The Animal Liberation Front:
Since I’ve been talking about the animal rights movement, and I always show how everything I talk about applies to the people on the extreme ends of any topic just like it applies to everyone else, I can’t possibly leave the subject of animal rights without talking about the Animal Liberation Front. ALF volunteers, after all, are Homo sapiens attempting to preserve the survival of their DNA by the most effective means perceivable to them, just like everyone else.
But rather than my talking about them, let’s see what they have to say for themselves. The following is a communiqué they sent to Earth First! Journal in 2005, about an action they had just staged. A lot of people might wonder why I should pass something like this along to you, and might think I’m condoning criminal activity. But these are Homo sapiens who are trying to tell their side of the story, why they’ve done what they’ve done, and why they perceive it to be right. If the success of your political system depends on preventing certain people from saying what they have to say, or preventing other people from listening to them, then obviously there’s something fundamentally wrong with your political system, because obviously there are some situations that your political system isn’t capable of dealing with.
Animal Liberation Front Raids University of Iowa
Releases 401 Animals & Destroys Labs
The following communiqué was received anonymously from the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
The ALF is claiming responsibility for the liberation of 401 animals from the University of Iowa (UI) in the early hours of November 14. All animals on the third floor of the UI psychology department—88 mice and 313 rats—were removed, examined, treated by a sympathetic veterinarian and placed in loving homes.
Additionally, two animal labs and three vivisectors’ offices were entered, and all contents relating to animal research were destroyed.
Specifically, these are:
Fourth Floor, Spence Labs: Vivisector Ed Wasserman’s lab entered. Dozens of computers and devices used in experiments on live pigeons were destroyed.
Basement, Spence Labs: Lab of vivisector Mark Blumburg and others entered. Surgical equipment and small animal stereotaxic devices, as well as “shock boxes” and other instruments of torture were destroyed.
Fourth Floor, Seashore Hall: Primate researcher Joshua Rodefer’s office entered. Computer disks, hard drives, paperwork and photos showing Rodefer’s work (confining drug-addicted primates in small glass boxes) removed. The remaining paperwork detailing his monstrous work addicting primates and rats to narcotics was soaked in acid, and the computer was destroyed.
First Floor, Seashore Hall: Primate researcher Amy Poremba’s office entered. Computers destroyed, documents removed, and the remainder soaked in acid.
This raid was carried out to halt the barbaric research of the UI psychology department’s seven primary animal researchers: professors Amy Poremba, John Freeman, Mark Blumburg, Kim Johnson, Scott Robinson, Joshua Rodefer and Ed Wasserman.
This was not thoughtless vandalism, but a methodical effort to cripple the UI psychology department’s animal research. Only equipment in rooms where animals were confined and tortured was targeted. Only computers belonging to or used in the work of vivisectors were destroyed. Only documents of animal researchers were doused in acid. The acid was a deliberately chosen, paper-dissolving agent.
Our goal is total abolition of all animal exploitation, achieved in the short term by delivering the 401 animals from UI’s chamber of hell—and in the extended term, by shutting down the labs through the erasing of research and equipment used in the barbaric practice of vivisection. The entire raid was a careful and deliberate five-pronged assault on UI’s animal research.
Behind the laboratory doors, we found drug-addicted rats, rats subjected to stress experiments involving loud noise, rats undergoing thirst experiments, unanesthetized rats with protruding surgical staples and oozing wounds, and mice and rats affixed with grotesque head implants. Inside the labs of UI’s psychology department, we found a bloody torture chamber showcasing the cruelest whims of our Earth’s sickest minds. Professors Freeman, Poremba, Rodefer, Johnson, Robinson, Blumburg and Wasserman are monsters. Tonight, 401 animals are spared their reach.
Our deepest sadness is reserved for the animals on the fourth floor kept from our arms, those we were unable to save, including hundreds of mice, rats, pigeons, guinea pigs and eight primates.
No animals were released into the wild. All 401 were placed in comfortable, loving homes.
We acted as operatives not only of compassion, but good science. Animal research is not only cruel but hazardous—as data derived from animal models is not applicable to humans and therefore dangerous.
Our bypassing of UI’s sophisticated, key card-access, four-walled security system (perimeter, elevator, corridor, animal room) should be interpreted as a two-fold message:
•Our utter seriousness in achieving animal liberation.
•If you torture animals, we will not be stopped from liberating them.
On the ears of these monsters who know only profit and blood, who hide behind unjust laws, our breath has been wasted. Justice for the victims of vivisection will not be achieved by the blows of boycott or protest—but by our sledgehammers to laboratory doors.
Let this message be clear to all who victimize the innocent: We’re watching. And by ax, drill or crowbar—we’re coming through your door.
Stop or be stopped.
Communiqué Addendum
The continuation of vivisection is maintained only insofar as it remains outside public sight and scrutiny. The ongoing research uncovered at UI’s psychology department is of such a sadistic nature as to be inexcusable by all but the sickest minds. UI code requires that all animals be kept behind the locked doors of windowless rooms, and most often on floors locked to the public. UI has tagged this raid as mere vandalism and denied an animal liberation motive, despite numerous slogans left painted at the site, to divert attention from its animal research. We confiscated paperwork from UI’s seven primary researchers to give the public a glimpse into the sickness kept from their eyes.
Professor Freeman: Drills holes into the skulls of rats and affixes head implants in neurology experiments involving “electrical brain stimulation.” Rats removed from his lab were grossly disfigured by surgically implanted devices on the skull.
All animals in his lab were rescued.
Professor Johnson: Exposes rats to a series of “chronic stressors” including loud noise and strobe lights for the aim of “experimentally induced depression.” Also performs experiments involving the withholding of water from rats.
All animals in his lab were rescued.
Professor Blumburg: Subjects infant rats to prolonged cold exposure. Famously deranged mind on record as stating that the cries of animals in labs are an automatic response and convey no more emotion than a sneeze.
All animals in his lab were rescued.
Professor Poremba: Currently confines eight rhesus monkeys in the northeast corner of the psychology building’s fourth floor, subjecting them to numerous stressors including reward/punishment experiments. Places primates in a “behavioral conditioning box,” also known as a “shock box,” where primates are subjected to shock experiments. Inside her office, we found pieces of primate brain encased in glass and blueprints to the building.
Professor Rodefer: Addicts primates and rats to cocaine, methamphetamine and PCP in redundant drug experiments. His drug possession license, filed with the Drug Enforcement Administration, stipulates that the drugs be kept in a locked safe in the building’s basement. However, two stashes of narcotics were found in his fourth floor office, including in the inside pocket of a jacket, suggesting that he is himself addicted to the drugs that he has for years forced on animals.
I really liked this article, because there are so many, many valuable lessons to be learned from it.
First, if that biology professor honestly believes that the cries of suffering animals are reflexes that don’t convey any emotion at all, he obviously doesn’t have a f*cking clue how evolution works. If animals don’t have emotions, where the f*ck does he think human emotions evolved from? I have a lot more to say about this in the next chapter, but basically, everything evolves in small steps, not in giant steps. When you start omitting pieces of evidence that are inconvenient for you, you aren’t talking about science anymore; you’re talking about propaganda. So why the f*ck is he a biology professor at all?
Now let’s apply a little behavioral and evolutionary psychology to the person who wrote this communiqué. Start at the beginning. The actions described in the article, and the act of writing the article and sending it to Earth First! Journal are both acts committed by a Homo sapiens in the attempt to preserve the survival of his or her DNA by the most effective means perceivable to him or her. That’s ironic, since if the author of this article heard me say that, he or she would probably tell me they didn’t do it for preserving the survival of their own DNA at all, they did it for the sake of preserving the survival of the laboratory animals’ DNA. And that’s one reason this is such an educational article. Let’s consider each of those two actions separately.
So the next question is how did this person perceive that rescuing these animals was the most effective means to preserve the survival of his or her DNA? Go to the eight motivations.
The person’s survival and personal safety obviously weren’t at risk here, so those are out.
What about reproduction? Did the person perceive these rats and mice to be part of their family? I have some cousins who are adopted, who I perceive to be members of my family. I perceive pets to be members of my family. There’s that tricky word perception again. If this person perceived these mice and rats to be members of their family, that’s all it takes.
As it turns out, a mouse’s DNA is about 75% identical to the DNA of a human. The person was attempting to preserve the survival of his or her DNA by the most effective means perceivable to him or her, and he or she rescued 401 animals whose DNA was 75% identical to his or hers. So it can be argued that this person was protecting members of his or her family. I doubt a judge would agree, but the person’s belief is not completely unfounded.
What about social? Did the person recognize these mice and rats as important members of his or her community? Well, mice and rats were created by the same global environment that created us, and we are all members of the global environmental community. That’s obvious.
Did rescuing these mice and rats make the person feel good? Obviously it did.
Did rescuing the mice and rats help the person put their abilities to use, put them to use as much as possible, and put all of their abilities to use as much as possible? The person obviously perceived the mice and rats to be either family members or important community members. This person obviously measures their success in life at least in part by their ability to protect animals. He or she had the ability to open the cages to rescue the animals, so that was the use of an ability to make a life for him or herself. But not only that, the person had to use a whole bunch of other abilities around that basic ability, because in order to open the cages and let the animals out, first he or she had to break into a highly secured building—and then carry all the animals out afterwards.
Now, how did the five external factors affect the person’s decision-making?
The person had the basic abilities to use to get what they wanted, as I’ve said already.
Another ability the person had was some sort of ability to empathize with the animals. If the person had an ability to perceive there was a problem here and to think of a solution, but everyone else involved didn’t, that would’ve led the person to make different decisions than anyone else expected.
They either had the skills and resources they needed to make the raid already, or else they got them.
Another resource they needed was the opportunity to make the raid. They obviously had that.
Personal history and cultural background obviously played some part in the person’s decision-making. He or she could’ve made the decision based solely on an extreme ability to empathize with animals, but the fact that he or she was part of a team, thought to write the communiqué to the Earth First! Journal, knew how to write in animal rights dialect, and knew about the Animal Liberation Front or the Earth First! Journal at all, all indicate that he or she had some personal history and cultural background involved.
As for writing this communiqué and sending it to the Earth First! Journal, let’s use an abbreviated version and ignore everything that doesn’t apply.
Membership in a community implies cooperation, and cooperation depends on communication. He or she presumably wrote the communiqué to the Earth First! Journal to communicate with other members of the animal rights community.
Self-gratification is obvious.
The act of doing something specific to achieve an important goal, to whatever level of the person’s ability the action represents, indicates that the person felt the need to do that thing to achieve the goal. So this was in part self-actualization, self-fulfillment, or fulfillment squared.
As I’ve already outlined, the person had the ability, the skill, and the resources he or she needed to write the article. He or she had the personal history and cultural background to have learned that doing all these things was possible, and was important.
The next thing this illustrates is a common saying among Anarchists: “Direct action gets the goods.”
Globalization 4.0 is a revolutionary struggle. Not to put too fine a point on it, no one has ever won a war without infantry. I can sit here and write books about how society should function differently, other people can write books, people can talk about it, write letters to newspapers, write to their senators, representatives, and governors, discuss it on internet message boards, whatever. But so far all anyone has done is to voice their opinions about something. So far, the enemy is free to ignore you. The only way you can get beyond that point is to decide what you want to happen in the world and then make it happen.
But there’s a catch: Revolutions are illegal! That’s because the people who are in power like being in power, so they write the laws to make sure they stay in power. That means that anything anyone can do to threaten their power is outlawed—or at least, that’s the safest way to bet, anyway.
That brings me to my next point. As you will notice, no one was injured or killed in the raid. The raiders carried out their mission without any direct contact with the enemy.
There’s a whole set of cultural values surrounding the Animal Liberation Front. The Animal Liberation Front has no membership, no hierarchy, no structure, and no leadership. It’s an Anarchistic movement. That means it’s a set of ideas someone, or some group of people, had, they spread those ideas around, and lots of people heard about them. Then a lot of people started cooperating with those ideas without anyone needing to be in control of them.
Animal Liberation Front volunteers value the lives of all animals, including people. Typically, they scope out their targets for a long time before their missions, to make sure they can pull them off without direct contact with the enemy. That means they don’t need to hurt or kill anyone to rescue the animals. If you do hurt or kill anyone over the course of your mission, whoever you are and whatever you’re doing, you do not represent the Animal Liberation Front, and anyone who knows anything about the Animal Liberation Front will know that.
And finally, if you get arrested on an Animal Liberation Front mission, your name will find its way around a lot of Anarchist political prisoner support groups, and whoever feels like it will write you letters, send you money donations, whatever. As the saying among political prisoner support groups goes, “They’re in there for us, so we’re out here for them,” or, “They’re in there so we don’t have to be.” But if you hurt or kill anyone on your mission, or you get caught on your mission and rat out your comrades, you’re on your own.
And that brings me to my next point. The FBI lists the Animal Liberation Front as America’s number one domestic terrorist threat. Timothy McVeigh is old news. The domestic equivalent of Al Qaeda today is a mysterious group of people who eat tofu and rescue animals. I’m not kidding. You can read all about it on the FBI’s website.
Now, one big problem with the War on Terror is that there are many different definitions of terrorism out there, and different law enforcement agencies each use different definitions. So basically, no one has any way of knowing if or when we’ve won the War on Terror, because nobody can agree on who we’re fighting against. Now this might sound like a dumb question, but if we’re going to go to all the trouble of waging a war, wouldn’t it be a good idea to figure out who the badguys are first, or at least, how to recognize them, so we can make sure we’re fighting against the right people?
A lot of definitions of terrorism refer to people killing, injuring, or threatening to kill or injure civilians. The Animal Liberation Front comes nowhere close to that. Even if you wanted to try to get out on the technicality that at the moment you kill or injure anyone you cease to belong to the Animal Liberation Front, that still doesn’t help you, because no one has ever been injured or killed on an Animal Liberation Front mission, botched, aborted, or otherwise.
Some definitions of terrorism refer to the illegal damage or destruction of private or public property for the purpose of driving people’s political decision-making through fear. The Animal Liberation Front qualifies under that definition, but so do a lot of other people. That definition renders every street gang in America a terrorist organization, because they spray-paint their gang symbols on public or private property around their neighborhoods to mark their territory. A lot of political activist groups could be labeled terrorist organizations for putting up posters, or playing pranks, or using civil disobedience if minor vandalism is involved. You remember the Midnight Peace Symbol Revolution from the last book, which you started by going out and vandalizing public property by drawing on the sidewalks with chalk? You probably didn’t realize it at the time, but you founded a terrorist organization!
Now consider this: A general definition of terrorism is people who use institutionalized fear to drive other people’s decision-making. Forget about the fact that our inequitable economy depends on institutionalized fear to maintain political stability. I told you Capitalism was terrorism in the last book. Everyone knows that. But how many times have you seen a commercial on TV where they show a situation where something bad happens to someone and give you some kind of a message about “You don’t want this to happen to you, do you?” Lately, I’ve been hearing commercials on the radio at work for someone’s new cell phone service where they have less dropped calls than any of their competitors. And in these commercials they always have an intense conversation happening between two people when the call drops and both people are left thinking the other hung up, and now their lives are completely ruined. Or car commercials where they say things like, “You don’t want your friends to see you driving around town in an unfashionable car, do you?” Or, “You don’t want your computer to crash, do you? So buy our new and improved computer.” Or shoes, or jeans, or fabric softener, or car stereos, health insurance, or home security systems, or whatever. What the f*ck do you call all of that besides institutionalized fear?
This leads me to a big example of why evolutionary science, and science in general is so controversial and so counterintuitive. A lot of what non-scientifically-minded people perceive about the world, they perceive in relation to themselves, without realizing it. If you were surprised as a kid to learn that stars are all roughly the same size as the sun, and some are even bigger, you know what I’m talking about. Looking back on it now as an adult, you might be tempted to say, “Stars aren’t as all as big as the sun. Some are a lot smaller and some are a lot bigger.” And if that’s the case, go outside and look at the sun again, and go outside out a clear night and look up at the stars again. What you see in the night sky are a lot of little pinpoints of light, and what you see in the daylight is a big yellow circle. And that’s what you saw as a kid, and you had no reason to suspect they were anything other than a bunch of teeny little points of light and a big yellow circle. Compared to that relationship in size, stars aren’t about the same size as the sun. You had no reason to believe that the sun and every other star were gigantic compared to the Earth either—not even remotely the same size—because you were looking at the Earth from maybe 3 feet away, and you were looking at the sun from 93,000,000 miles away. What a difference a lifetime of learning makes, eh?
If two things that are identical seem different to you because you have a different relation to each of them, so you give them two different names, at what point in the middle does it stop being one thing and start being the other? Whatever point that would be would be completely arbitrary, because the thing itself is not different. The only difference is that you used one word to refer to it in one context, and a different word to refer to it in a different context, without realizing they were the same thing. You never realized there could be contexts in the middle, so you never came up with words for that.
If you got on a spaceship and flew to another planet in another solar system, what would you call the big bright thing up in the sky? Would it be the sun, because now you were close to it? Or would it be a star because you knew it wasn’t the same sun you saw back on Earth? If you did call it the sun because it was star your new planet revolved around, as you flew toward the star and into its solar system, at what point would it stop being a star and start being a sun? Would you go by your distance from it, how bright it was, how large it looked, or whether you were inside or outside of its solar system?
Whatever point you picked to make this transition in using two different words for the exact same thing, it would be completely arbitrary. That means that someone else’s point of transition would also be completely arbitrary, which means it’s pretty unlikely you would both pick the same point.
Now suppose you’re talking about the thing to someone who has no idea that what looks to him to be two different things is actually the exact same thing seen from two different points of view. If he has no idea they’re the exact same thing, he’s going to perceive them as two different things, which means he’s going to feel like they’re supposed to be two different things. And if other people he knows refer to them by the same two words he uses, he’s going to assume that proves he’s right in thinking they’re two different things.
Now take that basic problem between suns and stars and apply it to the world around us, and tell adults about something that strange, and try to win elections that way. Not so simple now, is it?
If a person fights a war against the established government of his country by gathering together a band of peasants, giving them rifles (or bows, or muskets, or whatever hand-held weapons people of the time used), hiding out in the hills or mountains or swamps or jungles or deep forests, and fighting their enemies with a bunch of little skirmishes, ambushes, and raids, are those people called guerillas or freedom-fighters? It all depends on how whose side they’re on. If they’re friendly to you and their government is opposed to you, they’re freedom fighters. If they’re opposed to you and their government is friendly to you, they’re guerillas. Granted, the mainstream media in America is going to tell you that before you get the chance to figure it out for yourself, but most people would’ve fallen for that illusion anyway. That’s just another example of how deciding ahead of time that a person is either right or wrong, even if you only do it subconsciously by contextual clues of whether they’re trying to kill people you like or hate, creates information and anti-information packages in your brain, which then affect your perception of the world.
One of these things is not like the others: Geronimo, Ho Chi Mihn, George Washington, Ché Guevara. They were all leaders of small bands of men who fought against the established governments of their countries using small weapons, hiding in remote unsettled areas, and fighting skirmishes, raids, and ambushes. (Or at least, a lot of their followers fought that way, and all of those things were central to their strategies.) Out of those four people, George Washington was not just a freedom fighter but a patriot. The others were guerillas, rebels, and renegades. One was a savage who lived in the godforsaken desert and was the last warrior chief to fight against the U.S. government here in the continental United States, and the other two were Communists. But all four of them fought the same way, and they were all fighting for the same cause—the liberation of their people. So why do you use different words to refer to them within your own mind?
(And since it’s come up, I’d just like to point out that Anarchists never fall into this particular illusion. Anyone who fights a guerilla war for the liberation of their people is a freedom fighter. Now it is true that Anarchists generally hate all governments, which automatically puts all guerilla freedom fighters on the Anarchists’ side, and that point of view comes with its own information and anti-information packages. But you don’t have to be an Anarchist to understand this simple little point: If people are willing to fight guerilla wars against the established governments of their countries, and pit a few people armed with small weapons against the standing military of their country, it’s a pretty safe bet that the guerillas have something pretty goddamned important at stake.)
I’m using this example of guerillas, rebels, renegades, freedom fighters, patriots, the Animal Liberation Front, and the FBI for a very specific reason. The Animal Liberation Front volunteers, in this raid and many others like them, fought for what they believed in by destroying property but without killing or injuring any people. Have you ever heard of the Boston Tea Party?
Sometime before the American Revolution, some Americans (actually they were British colonists back then) protested the new British tea tax by sneaking aboard a British tea ship in Boston Harbor one night, and dumping all the tea overboard. They destroyed a lot of property and they did it without killing or injuring anyone. When you learn about them in history class, they’re called patriots, but according to the definition of terrorism the FBI is applying to the Animal Liberation Front, the people responsible for the Boston Tea Party were terrorists.
There’s a saying about perspectives I’ve heard that goes something like this: “The rabbit runs faster than the fox. The fox is only running for his dinner. The rabbit is running for his life.”
So here we run into the conflict between Capitalism and Use-Value economics once again, and their conflict in definitions of rightful ownership. The mice and rats that the Animal Liberation Front liberated here all valued their lives implicitly. The only reason they weren’t running for their lives was because they couldn’t, because humans had trapped them in cages. So other humans decided to even the score and do the running on behalf of the mice and rats.
What were the laboratory animals being used for before their liberation? The report by the Animal Liberation Front volunteer is anything but unbiased, but biased though it may be, it sounds like it was a lot closer to a tea tax or a dinner than it was to saving anyone’s life. If that’s true, then under the Use-Value economic system the animals were more entitled to their lives than the researchers were entitled to experimenting on them. Under the Capitalist economic system, those animals were the rightful property of the researchers, for no other reason than because the animals were not capable of defending themselves or even speaking on their own behalf. So people who oppose Capitalist oppression liberated them, fair and square. It’s a safe bet that freedom fighters who are willing to fight guerilla wars against the established governments and standing militaries of their countries are fighting for something important, and it’s a safe bet that laboratory mice only stay in their cages because they can’t chew through the metal bars. To every laboratory animal, every Animal Liberation Front volunteer is George Washington. If you assume every Animal Liberation Front volunteer must be Ché Guevara, it’s only because your judgment is clouded by subjectivity.
As I said earlier in this chapter, ending animal experimentation won’t make the transition from Capitalism to the Use Value economic system happen all by itself, but it is one step in that direction. There is no conclusive way to define a proper relationship between humans and animals, but there is one thing that is conclusive: As long as humans have such a one-sided relationship with animals, we don’t have a Use-Value economic system. And as I’m sure you remember, the Use-Value economic system is the economic system of the equilibrium state we must achieve if we are ever to learn to live within the physical limitations of the Earth. As long as we practice an economic system where profits are made by exploiting the helpless, we are not in an equilibrium state, and therefore we are not living within the physical limitations of the Earth. No matter how much people feel like an equilibrium state is a good idea, as long as they practice an economic system that rewards oppression, we don’t have an economy that’s compatible with the physical limitations of the Earth. And not only that, the people who say they believe in equilibrium but practice Capitalism anyway, obviously are not working with information packages that will lead them to taking actions that will ever make the transition happen. Global equilibrium begins within the minds of each individual person, and the Animal Liberation Front are fighting against just one of many ways Capitalists are failing to make that happen.
Finally, I’d just like to say that if anyone out there is still looking for these Animal Liberation Front volunteers, don’t bother checking the biology or psychology departments of the university.
In the same way that the laboratory animals shared 75% of their DNA with the humans who rescued them, which makes it 75% true that the Animal Liberation Front volunteers were rescuing members of their families, it is also true, despite what this ALF volunteer believed, that animal testing can yield results that are applicable to humans. This is yet another way that people misunderstand what scientists do.
If you’ve worked in a career for 20 years and you got 6 or 8 years of education in that field before hand, it’s inevitable that you know a lot of stuff about your job that anyone who doesn’t share your experience doesn’t know. And by the way, I’m not talking about scientists yet, I’m talking about any job.
Anyway, the Animal Liberation Front volunteer who wrote this communiqué obviously doesn’t understand very well how psychological experimentation on animals actually works, because they claimed that these experiments were unscientific and not merely useless but dangerous. But on the contrary, psychological experimentation on animals is scientific, and not only useful, but helpful, if you know how to conduct the experimentation and how to apply the results—which these scientists probably did, and the author of this communiqué obviously didn’t.
But on the other hand, if you’re an animal researcher and you’re getting up to give me a standing ovation, sit the f*ck down. I’d just like to say that on the 14th of November, 2004, the night this raid took place, I was unemployed and in the midst of writing the first volume of these books. The closest I’ve ever come to animal experimentation is owning cats. I’ve figured out everything I’ve figured out, including the Systems Theory of Human Evolutionary Behavior and the Theory of Evolutionary Relativity by being observant, paying attention to what’s going on around me, the people I meet, movies and stage plays I watch, and books I read, and being really, really f*cking good at it. But I’ve contacted several university professors by now, and with the exception of one who referred me to a couple of other university professors, not one of them has ever lifted a goddamned finger to try to help me. And why? It obviously can’t be because of their passion for moving science forward in spite of any obstacle. So what would that insurmountable obstacle be? In the end, I would have to guess that it has something to do with my being more valuable to the Capitalist economy hammering nails for a living and throwing 40 hours of my life in the garbage every week than I am working at a university. Someone at the University of Iowa—or some university somewhere—could’ve hired me, shut down their animal research lab, and replaced it with a theatre department, but they chose not to. And still here I sit, four years later. I never held a gun to any university professor’s head and told them to force me to fry bologna just so I could add a little affordable variety to my diet. So if an unexpected consequence of your economic system turns out to be Animal Liberation Front volunteers destroying your labs and liberating your animals, and you come to me looking for pity, you’re come to the wrong f*cking place.
But enough about me. This section is about the Homo sapiens who make up the Animal Liberation Front. Here’s another article from the Earth First! Journal, about another Animal Liberation Front volunteer. I think that having said all I have to say about the Animal Liberation Front, this article is pretty self-explanatory. So with that, I’ll end this section with another ALF volunteer’s own words, as printed in the January/February 2006 edition of Earth First! Journal.
Statement to the Court
By Peter Young
On September 2, Peter Young pleaded guilty to two counts under the Animal Free Enterprise Terrorism Act relating to the release of more than 8,000 mink from fur farms. On November 8 he was sentenced to two years in prison… For more information, visit www.supportpeter.com.
The Following is Young’s statement to the court at his sentencing. As Young did a lot of improvisation, what follows is an approximation based on his notes and the memory of supporters in the courtroom.
This is the customary time when the defendant expresses regret for the crimes they committed. So let me do that, because I am not without my regrets. I am here today be sentenced for my participation in releasing mink from six fur farms. I regret that it was only six. I’m also here today to be sentenced for my participation in the freeing of 8,000 mink from those farms. I regret that it was only 8,000. It is my understanding that of those six farms, only two of them have since shut down. I regret that it was only two.
More than anything, I regret my restraint—because whatever damage I did to those businesses, if those farms were left standing and one animal was left behind, then it wasn’t enough.
I don’t wish to validate this proceeding by begging for mercy or appealing to the conscience of the court, because I know that if this system had a conscience, I would not be here, and in my place would be all the butchers, vivisectors, and fur farmers in the world.
Just as I will remain unbowed before this court—which would see me imprisoned for an act of conscience—I will also deny the fur farmers in the room the pleasure of seeing me bow down before them. To those people whose sheds I may have visited in 1997, let me tell you for the first time: It was a pleasure to raid your farms and free those animals you held captive. It is those animals I answer to, not you or this court. I will forever mark those nights on your property as the most rewarding experience of my life.
And to those farmers or other savages who may read my words and smile at my fate, just remember: We have put more of you into bankruptcy than you have put liberators in prison. Don’t forget that.
Let me thank everyone in the courtroom who came to support me today. It is my last wish before prison that each of you drive to a nearby fur farm tonight, tear down its fence, and open every cage.
That’s all.