New look, pages, & blogs 28 February 2006
Posted by Zach in blogs, legal, meta, support, visuals.add a comment
New skin
I’ve been neglecting to write about the wiki proper lately due to the SHAC 7 trial goings-on, but there has been stuff going on. Most excitingly (for me at least), I’ve been for most of the past 24 hours working on a new skin (i.e. layout) for the site. I’ll probably be done in another couple days. I’ve thought for a while that we really needed one – so many people just won’t come back if a site looks ugly – but been too scared of CSS.
Turns out though CSS isn’t that bad. I just jumped in and started messing with it.
What I’m working on will be a good bit simpler-looking than the standard “Monobook” skin we currently have, what with all its lines and boxes everywhere. I think across the top is going to be a banner made up of veggie or animal liberation related silhouettes, not entirely unlike (though not entirely like either) what you see on this site. I spent the last couple hours trying to get a nice silhouette of a rodent of some kind being freed (below), though frustratingly I’ve lost the original link so I don’t know what kind of animal it is or where. I’m not super happy with the graphic, and may not use it in the final skin, but it gives you a general sort of gander of where this is going.
New pages
Perhaps the most important page recently made is Eric McDavid. Eric was arrested back in January, along with a two others, for allegedly planning to destroy some cell phone towers, one or more power plants, and a facility of the U.S. Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics. They were arrested mostly because they, along with many other radical groups over the years, had been infiltrated by a young undercover agent who went by the name of “Anna”.
When I went down for the SHAC 7 trial last week, I met a girl doing prison support for him and the two other activists. I had heard about some recently-arrested activist who was on the third week of a hunger strike because he was being denied vegan meals; it turns out this was Eric McDavid, and that very recently, after about a month, they started feeding him suitable meals.
Still, letters would be appreciated, and if you’re near Sacramento you could visit him. (Also on the vegan prisoner front, Peter Young has been allowed to receive books again. His wikiveg page hasn’t been updated yet though, so see SupportPeter.com for more info on that.)
Other articles include: a Philadelphia page; one on Mary Lou Sapone, an undercover agent who did something tres bizarre in the 80s; Teany, a cafe opened by vegan musician Moby; Huntingdon Life Sciences (did I already mention that before?); elephants, which apparently are more and more frequently being born tuskless due to a certain gene being promoted by hunting (“unnatural selection”).
Finally, there’s an article on soya toxicity (aka soy toxicity). Apparently some sources say that soy in high enough amounts (amounts many vegans get) becomes bad for you. Other sources say this is just dairy-industry propaganda. I’m not sure which is true, but I did notice a long article about this in an issue of Herbivore I have, so I’ll try to read it and add some info from it in the next week or so.
New blogs
There’s what looks like a really good, down-to-business blog on U.S. animal law called Hounded, Cowed, & Badgered. Also, Herbivore just launched a staff blog.
Bad medicine in New Jersey 25 February 2006
Posted by Zach in SHAC, legal.1 comment so far
I went down to Trenton Wednesday night to observe the SHAC 7 trial, as I said I might. We saw the defense lawyers’ entire case Thursday, and Friday was reserved for some finagling between the lawyers about the documents that will be given to the jury later. Closing statements are happening Monday, and jury deliberations shortly after.
It ain’t over till it’s over, but I’m afraid it may not go well for them. I talked to Josh Harper (one of the defendants) after the defense ended, and he indicated they weren’t very optimistic. He called it “mind-numbing” that he very well may be going to jail over some emails and speeches, and even more mind-numbing that there are laws on the books making that possible.
I think the big problem was that the defense lawyers weren’t doing so hot. (“Sleeping on the job” is how one defendant described it.) Most of them seemed competent, but it just seems not quite right, not quite right at all, for the prosecution to take ten days making its case, and the defense lawyers to be finished all in one day. I mean, they originally thought the case would last 12-18 weeks; then six weeks; this is just three and a half!
I’m guessing the problem is that all but one of the attorneys are court-assigned and don’t have a lot of time to devote to the case, or deep interest in it. The money people have raised for the legal fund has, I believe, gone to the remaining attorney, whose name I forget. Perhaps we just didn’t raise enough to get him to really invest himself in the case?
Another big problem was that the judge, Anne Thompson, was gagging everyone from talking about what can happen to animals inside HLS. People would start to refer to “the video of the workers punching—”, for example, and get cut off by her or prosecutor Charles McKenna. I think her official reason was that it’s just “hearsay”; the footage, for example, “could be from anywhere”. I think there must be more to it than that though: one witness, Janine Motta of the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, started to say, “There’s this one test that they do, where they—” before she was cut off by the judge. But she wasn’t talking about HLS, or even implying that the procedure happens or could happen at HLS; she was just answering a question about what information made her become an animal rights activist. I don’t think it’s uncharitable to suggest that the judge probably just didn’t want to allow anything graphic enough to make people ashamed of how our society treats animals.
If they get some prison time, and only Darius is expecting not to I believe, Josh said an appeals process might exonerate some of them, especially Jake Conroy and Lauren Gazzola; hopefully we can raise enough funds to make that happen. But in the meantime they’d be in custody for at least a year or so. And I heard the max figure for one of the defendants is 23 years; hopefully that’s wrong and the news article that said 13 years is right.
A tiny silver lining: the mainstream news articles, I think, making them look good and HLS and the government bad for a change.
(Note: I wrote this Friday but it didn’t post for some reason. There’s also been an official update since then; they still want people to come to court Monday and Tuesday.)
Going to Trenton in my heart 22 February 2006
Posted by Zach in SHAC, legal, regional, support.add a comment
The SHAC 7 are specifically requesting supporters to come to court for these last three weekdays this week, since the prosecution finished yesterday, and the defense’s case starts today (Wednesday). From the request from defendant Andy Stepanian:
The government’s case is expected to rest this Tuesday, and it is at that point that we will be putting on our defense. We have been restrianed from showing footage of the documented crimes commited by HLS, we have been prohibited from allowing expert testimony on how vivisection is both morally and scientifically fraudulent, and we have been prohibited form mentioning the recent charges brought against HLS by the NJSPCA (see http://www.animaldefense.info/news/010506.html) We must show that we have support from the community!, we must show that we are not only innocent but we are right!, YOU CAN HELP US DO THAT! For the animals inside HLS, and for the the freedom of myself and my co-defendants please tell everyone you know to PUT ON YOUR BEST CLOTHES AND BIGGEST SMILES AND ATTEND COURT WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY OF THIS WEEK.
WE NEED YOUR HELP!
Your Friend,
Andy Stepanian
I just emailed the Boston ADL list to see if anyone else is going Thursday. If no one is I may still go via train and bus, but it’d be more difficult.
Herbivores galore!
In other news, I ordered an almost complete set of Herbivore magazine back issues, and they arrived today. I think they will be massively useful as info sources for wiki articles…
Boycott Newbury Comics; SHAC update 18 February 2006
Posted by Zach in SHAC, activism, boycotts, fur, regional.1 comment so far
I’ve seen my share of graphic footage of animal abuse, but holy shit, I couldn’t finish watching this video, from a 2004-2005 undercover investigation of Chinese fur farms.
If you don’t want to or can’t watch it, let me give you the highlights: workers killing or stunning animals by repeatedly slamming their heads on the ground by their hind legs, workers skinning animals alive, skinless animals still alive and moving, animals going berserk in cages as they see what’s going to happen to them.
Apparently, about half of the finished fur sold worldwide comes from China, because animal regulations there are virtually non-existent and labor is so cheap. So this is kind of like a major problem. You can read more about it (and send a letter to someone) on this page by the HSUS, or this less detailed Peta page.
What Newbury has to do with it
I heard about this, albeit in less graphic detail, this past Monday at a meeting of the Boston Animal Defense League (BADL). BADL is organizing a boycott of Newbury Comics, a popular New England music retailer, because they have refused, after months of polite requests, to stop selling novelty items made with Chinese-farmed rabbit fur in their stores. They’re a smallish operation (26 stores, all in New England), so I imagine the boycott will be successful.
That link goes to a wikiveg page I just made, which contains info on getting more involved if you like. You can also get more info on the boycott’s homepage, myspace.com/boycottnewburycomics.
Second week of SHAC 7
The SHAC 7 site, which for a while hadn’t been updated, has been modestly redesigned and is now being updated. Yesterday this report on the second week of the trial was post:
The second week of the SHAC 7 trial has come to a close, with the prosecution nearing the end of its case. It is expected that the prosecution will rest on Tuesday afternoon.
The week saw employees from a variety of companies related to HLS testify about home demonstrations and direct action targeted at their companies and residences. Their testimony contained one common thread: they could not identify any of the defendants as having directly been in contact with them. A slew of FBI agents, officers, and others also took the stand to testify about the information seized from the defendant’s homes during raids. One computer expert that the government spent nearly $200,000 just on analyzing the defendants’ computers. Talk about money well spent!
Thus far, the jury has only heard one side of the story—the way the government would like to present it. Next week, the defendants will finally have a chance to have their voices heard.
The problems of direct action 15 February 2006
Posted by Zach in activism, direct action, open actions, solidarity vs. division, visuals.2 comments
There’s an interesting editorial on direct action in a recent issue of Animal People (via Animal Writings):
Animal advocates should be aware that seven years before any ALF or ELF suspect used a pipe bomb, a covert operator named Mary Lou Sappone, hired by former U.S. Surgical Corporation owner Leon Hirsch, in November 1988 set up a fringe activist to be caught in the act of planting a pipe bomb in the U.S. Surgical parking lot.
Why?
Because when the public sees purported animal advocates involved in violence, that violence becomes the story—not the violence going on outside in the woods, in the labs, and inside the slaughterhouses.
…
Convincing the world to treat animals with moral consideration requires activists to keep the high ground, not from fear of arrest, but from the likelihood that appearing to be irrational or dangerous will obscure the message and lead to failure.”
Peresonally I agree with the last bit (that I bolded), and agree that a lot of direct actions probably are hurting the public ‘battle-of-hearts-and-minds’.
But I don’t agree with the suggestion that direct action is incompatible with keeping the moral (or more accurately, I think, PR) high ground. The ‘open rescue‘ approach is the best example of this. And I think ‘non-open’ rescues of live animals (the kind ALF usually does) aren’t bad for PR either.
Direct action pro and con
The two main problems, I think, are (1) anonymous property destructions, especially via bombs and arson, and (2) the “we are going to hurt you and enjoy it” tone of many ALF communiqués, such as these recent open letters to HLS business partners.
If direct action activists just minimized those two things, I don’t think we’d really have much of a PR or ‘high ground’ problem. Animal liberations with kindly-worded (but still firm, which of course is a hard balance) communiqués sent afterward shouldn’t set us back. Acts of “open property desctruction”, like that done in the Bye Bye Egg Industry action, shouldn’t set us back either.
So I don’t think I can accept the conclusion of the editorial, which echoes the opinions and tone of most mainstream animal advocates:
“Accepting terrorism of any sort invites infiltration and disruption, and ultimately retards the cause, no matter how much of a vicarious feel-good activists may get from a transiently successful ‘direct action.’”
Point taken as far as many direct actions go, but I really don’t think that actions of the sort I just described ‘retard the cause’. If anything I think they promote it much faster than legal or advertising-based approaches do completely by themselves. To use a cliché (but still appropriate) example, the battle for civil rights in the U.S. would have been won much more slowly if activists had not used civil disobedience (aka open direct action).
Movement unity or division
What does retard the movement, in my humble opinion, is when different wings of the pro-animal movement don’t treat each other with respect. Everyone is at least a little bit guilty of this, the radical wing included, but that doesn’t make it excusable.
Which is why this article makes me a little upset, because it doesn’t just disagree with the radical wing (which is fine), but disrespects it.
For one thing, it uses the terms “violence” and “terrorism” without distinguishing between property destruction and violence against people; this makes it sound like the ALF is out to hurt people, and is a common tactic of the anti-animal lobby. It suggests that activists who use property destruction are only “purported animal activists”, or “fringe” ones. And I think there’s a hint of patronizing in the suggestion that ALF activists are hurting the animal cause but don’t realize it because they are too affected by the “vicarious feel-good” one gets from direct action. I’m sure some ALF kids do get addicted to that good feeling and don’t think hard enough about the long-term PR battle, but being patronizing or disrespectful isn’t the way to reform the movement.
Update: Gary from Animal Writings has posted excerpts from a second article on the same topic (this one from Satya magazine, written by the Vegan MD). Here is a quote from the original article:
Take, for example, the failure of right wing religious terror in this country. Although the morally contemptuous murders of nine abortion doctors and supporters seemed to have reduced abortion availability by intimidating providers and their support network, most analyses view the terror as ultimately backfiring against the anti-choice movement in terms of public credibility. In fact, according to the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, the percentage of people considering themselves pro-choice actually peaked in 1994, the anti-choice murderers’ single bloodiest year.
The animal exploitation industries are drooling to have us hurt someone. [note: as Jerry Vlasak recently called for] They know that our power is our compassion. That’s why they try to take away our power by painting us as violent misanthropes.
Since a couple weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the comparisons between the pro-life and pro-animal movments; there are a lot of similarities between the two issues (and also a lot of differences; I’m not trying to equate them at all, just to be perfectly clear), so I think we can probably learn some important strategic lessons by studying the sucesses and failures of the pro-life movement.
Skin update
I just spent a good couple hours going through HTML/CSS tutorials, in preparation for trying to design a nice skin for the wiki. It’ll probably be at least a week before a start seriously experimenting, and another few weeks until I have a skin ready.
Fur-st week of SHAC 6 13 February 2006
Posted by Zach in SHAC, activism, direct action, legal, regional.add a comment
The first week of the SHAC 6 trial seems to be going well. From the SHAC 7 MySpace profile:
The week saw approximately 15 witnesses for the government, including the Huntingdon Life Sciences’ Managing Director Brian Cass and other HLS employees. Despite allegations by the government that the SHAC USA site was “causing” people to take direct action against these employee’s homes, most testified that either nothing illegal had happened at their homes or that their home addresses had not been posted on the SHAC USA website prior to any direct action. Of course, none could say that any of the defendants had done anything illegal to them.
The highlight of the week is when the government called a 20 year old activist from Ohio who was “caught” participating in an electronic civil disobedience (ECD) (the act of visiting a website with special software designed to overflow a server’s bandwidth and effectively crash the site) and who sent black faxes. Undoubtedly, the government expected him to testify that SHAC USA and/or its website caused him to do these things. Instead, he repeatedly said he learned about it from other places, participated in the actions on his own freewill, and none of the defendants had anything to do with his actions. When asked why he had sent the black faxes, he said that he was angry after watching the undercover footage at HLS where workers are hurting beagles.
The trial is going on in Trenton, NJ; if you want to visit (do it before mid-March), instructions are on the original post. My ma lives near there, so I be able to visit the trial at some point.
In a few minutes I’m heading off to a meeting (my first) of the Boston Animal Defense League. It seems like they largely focus on the HLS/SHAC campaign, and on protesting a certain fur shop in Boston. I’ve been wanting to focus my wikiveg posting efforts more narrowly, so as to get a couple topics covered more comprehensively; I think I may let fur/fur farms and SHAC/HLS be what I focus on for the next few months. (My other choice was horses – did you know almost 90,000 horses are slaughtered in the U.S. every year and exported abroad for meat? I was shocked.)
On the SHAC 7 (and kases of energy bars) 8 February 2006
Posted by Zach in SHAC, activism, direct action, legal, open actions.add a comment
Two v. important things have been brought to my attention:
1. Clif bars for cheap.
If you buy 49 bucks worth of eligible Clif energy bars from Amazon.com, which are all vegan, you’ll get a 20 dollar Amazon gift certificate. I like the choco-mint ones. (via Erik Marcus)
2. The SHAC 7 case started yesterday.
The trial of the SHAC 7 (really 6 now) re-started yesterday, after the last one ended in mistrial due to a lawyer’s illness. The SHAC 7, if you don’t already know, are activists with the U.S. arm of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a campaign that is trying to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a large animal testing corporation which has undergone several undercover investigations revealing wretched treatment of the animals they test on.
The way the SHAC organization works is by posting information about HLS, HLS staff, and that of companies doing business with HLS. Initially, they will ask supporters that they politely call or email a given company, and ask that they stop doing business with HLS. If a company refuses, they publicize this fact, and here’s where the wider SHAC campaign comes in: typically activists will, of their own accord, begin pressuring the company in less polite ways, such as by “home demos” (protests at the houses of executives), vandalism of property, and even threats of violence (not carried out). Activists who perform these actions will typically send emails about them to the SHAC organization, which are then published on the website.
The very tricky legal question involved in the case that started yesterday is this: are the members of the SHAC website/organization responsible for the illegal actions of the people who read the site and then perform illegal actions (the wider “SHAC campaign“), considering that the website doesn’t tell anyone to do anything against the law?
That’s the whole issue, because the government hasn’t laid any charges of actual criminal acts (e.g. threats, vandalism) onto the defendents, aside from one alleged tire-slashing that has been dropped. It’s all about whether publishing a website that gives names and addresses of ‘targets’ and reports about actions committed against them by third parties, is illegal. Which is why the SHAC defendants are going to argue that what this is about is free speech, not, as the government says, terrorism or conspiracy.
The SHAC defense
According to an excellent Mother Jones article on the situation, the Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio will be a big part of the defense. That was a case where Clarence Brandenburg, a KKK figure, made speeches advocating “revengeance” against Jews and blacks (not a very flattering comparison for SHAC), and was then convicted by an Ohio state law prohibiting that sort of thing.
When the case went to the Supreme Court, they ruled that the Ohio state government didn’t have the right to do that, ruling:
“the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
Reading this doesn’t give me a good feeling about the SHAC 6’s chances.
Why?
Well, it seems like it could be successfully used to protect people like, say, Jerry Vlasak. Jerry is a press officer for the Animal Liberation Front (and a surgeon), which is a more fully underground group who commit illegal direct action to liberate animals or raise the cost of abusing them. As an ALF supporter, Jerry of course advocates illegal animal liberations and property destruction aimed at animal abusers. He even recently said that it would be a good thing if a few animal researchers were killed, so as to scare people away from that field. (It should be noted that, aside from whatever moral problems one may have with this, that would go against the ALF’s own rules.)
This seems rather like, in form if not content, Brandenburg’s general support of “revengeance”: both are clearly “advocacy of the use of force or law violation”, but are not “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action”, and therefore legal. As far as I know, no ALF activist waits for Jerry to tell them when to act or who to taget; he’s a PR guy, not a leader.
But the activities of the SHAC organization/website, by comparison, can with some fairness be said to be “inciting or producing imminent lawless action”. They identify some company as a target; in the following weeks and months that company gets hassled or vandalized; and then they publish reports about those actions. It’s a bit more plausible to say that SHAC activists, or many of them at least, wait for the SHAC organization to tell them who to target and when to act. Which is bad news for the case, it seems.
The one key difference though is that Jerry is (and Brandenburg was) actually advocating illegal acts, while SHAC officially are not. So, it seems to come down to whether the court will think that inciting illegal actions in SHAC’s implicit, officially denied, read-between-the-lines sort of way counts as real incitement. Which will make for an interesting case. (Readers not satisfied with my uninformed legal opinion might want to look up the Supreme Court decisions listed on the SHAC site.)
Should we support SHAC?
So much for describing what’s going on; the question you may be asking is, should people who care about animals support the SHAC 6? My own feeling is yes.
Like many of you, I personally am not comfortable with a lot of their tactics; insults and implied physical threats (even if they aren’t carried out) against people a couple degrees of separation from HLS, for example, leaves me with a bad feeling. To try to scare someone with threats of violence is to stop treating them as a person – and this act of treating persons like un-persons is against everything I’m about. Hell, that’s what animal abuse itself (not to mention war, racism, etc.) consists of.
And yet, I think it’s important for the vegan/animal liberation movement not to let disagreements over tactics divide us. (Within reason; actual violence is not OK, though Morrissey disagrees.)
I mean, I personally think PETA is too welfarist, and that a lot of their campaigns promote primitive sexual attitudes – but I’m not going to stop supporting them, because they make a huge difference in the lives of countless animals. I personally don’t think I’m comfortable with doing covert illegal actions at all, and will probably do “open rescue”, turn-yourself-in-afterwards actions exclusively when I become active – but I’m not going to stop supporting the (usually-covert) ALF, because they make a huge difference in the lives of countless animals too.
Same with SHAC. I don’t like some SHAC activists’ tactics, but thousands of animals will be spared a life of suffering if HLS is shut down. And it seems like that may indeed happen, thanks to SHAC; in September a $41 mil loan comes due, but they only have $12 mil on hand, and they recently were demoted to the ‘Penny Stocks’ exchange.
Personally I think the way to work through these disagreements is to maintain solidarity and work for change within the movement, instead of distancing ourselves from each other. I hope to do my part in that by soon (4-18 months) starting a Quaker animal liberation organization. It would, I hope, add a religious voice to the radical animal activist movement, as well as encourage more Friends to minimize their support of animal abuse by their purchases and consider taking direct action.
In the meantime, I think the entire vegan/activist community should support the SHAC 6, in spirit if nothing else. I’ve donated a little money to their legal fund; you may do the same through the Food Fight! store, or directly on the SHAC 7 website.
Solidarece,
Zach.
(cross posted to A quaker anarchist)
On essays, open rescue, and beeswax 2 February 2006
Posted by Zach in direct action, open actions, policy, recipes.add a comment
There’s been a little talk on the community portal about creating a namespace for essays. A namespace is kind of like a folder for pages in the MediaWiki software. Pages related to policy or abou the wiki itself should (*cough*) be going in the “Wikiveg:” namespace, such as the page on deleting; help pages typically go in a “Help:” namespace. Most pages are in the default namespace, which doesn’t have a prefix. Anyway, you can add custom namespaces; if we added one for essays, you would have the freedom of creating a page like “Essay:Peta is too welfarist”, and write whatever you like. We’d have to work out a different set of rules I imagine though, since we probably don’t want people editing each other’s essays.
If you think this is a good (or bad) idea, go ahead and chime in on the community portal. In the meantime, feel free put any essays you’d like to write in subpages of your user page (e.g. User:Zach/Tofu_is_neat), like NTK has done with an essay on Peter Young and direct action.
NTK talked about the value of doing ‘open’ direct actions, i.e. ones where you act, call the cops (or wait for them to arrive), and accept whatever legal punishment the system gives you, in the style of civil disobedience. Personally, I support anybody who does direct action, covert ones included, but I agree there’s a lot of value to open actions. So I went and made a rough-and-ready page on open rescue, which apparently is a much more widespread practice than I had thought. (Until looking at the OpenRescue.org website, the only open action I had heard of was the Bye Bye Egg Industry one.)
I also started pages on direct action, the ALF, and sugar, and posted a recipe I pseudo-invented for molasses almond cookies. We also have a new page on beeswax.
