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Tag: Animal Rights

0 Mandy Hiscoks Presents at Human Rights are Animal Rights on the connections between prisons and zoos

November 9, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Radness · Video

Former G20 prisoner Mandy Hiscoks speaking on Zoos and Prisons and the false dichotomy of human-VS-animal liberation

0 Thinking Outside The Bars

October 28, 2013
by Comrade Black
· PE Web Zine · Video

poem by Comrade Black

by Comrade Black

The grass IS always greener
When you’re standing in a desert
That use to be a forest
Like the Fertile Crescent
Or the great Scottish rain forests
You know, where now what we call the Moor is
Or parking lots and paved roads where the meadow use to live
But you see the trick isn’t to get over to the other side of the fence
But instead to tear it down altogether
A world free of false man made borders
Walls and fences
Cages are for captives
And we are meant to be free
As all life is meant to be
I hate walls and all the people who love them.[i]
I hate bars and prisons
And bars built to keep people drunk in
Captives to their own inebriation
Wasn’t that drink suppose to give you escape?
But there is no escape when the whole world is our prison
Just another bottle do drown in
Not until the people have risen
To tear the oppression down
Bring the bastards down
No crowns
Royal or otherwise

[i] This line is a play off a line from anarcho-pop band Chumbawamba “I hate wars, and all the people who love them” from the song Here’s The Rest Of Your Life from their second album Never Mind the Ballots

0 Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Book & Speaking tour for Layla AbdelRahim

September 21, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Events · News · On Tour · PE Web Zine · Radness

It is with great enthusiasm that we are announcing the 2013 speaking tour for anthropologist, unschooler, and anarchist Layla AbdelRahim. Layla will be touring with her new book Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams through various communities in the Cascadian Bioregion.

We are still booking dates. If you wish to organize a speaking engagement with Layla in your community please get in contact: prideandunity@hotmail.com

Tour dates so far:

Tuesday October 8, 5:30-7:00
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
Surrey BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories
Crime and Reward from an Anarcho-primitivist Perspective.
Saturday October 12, Venue TBA
Vancouver BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories
The Insidious and Resilient Narratives of Domestication: Pitfalls to Watch for in Autonomous Learning Zones.

Tuesday, October 15, 7pm,
Camas Books – 2620 Quadra St,
Victoria BC, unceded Lekwungen Territories
What’s in a Class? On Reproduction of Gender, Species, and Ethnicity as Categories for Labour and Consumption.

Friday, October 18, 7pm
University of Victoria
Victoria BC, Unceded Lekwungen Territories
The Ship of Fools as a Place of Spectacle, Healing, and Education where the Wild are Sent to Die.

Still seeking dates in Portland, Olympia, Eugene, and Seattle.

poster artwork drawn by Ljuba Miltsova at age 12

To order copies of Wild Children Domesticated Dreams
http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/Wild-Children-Domesticated-Dreams/

Please visit Layla’s Website (where you may find many of her writings online)
http://layla.miltsov.org/

The Wikipedia entry about Layla Abdel Rahim
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layla_AbdelRahim

Full presentation descriptions:
——————————————————————————

Crime and Reward from an Anarcho-primitivist Perspective.

George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Black teenager, Trayvon Martin, this summer came as a surprise to many mostly because the civilised believe words and focus on language rather than on praxis and consequences. Namely, civilised people see the judicial system with its verbose process of trial as a system of justice and in the eyes of those involved in Zimmerman’s trial, there was “no evidence beyond reasonable doubt” that Zimmerman acted within the confines of the American law. The question thus was not whether killing someone was wrong, the problem that was to be resolved in this system of justice was whether the killer had the right to kill.

In this lecture, Layla AbdelRahim discusses the civilized premises that construct the human animal as predatory and thus centers murder in anthropology itself and reinforces the predatory narrative. Furthermore, this predation is structured by the classificatory system of civilized epistemology that categorizes groups of living and nonliving beings, whether human or not, as “resources” and “consumers” thereby excluding whole groups and immense suffering from the public discourse on justice. And as discussed in her book, Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Civilization and the Birth of Education, this predatory narrative is reinforced by both the medical sector and the system of education.

The Insidious and Resilient Narratives of Domestication: Pitfalls to Watch for in Autonomous Learning Zones.

Not only has the hierarchical project of domestication and civilization existed for the past ten thousand years, it has been expanding globally, engulfing more and more territories and bringing the world to a state nearing the brink of collapse of biodiversity and self-sustainability. This colonizing project has not been accepted passively. It has met strong ideological, epistemological, socio-economic, and physical resistance on both individual and social levels. Nonetheless, civilization has reached an epidemic level largely owing to its misconstruction of “knowledge” about human nature and the world. In her research, Layla AbdelRahim applies concepts from biology, anthropology, ethology, and sociology to examine the mechanisms by which socio-cultural narratives and material cultures reproduce themselves through domesticated bodies, minds, and desires. In this workshop, Layla will identify these mechanisms of perpetuating domesticated “unknowledge” and will engage a discussion on resistance to its narrative.

What’s in a Class? On Reproduction of Gender, Species, and Ethnicity as Categories for Labour and Consumption.
https://www.facebook.com/events/169052663280221/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

How do we know the world? How do we relate to the world and to our knowledge of it? Today, most people around the world believe that we cannot learn how to live in the world without having gone to school and received an “education”. However, what is this “education”? What is its content, its method, or its purpose?

Education is a systemic production, reproduction, and transmission of specific socio-economic constructs about humans, society, and the world. These constructs are then passed on as “knowledge”, which ensures the coexistence of epistemological classes as socio-economic classes in a hierarchical paradigm. Civilised science prioritises Cartesian thinking that divorces “reason” from “emotions” precisely because empathy with the exploited, the suffering, or the consumed will interfere with the project Civilisation.

In this conversation, Layla will discuss the underlying premises in scientific thinking about the world as a system of domestication of human and nonhuman resources for production, reproduction, consumption, and ultimately devastation.

The Ship of Fools as a Place of Spectacle, Healing, and Education where the Wild are Sent to Die.

The Medieval European allegory of the Ship of Fools was more than a metaphor or a literary ruse to critique the Church and the state. In Madness and Civilization, Michel Foucault argues that this trope was also a real socio-political tactic used to cleanse the civilised space by isolating the “mad” or the “unreasonable” from “society”. For civilisation, “reason” has two constituents: raison d’être and sanity. The sane are here defined as those existing for the purpose of domestication in a “natural” food chain hierarchy. In this sense, “society” consists of those working for the “reason” of domestication and socio-economic hierarchy, exploitation, and consumption and those who cannot or refuse to abide by the domesticator’s definition of their reason for existence are either sent to sanatoriums, hospitals, or other correctional facilities to be cured or killed.

Drawing from the research conducted for her book, Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Civilization and the Birth of Education (2013), Layla AbdelRahim discusses schools and children’s culture as spaces of such isolation and “correction”: where the wild raison d’être to dream and to exist for one’s own, known or unbeknownst to self purpose is extinguished and where the child is taught to exist to serve as a human resource in the chain of exploitation of nonhuman resources.

2 This Is The ALF! – The new resurgence of militant activism

August 10, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Columns · Events · News · PE Web Zine · Radness · Uncategorized

by Comrade Black

A spark has ignited in 2013 as nearly every day lately I have been reading about another new action taken against businesses that profit from the exploitation and murder of animals. Yes, rising from the ashes of Operation Backfire and the Greenscare, the Animal Liberation Front appears to be back in full swing again!

David Barbarash spent time in jail in the mid 90s for his involvement in the ALF, freeing cats from an Alberta lab, along with other smaller actions. He later founded the North American Press Office of the ALF, and was the official spokes-person until he retired in 2002. I asked David what his thoughts are on this recent increase in actions. “Brings a smile to my face!” he told me. “Even after all the new laws and repression animal and environmental activists are now subjected to, the spirit to resist and fight back continues. It seems there will always be a new generation willing to make sacrifices for animals and our planet, which in itself continues to give me hope for our collective future.”

If you haven’t been keeping up on the ALF news, in the last few weeks there has been nearly an action per day; ranging from low level insurgency like gluing locks and graffiti, to full on liberations such as the release of 2400 mink from a Idaho fur farm on July 28, 2013, or the release of farm pheasants on July 22. “This period reminds me of the early 1980’s when animal and earth activism was at the beginning of an upward trend, which peaked in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.” David said.
Perhaps our new adage should be an action per day keeps the Vivisection doctor away! (on stress leave that is).

I first learned about the ALF through punk songs by bands like Conflict, and DROPDEAD – back around the time David was having his house raided by the cops – I have been a open supporter ever since. The ALF has been active for over 40 years now, freeing hundreds of thousands of animals world wide, with the activity waxing and waning at numerous points over the decades. It seems to me that we have not seen this level of ALF activity in the colonized nation states of North America since the 90s, and definitely not since the FBI attack on the activist movements in the mid 2000’s. Or as David put it “After 9/11 and the FBI crackdown, activism saw a downward trend. It will never disappear, it simply ebbs and flows as all life does. Perhaps now what we’re seeing is a new cycle beginning.”

This type of resurgence of course doesn’t happen in a vacuum; a lot of other rad shit is going down! In recent years there has been an increase in interest in eco-defence campaigns and campaigns of Indigenous resistance to colonization and destruction of their lands for resource depletion. Also in the last year has been the release of

the first feature length documentary on Vivisection Maximum Tolerated Dose, which is currently on tour with the Open The Cages Tour, as well as the debut of the ALF action comic book Liberator, all of which helps to raise awareness on the issues and keep topics like animal testing or environmental destruction in popular discussion. Perhaps one of the most ironic sources for keeping the discussion open on animal abuse in the last year was the animal industries and their political front-groups, who’s recent attempt at getting new legislation passed legally banning the videotaping of animal abuse industries turned into an industry PR nightmare, thanks to the work of good dedicated journalists like Will Potter (author of Green Is The New Red), who worked to expose these bills to the public.

For those who don’t know, the ALF is a clandestine, leaderless movement of human allies who risk imprisonment to save the lives of animals. The ALF originated in the UK in the mid 1970s, formed by former Hunt Saboteurs. You can not join the ALF, rather you take actions and in doing so you become the ALF. The ALF guidelines are:

1. TO liberate animals from places of abuse, i.e. laboratories, factory farms, fur farms, etc, and place them in good

Flaming Arrows, A Compilation Of Works By Rod Coronado. Probably the best book on animals liberation ever written. Fuck yeah!

homes where they may live out their natural lives, free from suffering.
2. TO inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals.
3. TO reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors, by performing non-violent direct actions and liberations.
4. TO take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human.

Any group of people who are vegetarians or vegans and who carry out actions according to ALF guidelines have the right to regard themselves as part of the ALF.

David was part of an earlier generation of ALF activists, a generation where they took some very serious risks, “I hope this new generation has learned the hard lessons my generation had to face and are still dealing with, and are taking security and secrecy in the most serious way” he told me. “With each new generation of the cycle, hopefully lessons of the past are learned, and strategies evolve. It’s more dangerous now to an individual’s personal freedom to participate in a resistance movement, so i hope security culture has also evolved.”

In the words of imprisoned ALF warrior Walter Bond
“Animal Liberation – Whatever It May Take!”

2 Best Advice for Dumpster Divers

June 11, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine · Radness · Uncategorized

by Comrade Black

Dumpster diving can be a blast, and a great way to get healthy food for many of us who were not born into class privilege. I don’t dumpster dive as much as I use to, but I have been doing it off and on since I first lived in a squat on the streets of edmonton, in 1996 at the age of 16.

I also have many friends and roommates who do the dive, and as awesome as it can be I have notice a few common trends and I feel like some folks might benefit from a little basic advice.

In Grime We Crust?

1) While there is many treasures to be found in the garbage, not everything in the bins is treasure. Often things belong in the garbage, sometimes way before they were ever thrown out. Products like Sunny D, or “Orange Beverage” which is sold for $1.00 when new, and tastes like watered down flat orange pop, belong in the garbage. Just because it is in the bin, doesn’t mean you need to take it out.

2) Leave some for other folks, you don’t need to take every scrap of edible materials from the bin. I know some approach dumpstering like it is their social mission to stop every scrap they can from hitting the landfill, but you gotta remember others might also be benefiting from that same store tossing their lunch. If you take everything, you might be taking food away from people who need it just as badly, or worse than you. If you insist on taking everything, consider going later, like 3am, after everyone else has come and gone, so that you are taking the leftovers rather than preempting others bin din.

3) Consider your social position here; if you have access to a kitchen, stove, oven, fridge and freezer – take stuff like produce which requires cooking and storing – and consider leaving products (like donuts, bagels, or pre-made meals in a package) that can be easily consumed without cooking for those who live on the streets and don’t have access to amenities.

4) Just because meat is in a dumpster doesn’t mean you have to put it in your body. Often I have seen formerly vegan or vegetarian kids start eating meat when they start binning, and rationalize it by claiming it would be disrespectful to the animal not to eat it… wait, did they actually just say it would be disrespectful not to eat an animal…? Yup that logical lunacy is a staple in the rhetoric of the ex-vegan ex. If you really respect animals, perhaps consider not viewing them as products to be consumed. Or better yet, join or start an group dedicated to animal liberation – above ground or clandestine – and take actual action to help living animals, or perhaps volunteer at the local rescues, sanctuaries, or adopt one from the shelters. There is so much work needed to be done and frying bacon out of a dumpster isn’t saving any animals, or your health, so quit making excuses. If you need to rationalize something, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.

It’s also just gross, all ethics aside. If you are consuming the flesh of animals from the dumpster, you are consuming torture. If you put torture in your body, don’t expect to get good health out. Never mind all the hormones, chemicals, and other crap. The flesh of domesticated animals from factory farms is simply toxic on so many levels. It always shocks me how people will get riled up about monsanto fucking with our food crops, or will refuse to eat soy because it is GMO, yet will fork flesh and puss (cheese) into their mouth 3 times per day.

4) Be picky. Dumpster diving is not a starvation economy, it is a fucking horn of pleanty. You can pick and choose and still bring home boxes of food most middle class yuppies couldn’t afford. So don’t eat shit, and don’t say thank you for the privilege. Take the good stuff and be healthy. Leave the garbage in the garbage.

Don’t put garbage in your body

The Dumpster Mafia – Organized Grime!

Simply eating garbage is by no means a revolutionary act, otherwise every seagull is a full fledged anarchist warrior leading the revolutionary vanguard! That doesn’t mean that dumpstering can’t be a ‘part’ of our anarchist practice. A few years back I had a roommate who really did try to make dumpster diving a revolutionary concept by applying ideashe learned from anarchist community organizing. He moved dumpstering from being just a lifestyle choice to actually using it to build community, organize, and increase food sovereignty.

He founded a group he named The Dumpster Mafia, it was organized similar to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, and was by far the most organized and concerted dumpster diving I have witnessed or been part of. It involved a small team of volunteers, and anyone who either donated their time or a small amount of cash to cover costs, got a box of goodies hand delivered to their house every week.

The basic structure worked like this: he got a car given to him, a junker, which they would use to hit up the dumpsters, this way they could bring way more home in one trip, and could hit harder to get to bins out of bicycle range. In our backyard he set up a couple tents which he managed to get donated somehow, as well as a large chest deep freeze he got free off Craigslist. Beside the deep freeze, under the tents he had a series of good quality plastic bins, which he would use as refrigerators by filling plastic bottles with water to freeze them, creating diy ice packs, which were placed with food in the plastic bins under the tent (thus out of the sunlight). Food that needed to be frozen went in the deep freeze, produce and almond milk went in the bis, packaged goods like cereal just went in the house.

One group of volunteers would go dumpster each night of the week, using the car, and usually in pairs. They would go late so as to not take food away from anyone. They would process the entire bin, by taking out every garbage bag and piling them beside the bin, then systemically going through them one at a time taking out whatever food they could get which was worth bringing home, and finally placing the lightened bag back in the bin. Usually they managed to fill a car about 1/2 way by using this technique. They also would make sure to always leave the area cleaner than when they got there so as to not burn out their dumster supply by pissing off the stores.

The next team of volunteers would arrive in the morning, take the boxes of dumpster goods and process them: go through fruits and veggies that came in packages looking for bad ones to toss, or sometimes cutting off bad spots from fruit that could be eaten if frozen. Then they would place the food in the bins or freezer for the next group. The third group came by once per week, and would sort the scores into boxes to be distributed. Making sure to split food as evenly as possible. Finally volunteers would fill the car and make the deliveries to everyone who had contributed. Any money donated went to cover gas and insurance, although with 100% volunteer labor, very little money was ever needed, and the average volunteer only did about 2 hrs per week. It was a smooth operation for sure. And leftovers were delivered to a few local single moms down the block whenever possible, as well as to the local chapter of Food Not Bombs.

That entire year I barely bought food at all, and yet I ate fruit smoothies, stir fries, veggie bakes, and tofu scramble every day. It turned out to be a great way to build community, to get people working together, organizing, and it saved us all a ton of money. Plus we all were so healthy!

Get Dirty!
and remember, it’s even better when you do it with friends!

1 Open The Cages tour needs your support to end vivisection: Call for endorsements

March 23, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Events · On Tour · Radness

Last year I was lucky enough to take part in the Open The Cages Tour, which combines music, protest, film, and workshops all geared towards ending animal testing. OTC could be described like a travelling carnival of animal liberation, organized in the DIY punk tradition. OTC is continuing with extensive tour dates throughout 2013 and they looking for support from groups and individuals, like YOU! Support is easy, and doesn’t cost a cent. For real yo!

Endorsing is as simple as saying you support the tour and posting about our events and linking to our page. We get a ton of traffic on our site, from individuals, groups, media and students; we are happy to showcase other group to these visitors! Additionally we get a lot of visits from labs and universities to our website so we like to show that we are part of a network of people who are opposed to this (instead of just one small crew of people they only have to worry about for 2 days of the year when we get to town.) We know this fight is bigger than us, and we are very happy to act as a hub for the resistance to the pseudo-science that is vivisection! If you want to be part of our network, or show support for the tour, please fill out the form! Thank you so much!

If you want to know more about the tour, check out this interview we did on Profane last year with tour director Mike XvX.

The tour also includes the first feature length documentary about vivisection, watch the trailer here

Additional Information About Endorsements:

We love endorsements because they really help us to promote the efforts of local chapters and groups! We want to build up a big network of folks that share our beliefs, values and objectives so that individuals that come to our events know where to go after we leave if they want to keep being active. Having a list also gives us the ability to direct folks if they miss our events or if they come to find us after we have already been through town, or even if they are just checking out the website looking for resources.

An endorsement doesn’t have to be material in any way, but really just adds to a growing list of opposition, and proves a network and resources before, during, and after the tour stops. We just really want to highlight local crews and groups so that our reach can boost and enhance the local campaigns, not override, sit on top of, or over shadow it. If your group wants to donate materials, zines, shirts or anything to the tour that we can take with us along our route, we also accept donations that are non-traditional or outside the capitalist system. The tour will accept any donations of mech, anarchist, vegan, animal liberation/total liberation, workers-rights, feminist, anti-oppression, antifa, anti-racist, intersectional, books/zines as well as stickers, postcards, or other goods. We also are looking for places to crash, eat, or get things printed. If your group or a contact of yours has the ability to assist us in addition to your endorsement, please let us know!

All of us are vegan and we do ask that every endorsing group/collective/organization be against animal exploitation in some way, and if it is a business or restaurant we ask that they be vegan (meaning that you use nor profit from any animal exploitation -eg: use no flesh, dairy, eggs, shells, wool, leather, fur, feathers, bones, silk etc. regardless it’s origin or if it is new, used, found or dumpstered)

9 Effective Activism & State Repression: An Interview with Jake Conroy on how the SHAC Campaign nearly bankrupt one of the largest animal testing labs in the world

February 7, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Interviews

Interview by Comrade Black

How do we shut down a multinational corporation?

500 animals per day die in the labs of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), one of the largest contract testing companies in the world. Beagles, primates, rabbits, mice, rats, cats and other species are burned, cut open, or injected with poisons all while alive to ensure products like Viagra and diet pills will make it to the shelves of stores around the world; as well as GMO crops, pesticides, fertilizers and house hold cleaners. A small handful of dedicated activists started a campaign that nearly brought the giant to its knees as over 500 companies quit doing business with HLS, including their insurance company. Activists also managed to get HLS dropped from the New York Stock Exchange, eventually stopping their stocks from being publicly traded altogether.

Jake Conroy was one of the activists involved in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign (SHAC) in the USA, helping to run the website, and lead demos. For this, Jake was sentenced to 4 years in jail.

PE: How did you get involved with animal activism, and more specially the SHAC campaign?

JAKE: I’ve always had strong feelings for the underdog throughout my life. It didn’t really occur to me until I was 19 that some of the biggest underdogs in the world were non-human animals. I had spent a long time thinking about the issues and reading books and pamphlets I picked up at hardcore/punk shows, and watching videos wherever I could find them (which actually was pretty hard to do in a pre-YouTube era). But I was somewhat on the fence about making that leap to get involved.

I was living in Seattle at the time, walking downtown to school, when I passed some folks protesting against the circus as they paraded the elephants for miles through the city. I passed them and didn’t say a word but it sat heavily in my mind that I should. So I turned around and walked back and asked what they were doing and who they were and how I could get in touch with them. They simply replied, “We’re in the Yellow Pages”. Sure enough, under Animal Rights, there was one listing – The Northwest Animal Rights Network. I called the number and listened to the info about the upcoming circus protests, and I went down that weekend by myself to join in.

The next 5 years I would participate in civil disobediences, run successful campaigns to close fur salons, help transform Seattle into one of the most animal-friendly cities in the country, and be arrested (with my current co-defendant Josh Harper) for engaging in the first whale hunt sabotage in US coastal waters by piloting a boat between whales and hunters.

In 2001 I had been working locally on the anti-HLS campaign in the Seattle area, when I got a call from a friend asking if I wanted to move out east for a few months to help start the office for this group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA. I had nothing else to do, so I packed up my belongings, put them in storage, and headed out to Philadelphia. I became so excited and inspired by our first 3 months that I never went back. I would spend the next 5 years helping run one of the most exciting campaigns of my life.

PE: What can people learn from SHAC, and from the repression you faced?

JAKE: I think the most important thing people can learn is that their activism needs to be strategic, smart, and creative, while being thoughtful, careful, and calculated. We shouldn’t rush in head first because that’s the way it’s always been done; rather prepare for all outcomes, be ready to accept them, and not fear them. We need to realize that we are under a microscope, so our actions need to be significant and have a focus on duration and long term strategy.

PE: What do you think made SHAC so successful?

JAKE: Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, once said that in order to be successful you have to capture the imagination of the people, and the anti-Huntingdon Life Sciences campaign and SHAC USA did just that. It began in North America at a time when national welfare organizations started to dangle paychecks in front of grassroots organizers, when they began shifting the debate away from liberation to welfarism, and when they made you feel like you were doing your part by voting every couple of years and sending in your donations to cover their expanding paychecks. They were disenfranchising the animal rights movement and getting folks to fall into line. But deep inside, we all wanted more.

SHAC USA sprang into action quickly and furiously. It said loudly and proudly that we weren’t going to sit back and accept bigger cages, and we were going to hold everyone and anyone accountable for their actions and support of animal cruelty, no matter when or where. We were happy to push the envelope and support radical ideas and tactics when others wouldn’t. We believed in people power, horizontal and autonomous organizing, and supporting and using every tool in the toolbox to enact change. Within months, we managed to gain victories as an all-volunteer organization of 4 where huge national organizations couldn’t. We captured the hearts and minds of activist communities and the general public, and we were off and running, bulldozing anyone that got in our way.

Full page ad that appeared in New York Times during the time of the SHAC 7 trial and amendments to the AETA was being discussed in congress

PE: SHAC centers on vivisection, specifically contract testing for consumer products like viagra and diet pills. Why focus on vivisection rather than fur, circuses, or the horrors of the pet industries, food/meat, or other areas of animal exploitation?

JAKE: There are so many atrocities perpetrated against the earth, and the animals, both human and non-human, that live on it. It’s very easy to fall into a pattern of trying to save the entire planet all at once. But we need to be strategic about our campaigns and smart about how we go about them. There had been a campaign against HLS since the late 80’s, with some amazing actions, but it just wasn’t getting the job done. But the late 90s saw a perfect storm of sorts in England. Activists had closed Consort Beagle Breeder, Hillgrove Cat Farm, Regal Rabbits and they were closing in on Shamrock Primate Farm and Newchurch Guinea Pig Farm. Energy was extremely high and victories were coming in swiftly. Meanwhile, Huntingdon had two undercover investigations released against them in the UK and the US, and it had almost bankrupt them. They were a huge target, teetering on the brink of foreclosure, and they needed a firm kick to push them over the edge. It would be a gamble, but it was part of a larger overall campaign strategy that was proving to be successful. HLS is the third largest contract research organization in the world and they were on the brink of being brought to their knees by grassroots activists. The time was just right.

PE: Do you still think that the SHAC Campaign can succeed at this point? What is the relevance of the campaign today?

JAKE: Martin Luther King Jr said that the arc of the universe is long and bends towards justice. And to add a footnote by Becky Tarbotton, “sometimes we don’t see it bend, sometimes it feels like it flattening out. And other times we can see that arc perceptively bending towards justice.” We didn’t close down Huntingdon Life Sciences according to our timeline, but I still believe the campaign can and will be successful. It’s suffered some major blows to it’s infrastructure, but like all good things, it keeps moving forward, it continues to bend towards justice. People are still active all over the world in the quest to shut it down for good and HLS is still financially hemorrhaging.

I think the relevance of the campaign is that it represents the tenacity, passion, and drive we as a global movement has to see justice served, no matter how long that might take. The tactics the SHAC campaign used were innovative and powerful, and they continue to be replicated by a broad spectrum of movements around the world to fight back. That alone is a testament to the relevance of the campaign and how successful it was and continues to be, regardless of the outcome of our explicit goals.

PE: How can activists today become more effective?

JAKE: Effectiveness and success is going to come by studying our collective histories, working hard and being creative today, while keeping long term future strategies in mind.

As activists today we have a unique opportunity to still talk to and learn from some of the greatest revolutionaries of decades past. These folks are still involved decades later and they want to sit with you, to have you learn from their mistakes, and understand their successes. We need to take advantage of these opportunities any chance we get before it’s too late.

We need to recognize that we are living in one of the most oppressive times to be an activist. Our targets wield more power than ever before and are getting away with using every tool in the toolbox to silence and imprison us. We need to take their lead and fight back in kind. We as activists need to realize that perhaps our old ways and tactics aren’t going to work anymore and we need to start thinking outside the box; to be more creative and look for other ways around the blockades before us in order to reach our desired goal.

Finally, we need to be smart. We can no longer rush in head down, into brick walls. We need to pick our heads up and look forward and see how we can strategically plan not just for this year but the next generation. We need to look deeper and with more thoughtfulness into how we are making change and how we can make it lasting.

PE: Are you still involved with animal activism now that you are out of prison?

JAKE: I’m involved with animal activism as much as I can be. I am currently finishing my third year of probation (out of 3), which puts restrictive conditions on you and your actions. Your whereabouts, employment status and financial records are all monitored by the federal government. I have a list of 30 or so rules, some very specific, some very broad, that I am required to live by. If I violate any of these rules, the probation office has the right to yank me off of probation and put me back in prison. So while they can be lax about certain things, getting in trouble doing animal activism is a sure way to end back in prison.

However, I still do as much animal activism, prisoner support, and outreach that I can. I am also employed by a non-profit environmental organization that uses non-violent direct action and pressure campaigns against global corporate targets to affect change. In a sense it’s much like SHAC, minus the radical aggressiveness that landed us in prison.

PE: If we truly want to be effective in our activism, it seems like in today’s atmosphere we should get prepared for the very real possibility of prison. Do you have any advice on how to prepare or was there anything that helped you get trough it?

JAKE: While I think activists today need to be very aware of the repression going on around the globe and learn how they can fight back, I wouldn’t say that prison is a very real possibility for a large majority of us. In the grand scheme of things, very few of us have actually been imprisoned for the amount of actions and campaigns that have been going on. Unfortunately, while the number of folks in prison right now is rising, it doesn’t mean that we all are going to end up there some day.

The SHAC7 case was a perfect example of that. Thousands of people in North America alone participated in the campaign in their own way and it came down to a half dozen of us in court. The odds are in your favor.

If you are in the small minority of people facing prison time, I would highly suggest turning to those who have been or are currently incarcerated, for advice and counsel. Prison is a place like no other; nothing can possibly compare to it. It’s a place filled with bizarre rules and expectations and nothing can really prepare you for it outside of the experience of others. I spent a lot of time leading up to my incarceration writing friends that were serving time as political prisoners, asking them every thing I could possibly think of. We would write tomes back and forth. But ultimately nothing can fully prepare you for the experience.

Ultimately, prison is a dark and lonely and depressing place. And one of the few things that can put a smile on an inmate’s face is a letter. It is what makes the experience survivable. So I would encourage everyone to look through the lists of political prisoners and find a couple that resonate with you, and write them. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy diatribe on your political beliefs (its better that it’s not), rather, write them about your day, the last back packing trip you took, the last meal you made. Send a photo or a postcard. Anything will brighten their day. Take the time to foster a relationship with them and help them get through their experience. What may seem like an insignificant 20 minutes to you writing a letter, it can be a total life saver when on the receiving end while in prison.

PE: How much dose having a terrorist enhancement effect your life? And how do you feel about being considered a terrorist in the eyes of the government?

JAKE: Just to be clear, none of the SHAC 7 received a terrorist enhancement during sentencing. We were, however, classified by the Bureau of Prisons as domestic terrorists. This meant that during our stay in prison and our time on probation (and I’m sure afterwards), that label followed us around wherever we went. In prison, for me, that meant all of my phone calls were monitored and recorded, all of my incoming and outgoing mail was opened, read, and photocopied if they desired, and my ability to have my friends come visit me was drastically reduced. It also meant that I was put onto a ‘high visibility inmate’ watch list inside of the prison. I was one of 10 to 15 inmates that the administration said posed the biggest security threat to the institution, in a population of around 1300 inmates incarcerated for murder, rape, bank robbery, high-level gang activity, etc..

PE: Could you please recap what the charges against you were, and what you were accused of doing?

JAKE: Kevin Kjonaas, Lauren Gazolla and I were found guilty of 6 charges based on our direct involvement and so-called “leadership” roles with SHAC USA. They were one count of conspiracy to violate the 1934 Telecommunications Harrassment Act, one count of conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (now called the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act), one count of conspiring to commit interstate stalking, and 3 counts of interstate stalking.

Essentially we were found guilty of running a webpage that advertised and editorialized events, actions, and strategy; that published write-ups of those events and actions after the fact (much like an online newspaper); that shared ideas, and supported the thinking of controversial ideologies. By doing all of this online, we crossed state lines to enter into a conspiracy with essentially anyone who had ever used the internet. By simply publishing and editorializing ideas and actions, we were encouraging anyone who accessed our webpage to go out and do the same things.

It was a far-fetched (yet successful) attempt at criminalizing controversial, yet legal, forms of demonstrations, supporting radical and controversial ideologies like non-violent direct action, and the sharing of ideas.

PE: Can you talk about the role music & subcultures can play in Animal Liberation and other activism?

JAKE: Subcultures and music has played a very influential role in grassroots and radical movements. The first time I was introduced to the idea of black power and the Black Panther Movement was after buying the album Fight The Power by Public Enemy when I was in junior high. As a white, suburban kid growing up in New England, those radical ideas didn’t make it into our classrooms. Soon after I would be introduced to hardcore and punk rock, which would open the doors to a do-it-yourself subculture, the straightedge philosophy, and veganism. Bands, ‘zines, and literature acquired at record stores and shows filled my imagination and passion with big ideas about grassroots organizing and direct action; the idea that we didn’t need large organizations and governments to enact the change we wanted to see in the world. That change was something we could bring about on our own and on our own terms. This idea wasn’t just mine – this self-empowerment and introduction to direct action through music communities was shared by 5 of the 6 individuals in the SHAC7 case, and direct action legends like Rod Coronado and Keith Mann. It introduced a whole generation of young people in the mid 90’s to veganism, activism, and direct action, that would eventually shape the entire animal rights movement.

Jake Conroy is available to speak at public events and will be speaking at Camas Books in Victoria BC (Via skype) Feb 16. To contact Jake about speaking in your community go to http://aidandabet.org/roster/from-activist-to-terrorist/

To learn about the ongoing campaign to shut down HLS today check out the SHAC website (includes videos, lists of companies doing business with HLS, and other campaign materials)

http://shac.net/

To learn more about the repression of activism and the SHAC 7

http://www.greenisthenewred.com/

http://www.shac7.com/

3 No More Excuses: On Veganism, Colonialism, and Privlege

January 28, 2013
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine · Uncategorized

by Comrade Black

I am not suggesting that everyone everywhere in the world should be vegan, especially not in the case of Indigenous peoples living traditionally with a diet that ‘includes’ sustenance hunting and direct relationship¹; but it really pisses me off when white folks (& other settlers²) use indigenous cultures and their traditions as a scapegoat excuse to continue eating factory farmed meat and cheese bought from a grocery store. Last I checked no traditional communities (Indigenous to Turtle Island or elsewhere) ever had factory farms as part of their traditional ways of life. Nor did they have ‘rape racks’ or ‘veal’ calves, which are both part and parcel of modern dairy farming.³ As ALF prisoner Walter Bond once said ” most often the person making the argument isn’t as concerned with protecting the rights of tribal people as much as they are trying to equate Veganism with racism.”

Similarly I don’ t buy most of the arguments about dumpster-diving meat, cause when I dumpster there is far more than enough variety of stuff to be picky. In fact, when I am regularly hitting the bins I get far more privilege to be picky, it is when I am having to pay for foods at a store that I struggle cause I can often only afford the cheap crap. Just seems like another excuse to rationalize a behavior rather than change it. If you are rationalizing something, it usually means you know there is something wrong with what you are doing that you feel guilty about. If someone is poor enough they are getting food from the soup kitchens, or food banks, then I have no judgments; sometimes you need to take what you can get. I get that. We all do the best we can in the context we are living in.

If you don’t believe that animals are sentient, or just don’t believe in veganism, than that’s a different discussion. I would rather if people just said “I don’t believe in that” rather than making bullshit excuses. If you are gonna eat factory farmed animal flesh, cheese, eggs, etc, don’t try to find excuses or rationalize it. Either own up to the fact you are putting money into systems that are based on animal exploitation, or change your behavior if you are not ok with being part of that.

Footnotes:
¹) I also am quite aware that there is far more to the relationship that many Indigenous cultures have to the animals they hunt as food and that many settlers never acknowledge the importance of giving thanks, or to the other spiritual elements. Often we hear from settlers how Indigenous people ‘use all the parts,’ which is often true, but from my limited understanding this was only one part of the acts of respect given in return for the animals life. Whether secular settlers, atheists, or others choose to acknowledged or dismiss the spiritual exchange and relationship that many Indigenous say is the most important part of that interaction, doesn’t change the fact that it is important.

²) Settler means people who are not Indigenous (originating from that piece of land or that place). The term Settler is used because there is many types of colonialism, and in the context of Turtle Island (which most settlers now call north America), the type of colonialism that primarily occurred was ‘settler colonialism’ meaning Europeans moved here to settle here. Nothing is completely dichotomous, there are people who don’t fit nicely into the Indigenous/Settler binary, such as Metis, or displaced people of Indigenous heritage, and of course decedents of the slave trade. None the less, many of us are settlers, and having a language to explain this can be useful, even if/when it is also problematic.

³) The dairy industry is far more exploitative than many people ever consider. Cattle are force impregnated often using a device referred to in industry lingo as a ‘rape rack.’ A Dairy cow will only produce milk for a period of time after calving (giving birth), so they keep the cows perpetually pregnant. Dairy cattle and beef cattle are different breeds, specifically bread for specific traits (such as producing more milk, or alliteratively the fat to muscle ratio in beef animals). Thus while the female dairy animals can look forward a life as pregnant milk machines, the males have little value because you only want 1 or 2 Bulls (adult males) per dairy heard (some farms don’t even keep bulls, preferring to buy sperm for mechanical insemination). So male calves from dairy breeds are sold to be used as veal calves, where they ore often locked into crates, or tethered in tiny shoots, to discourage the development of muscle. After a few weeks of force feeding, they are sent to slaughter. All this is to ensure the flesh will be ‘tender.’

10 Fuck Your Mustache! Fuck Movember!

November 13, 2012
by Comrade Black
· Columns · PE Web Zine

Fuck Your Mustache! Fuck Movember! – by Comrade Black

Movember- the time of the year, where men try to show they have testicles by growing an ugly flap of hair over their top lip. On top of looking like a greasy douchebag-hipster, pedophile, and/or cop – you are helping to raise funds for a multi-billion dollar black hole of an industry that is notorious for cruel animal testing.

Straight up, it pisses me off to have to watch every year as well intentioned people help pave the golden road to the hell that is vivisection. The fact that these people are raising funds for a cause shows me they are probably not psychopaths, they are clearly able to have empathy for others. Now if we are to give the benefit of the doubt to these folks that the majority are unaware that the cancer industry is a cancer, that the money they raise will help torture animals for so called ‘science’, than perhaps we need to do more work in the direction of making those connections more explicit, and showing what is wrong with animals testing.

If people truly are concerned with stopping cancer, we should be encouraging people to make healthier lifestyle choices such as; quitting smoking, cutting meat, dairy, and processed foods out of their diet, as well as avoiding pharmasuiticals as much as possible (At least 50 drugs on the market cause cancer in lab animals. They are allowed because it is admitted that animal tests are not relevant.¹), and being more active. As well as working to stop the industrial pollutants and other known cancer causing agents from being produced in the first place. Fighting against industries like the Tar Sands, cell phone towers, or Monsanto’s monocropped franken-foods, is fighting against the spread of cancer (in more ways than one). Stopping corporations from dumping chemicals in our water supply, foods, and soil would do more towards stopping tumors than growing a fucking mustache. Of course that would involve actually doing work, organizing, and taking risks. Growing hair under your lips is far easier, and trendier.

Perhaps in response what those of us who care about animals could do is make this the month we dedicate to anti-vivisection work. Turn Movember into No-Vember, as in No to Vivisection! Increase our presence in the community; set up info-tables on the streets, at malls, universities, airports, or wherever. Organize demonstrations, including home demos, table at more events with explicitly anti-vivisection information, set up film screenings of Maximum Tolerated Dose², organize anti-vivisection teach ins or workshops, hand out leaflets, put up posters, graffiti, drop banners, make art, or whatever it is that you do to raise awareness. Or organize a fundraiser for anti-vivisection groups in your community. And of course for those able bodied warriors willing to truly risk their privilege there is the actions that make the most direct impact to the lives of lab animals, physically freeing them from cages under the cover of night.

There is so much more we can do than growing a patch of fucking hair.

Footnotes
1) ALF Animal Testing fact sheet:
http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/vivisectionfacts.htm

2) Maximum Tolerated Dose is the first feature length documentary on animal testing:
http://maximumtolerateddose.org/

Resources:
Intro to Vivisection by Stop Huntington Animals Cruelty (SHAC)
http://www.shac.net/science/vivi_intro.html

Dying For A Cigarette
http://www.impactpress.com/articles/febmar02/cigs2302.html

Healing Cancer Naturally
http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/why_alternatives17.html

for a more extensive list of anti-vivisection resources check out http://maximumtolerateddose.org/resources

1 NEW Special Hand Crafted Limited Edition PE Release!!! (EXIST 132)

August 21, 2012
by xbencrewx
· PE Records

Melissa “The Intern” leaves her mark at Profane Existence: DYING SEA – Lachrymose 7″ & T-Shirt

Profane Existence was fortunate to have Melissa “The Intern” Meils come up and do her college internship with us this summer. For her “Final Project” Melissa had to start a band (from scratch), write and record a song (this was her first band), design the 7″ cover, logo & t-shirt art as well as figure out how to screen print and make a 7″ record. The end result is an extremely limited & collectable lathe cut 7″ with a screen printed cover and matching t-shirt by DYING SEA: a raging female fronted, blackened crust band that does not compromise when it comes to their views on animal rights.

Over the course of two days Melissa teamed up with her boyfriend Josh (who played in various bands on Prosthetic and Metal Blade Records) to write and record the song “Lachrymose”: a politically charged anthem of well crafted crust brutality calling for the end of vivisetion and animal torture. After listening to the recording, seeing the layout Melissa designed and reasilizing how how amazing and on-point everything was we decided it needed to be an official Profane Existence release: DYING SEA – Lachrymose 7″ EXIST 132. What started out as a class project quickly took on a life of it’s own and is now a part of Profane history!

LISTEN HERE! DYING SEA – Lachrymose

We printed a total of 20 square shaped, one sided 7″ singles on clear monophonnic poly-carbonite “wax”. THIS IS A HOME MADE RECORD. You can’t get any more DIY than this! Each record was individually made, in real time, using an embossing method. There are center labels on both sides of the record, although music only appreas on side 1. The covers were screen printed right here at PE on heavy weight canvas (like a patch) and the lyrics inserts are all hand numbered.

GET YOUR COPY HERE!

Although we will have the song available digitally this is going to be a one time, limited edition pressing of twenty one sided lather cut records with screen printed covers. Once these records are gone we won’t be doing a repress. The first ten copies are already gone. They went to the band and friends of the label before it even hit the streets. The remaining 10 copies are available from the PE webstore and come with a DYING SEA t-shirt. The DYING SEA t-shirts are all double-sided on high quality fabric. The Dying Sea 7″ image is on the front and the classic PE “Making Punk A Threat Again” logo is on back. This is only available as a package deal. Neither the t-shirt nor the record will be sold seperately. Available now… but only for a limited time. GET THEM BOTH HERE!!

Note: There are center labels on both sides of the record but music is only on side 1. DO NOT PLAY THE SIDE WITH THE PE LOGO CENTER LABEL. The poly-carbonate is clear and it might appear that there are grooves on both sides. Do not be fooled. It could damage your needle. Also if you are playing the record on the correct side and it doesn’t sound like the needle is catching the groove properly you might want to help it out. Each record was made special with 1940’s technology and might require a little special attention from you when playing it. GRAB A PIECE OF PE HISTORY!

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The legendary crust classic is now available once again!

We are happy to announce our next new release

WILT – “Self Titled”

Here is a track from the upcoming LP

“Sermon for the Bootlickers”

Tag: Animal Rights

0 Mandy Hiscoks Presents at Human Rights are Animal Rights on the connections between prisons and zoos

0 Thinking Outside The Bars

0 Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams: Book & Speaking tour for Layla AbdelRahim

2 This Is The ALF! – The new resurgence of militant activism

2 Best Advice for Dumpster Divers

1 Open The Cages tour needs your support to end vivisection: Call for endorsements

9 Effective Activism & State Repression: An Interview with Jake Conroy on how the SHAC Campaign nearly bankrupt one of the largest animal testing labs in the world

3 No More Excuses: On Veganism, Colonialism, and Privlege

10 Fuck Your Mustache! Fuck Movember!

1 NEW Special Hand Crafted Limited Edition PE Release!!! (EXIST 132)