The Liberator (1988, San Bernadino, CA. USA.)
In the 1970s, a small group of activists in England decided that animal abuse was so intrinsic to their society, and so protected by the courts and law enforcement, that anonymous, illegal activity was the only surefire way to directly prevent the horrors taking place in slaughterhouses, labs, and killing fields. They began to take the personal initiative to raid and sabotage places where the victimization of animals occurred, but how could they spread their message and tactics? With mainstream media treating them either as misguided nutcases or vicious criminals, and with national animal organizations disavowing their actions, they needed a mechanism to defend their tactics and share their views. The answer was the Animal Liberation Supporters Group, more commonly known as “The SG.” The SG soon took on the responsibility of printing newsletters, conducting press interviews, and raising funds and support for imprisoned activists. Soon, other supporters groups blossomed internationally, and eventually one took off in a small town in Southern California.
The Liberator was a publication of the Animal Liberation Front Support Group of America, an organization with a storied history that included FBI harassment, raids, and internal conflict. This inaugural issue was largely produced by Rod Coronado and Todd Meszaros, and the aesthetics of the issue reflect a bit of the punk influence that the two of them embraced. The design is busy, but also packed with information, press clipping, letters, debates, a timeline of US actions, and historically important letters from figures such as ALF co-founder Ronnie Lee. The centerfold is gorgeous, and it, and many of the other images contained inside were heavily borrowed and reprinted by other magazines.
The mission of the ALF SG of America was to vocally support and defend the ALF, to unify supporters of underground animal activism, to educate the public as to need and rationale of direct action, to encourage implementation of clandestine tactics, to provide a legal defense fund for imprisoned or arrested ALF activists, and to raise funds for all of the above. They did this at a time when dozens of labs across the country were being raided, thousands of people were protesting for animal rights, and the US seemed to be on the cusp of a mass movement for non-humans. The Liberator documented these efforts and is a classic piece of animal liberation history.
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The Militant Vegan 1-8 (January 1993 – March 1995. USA.)
Militant Vegan was an anonymously produced zine that ran for 8 issues between 1993 and 1995. The final issue was never printed by the team who produced the magazine, instead the files were distributed online. Due to the poor quality of modems and low usage of the internet at the time the issue was mostly lost to history. Other things contributed to the mag’s obscurity as well. For example- there was no address to order the magazine from. Instead, originals were distributed to some animal rights groups and it was requested that they make copies, and that the readers of those copies make further copies to distribute to activists. Since the publication already relied on much cutting and pasting this method of circulation resulted in heavy generation loss of images, and obtaining readable copies wasn’t always easy. Even activists who were heavily involved in the movement at that time never saw every issue. Conflict Gypsy was luckily able to track down a complete set, including the rare eighth and final dispatch.
Printed in starkly contrasted black and white, and dressed in over-the-top, macho imagery, Militant Vegan’s primary purpose was to publicize actions and news ignored by mainstream movement publications. Otherwise, the philosophy of the magazine was vague. It was pleasant to read a brief denunciation of the sexism and homophobia advocated by the “Hardline movement” in MV’s early issues, but elsewhere there was less clarity. For example, ALF guidelines prohibiting violence appeared alongside statements celebrating the poisoning of animal products left on store shelves. (These actions turned out to be hoaxes, and no one was actually poisoned.) Frequent reminders that the publishers didn’t wish to encourage illegal activity appeared alongside instructions on how to do exactly that. And despite the angry condemnation of speciesism, cops are still referred to as pigs in a page reprinted from Defiance #1. The rhetoric could be ugly and was generally unlikely to convince people that direct action was an ethical tactic that provided the movement a way forward.
Despite all of this there was nothing quite like Militant Vegan at the time that it was published, and it documented the rise of a new era of grassroots activism in the United States prior to the publication of No Compromise. For the lucky few who could obtain copies, MV brought news of groups like Student Environmental Action League, Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, and Animal Defense League into their homes when glossy magazines like Animal’s Agenda did not. After a sharp dip in the number of underground actions in the earlier part of the 90s, Militant Vegan was a good source of information on the new trend towards smaller scale economic sabotage. Occasionally a well written original article appeared, and seeing press clippings from former radical (and current HSUS honcho) JP Goodwin’s convictions for sabotage remains amusing. Finally, the letters from prisoners were at times inspiring, and the coverage of Rod Coronado’s case from arrest to conviction is essential reading.
In total, Militant Vegan was a product of its time, written by amateurs who saw a niche and decided to fill it. It remains one of the only insider perspectives from that period of underground and radical grassroots animal liberation activism.
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Dressed in Black 1-3 (1994-1995. Syracuse, NY USA.)
Dressed in Black was a short lived zine produced and distributed by members of the Syracuse Animal Defense League. It ran for 3 issues in the span of just over a year and then died out right around the same time as Syracuse’s other animal liberation publication, Holocaust. DiB’s infancy followed the pattern set by Militant Vegan in that it relied heavily on articles reprinted from other sources, but that strangely ended up being its primary strength.
To be aware of magazines such as Frontlines, Out of the Cages, or Liberator you already had to be a part of the movement. To obtain a copy in those days you had to mail a request along with hidden cash and sometimes even a return envelope. People who were not already committed to the cause were unlikely to do that, but Dressed in Black, at least in its first issue, acted as an aggregator for articles from those publications and got into the hands of non-activists by being distributed at hardcore shows.
Syracuse was one of many cities in the US that experienced a surge of youth led AR activism in the early 90s, but unlike Memphis or Minneapolis, Syracuse had a special ingredient that helped spread awareness of grassroots groups and local zines – the band Earth Crisis. After releasing their All Out War EP in 1992, the band’s popularity boomed. They often had chapters of the Animal Defense League tabling at their shows, and as Conflict Gypsy sought out copies of Dressed in Black many people told us that their introduction to the zine came at Earth Crisis shows in various places across the country.
By the third issue, Dressed in Black contained original writings and cleaned up its layout. It was surprisingly non-dogmatic for its era, and depicted ADL activists “going naked,” contained information from national organizations, and managed to avoid the pseudo-religious insanity of “Hardline.” Due to its wide circulation, DiB eventually became one of the zines that others copied articles out of, an interesting full circle for this small publication that died before reaching maturity.
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