The Archives

• Most Popular, No Compromise, Periodicals

  No Compromise: The Final Two Issues

  05.13.13 | Permalink

  No Compromise #29-30 (2006. Santa Cruz / San Francisco, CA)

  The early days of my activism were so exciting. After a lifetime of feeling powerless I suddenly discovered that there was a community dedicated to fighting the good fight. Its members were in every major city and many smaller ones, and sometimes not living in any city at all, but in trees and encampments. The people involved were empowered to act for themselves in order to create a better world, and had abandoned all the false hope of political parties and their dead politics. Words meant little, action was what counted, and the sky was the limit. The internet was not yet in wide use, and thank goodness! That meant that we met each other in conference rooms, in squats, on the streets, and sometimes on the pages of No Compromise magazine.

  No Compromise shaped who I am today. Each new issue contained articles that helped me and thousands of others to evolve our own style of resistance, and as our experience grew we were able to share our stories in the pages of the magazine.

  After 30 issues, the steering committee of No Compromise decided to stop publishing in 2006. Their decision could not have come at a worse time. With the SHAC website and newsletter killed by the convictions of the SHAC 7, Bite Back being published only sporadically and with a limited focus, and the Earth First! Journal mired in its “Confronting Oppression Within” drama, the sudden absence of No Compromise meant that the primary sources for radical animal liberation news, opinion, and strategy were the twin sewers of online social networks and the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. These were dark times for our movement, and we are only just beginning to recover.

  The final issues of No Compromise were the best of the series, though! I was in prison when issue 30 was released, and it felt electric in my hands. I read it over and over, alternately laughing and crying. As I was putting this post together I decided to pull out that print copy. It gave me the same sense of awe I had when I read those first issues. More than that, it reminded me that there is still a community of people capable of changing the world through compassionate direct action and mutual aid. And you know what? We are going to win!

  KEEP FIGHTING,
  Josh Harper

   

  (The complete set of all past issues of No Compromise can be found HERE)

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• One-off publications

  Meeting the People and Ideas of the Animal Liberation Movement

  06.16.11 | Permalink

  Meeting the People and Ideas of the Animal Liberation Movement (Publication date unknown, Amsterdam, Netherlands)

  Before the age of “re-tweeting,” “re-blogging,” and “sharing” other people’s postings on the internet, zinester culture had its own form of helping spread information further afield from its initial distribution. DIY publishers would extract and reprint entire articles in their own zines which they had read first in other publications. In the case of this publication, activists in the Netherlands took some of the best articles from early issues of No Compromise and compiled them into this short, informative, and inspiring little booklet. Ideas which had previously been shared in the United States thus became available abroad, and the old information grapevine which relied on print was expanded just a little further. This is a good read with a mouthful of a title!

  

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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.