC SeaTac
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA 98198
…
Into The 90s With The ALF (1991, City Unknown, England)
This Is The ALF #2 (1994, City Unknown, New Zealand)
First things first: the posting of these two old ALF publications requires a little uncomfortable honesty. You see, neither zine is particularly well written, the advice given on tactics (and strategy) isn’t particularly insightful, and everything covered inside has been dealt with better elsewhere. However, these were both widely distributed in their time, and as we aim to be a complete archive both of these anonymously distributed tracts deserve a place here on the site.
With that said (or written, as it happens to be!) these zines provide us with a view into the issues and campaigns being discussed by radical animal liberationists during the early 90s. The focus on economic damage versus rescue is particularly interesting, and some might argue resulted in a public relations failure for the movement. Also intriguing is tracking the way the contents traveled around the world to be republished in different countries. Into the 90s carries material originally published in Canada, This Is the ALF has content from the United States and England. The loose network of animal liberation militants that existed prior to the popular use of the internet is fascinating, and imagining how the anonymous authors of these publications received the items they ultimately reprinted is entertaining fodder for the imagination.
All told, these primers were meant to provide newcomers with a quick overview of the Animal Liberation Front, and to spread the use of direct action in their respective countries. They do so, just not in a particularly inspiring manner.
Breaking Barriers (1986. Washington, D.C.)
While it is true that direct action is often the best means to accomplish our goals, the way we conduct those actions can be an impediment to long term change. Early militants in the animal liberation movement were inspired by the aesthetics of groups like The Angry Brigade, and we have been saddled with that sort of ski-mask and army jacket imagery ever since. The problem is this: that appearance is heavily associated with anti-social behavior, crime, and random violence. While we may romanticize the bolt cutters and balaclavas, the general public does not. If our fashion sense harms the propaganda and recruitment value of our actions, than perhaps we need a makeover.
There have been efforts to part with the bank-robber-meets-gun-nut costumes, however. One of the most dramatic involved a spectacular raid, and… um… mime masks. This attempt at softening the imagery of underground activism was carried out by the aptly named “True Friends.” The video below, Breaking Barriers, was produced by PeTA in their more radical days, and acted to publicize the liberation of four baby chimpanzees from isolation chambers at the SEMA lab in Rockville, MD. While the effectiveness of their eerie masks and wigs is questionable, the beauty of these young primates being freed from a life of torture is not. This was a notable raid that garnered considerable public sympathy when it occurred, and just because the attempt at re-inventing our look failed in this instance doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.
…
Random clips (1996 and 1998, various locations.)
Speciesism is so entrenched that your average person sees nothing wrong with the anal electrocution of a mink in order to steal their fur. This same person, however, will scream bloody murder over an empty building being set alight to prevent such torture. Our society habitually denounces those who resist our everyday cruelties, until somehow logic manages to penetrate and suddenly the rebels are seen as being right all along. At one point in the United States the majority of (invading European) citizens saw nothing wrong with human slavery, and newspapers shouted their outrage over slave revolts, the underground railroad, and the burning of auction blocks that sold thousands of people into bondage. Through the efforts of generations of abolitionists, however, the tide was eventually turned, and none of those aforementioned papers would now dream of supporting the slave trade. The rebels who were hated by the public, who were jailed and hanged and ridiculed to the delight of the media, are now seen as heroes.
There are, of course, very real differences between the movements to end human and non-human slavery, but the role of the media has remained very much the same. Luckily our movement has had, from time to time, articulate spokespeople who can explain why direct action is taken on behalf of animals. In the 1990s Freeman Wicklund, then the publisher of No Compromise magazine, would act as a press liaison in order to explain the motives of the underground. Later, Katie Fedor would start the North American Animal Liberation Front Press Office. Working closely with former ALF prisoners and the Canadian SG, she appeared regularly on television defending the actions of anonymous saboteurs. (As an interesting side note, Kevin Kjonaas once interned for Katie’s press office, and actually received college credits for defending the ALF!)
We present here several news clips featuring Freeman and Katie in the 90s doing one of the hardest jobs a good press officer must do: defending the use of arson to save animals.
…
Let’s Get Free (2002, Eugene, OR.)
Once upon a time in the late 1990s I was down in southern California for a big activist gathering and protest. A local Food Not Bombs chapter was preparing a meal to feed the demonstrators the following day, and I ended up chopping vegetables next to this nice punk kid. At some point it came up that I was living in Eugene, and he mentioned that he might move there. We promised to keep in touch, and a little while later I saw him at a protest in front of Eugene’s federal building. “I’m sorry man, I’m terrible with names,” I apologized. “Call me Free,” he said.
Free became a very recognizable face during an interesting shift in the membership of Earth First! I had grown up in Eugene during a time when the “Rednecks for Wilderness” generation were losing ground to patchoulied, pacifist hippies. No one would have guessed that just a little more than a decade later the hippies would find themselves ousted by eco-crusties, but the change of guard can’t be stopped, and Free was right there in the center of it.
Everyone liked the guy, you couldn’t help it. The punk kids looked up to him because he walked his talk. The pacifists may not have appreciated how willing he was to literally fight for the planet, but even Julia Butterfly called him to discuss his near-record tree sit. Hell, the cops gave him a kind of grudging respect. He became a major part of the Eugene scene during a time that the struggle seemed to be accelerating, when we all felt like a revolution could break out at any moment. And then he was stolen away…
I had just defied a grand jury subpoena and was trying to quietly pass through Eugene. Stupidly, I stopped off for coffee at Out of the Fog, a little cafe that catered to the eco-defense and anarchist crowds. A loud voice yelled, “Man, I thought you were on the run!” It was Free, and suddenly everyone was looking at me. “Naw, man, it isn’t like that,” I muttered in the grumpy manner I am most known for. I took my coffee to go, bid Free goodbye, and then a few days later I heard the news. He had been arrested for an arson. Soon he would be sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison.
Let’s Get Free tells the story of Jeff “Free” Luers’ arrest, trial, and sentencing, along with some short articles and illustrations by Jeff himself. It was sold to benefit his legal defense fund and prison commissary fund before he eventually had his sentence reduced to about 10 years on appeal. It is a good zine, and it manages to capture some of the shock and anger felt by the activist community when one of our best comrades was buried inside the prison system as a reminder to stay in our place. What it doesn’t capture is the strength, sincerity, and warmth of Jeff Luers. I saw him recently, just a few days after my probation had ended. It had been more than 12 years since our last encounter and as he shook my hand and chatted I had to smile. The state failed to tame this young warrior. Free is free!
…
North American Earth Liberation Front Press Office Subcommittee on Eco-Terrorism (2002, Portland, OR)
One of the most frequently repeated myths about direct action is that is so damaging to public opinion that if people didn’t already do it, the government would in order to criminalize movements. If this were true it certainly seems that the system would spend less time trying to prevent radical action by silencing it’s proponents and more time harassing the Sierra Club. The truth is that nothing scares corporations and their paid-in-full politician pets like a well organized group with a willingness to fight and the ability to reach the public with their ideas.
In the late 1990s environmental sabotage was happening all across the world, but was particularly frequent in the northwest of the United States. At the forefront of these actions was the Earth Liberation Front, an anonymous, underground group, who utilized above ground spokespeople to reach the public. Their primary conduit for media relations was an activist from Portland named Craig Rosebraugh and his organization, the North American ELF Press Office. For his role in publicizing the motivations and rhetoric of the ELF he had his arm broken by the police, his home raided by Joint Terrorism Task Forces, his break cables cut, was repeatedly subpoenaed to grand juries, and eventually was called to testify before a congressional sub-committee who hoped to imprison him on contempt charges. The so-called “Eco-Terror committee” surely hoped that Craig would be an easy target, but that didn’t exactly work out for them. Snarky, educated, and angry, Craig’s testimony ran the gamut from stonewalling, to educational, to hilarious. For example, while running the Press Office with his friend Leslie James Pickering, Craig owned a bakery. When asked how the press office was funded, Rosebraugh simply replied “muffins.” When asked who had asked him to become the ELF press officer and how he was contacted, Craig responded, “Jesus Christ. It was a spiritual sort of thing.”
Jokes aside, a congressional subpoena represented a shift in the way environmental sabotage was being treated by the system, and publicizing that fact fell to Leslie James Pickering. In order to spread the word about the hearings, the NAELFPO sold a DIY booklet containing all of the testimony presented by both sides at the hearing and the subsequent written questions sent to Craig by the subcommittee. In a recent conversation with Conflict Gypsy about the booklet, Pickering had this to say:
“I can’t say for sure, how many of these were printed, but it was definitely less than 500. I had a little production line going, with people wearing gloves and hats, only half-jokingly, recently having learned about the WUO and Prairie Fire. The subcommittee was in February of 2002 and I left Portland in June of 2002. These booklets were produced somewhere in between there…probably March or April, because I utilized some machinery they had at college before the semester let out and because this was actually in peoples’ hands before it was easily found online. They were distributed through the ELF Press Office, which means that people could send us $10 and get a copy mailed, or get one at one of our event tables. A good chunk of them also went to AK distro, but we never saw a cent from those, which is another story. One of the more interesting aspects were the complaints from anonymous anarchists about it costing too much. This was when the PO was being bombarded with anonymous comments which were critical from many angles. I often think of how much work went into this and how cheap these people were, assuming for a moment that they weren’t all feds. If we didn’t have the old magnet scam going [where large magnets would be used to reset the copy keys at Kinkos – ed] we would probably have lost money at $10, because it was a pretty thick booklet.”
Inside / Out: Diary of Madness (2001, St. Louis, MO)
Back when the United States still had a strong grassroots animal liberation infrastructure, activists would regularly travel from all across the country to attend national demonstrations. Hundreds, or even thousands, of people would descend on various targets, and for a few days at least, bring the killers a little taste of the hell that they regularly created for non-humans.
Inside / Out is the story of Brenda Shoss’ experience at one such demonstration which took place in Little Rock between October 27th and 29th in 2001. Brenda, a devoted animal rescuer and mother, represented the broad diversity of the campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences during it’s early years. Hailing from St. Louis, she hardly fit the image of “the usual suspects” in militant campaigning. Happily marching alongside pierced punks and anarchists, Brenda’s mild mannered and patriotic politics did not clash with those held by her comrades: instead her presence signaled a movement able to break through to a wider audience. Throughout her account of the demonstrations she evokes the anger and outrage that prompted thousands to band together, despite their differences, to fight to shut down HLS.
Following her personal reflections on the demonstration and overall campaign are excerpts from Michelle Rokke’s “Diaries of Despair,” an insider’s account of the horrors that happen behind the locked doors of Huntingdon, a company that continues to kill hundreds of animals a day in unnecessary and vicious experiments.