1980s (Page 4)

In: Videos

Breaking Barriers (1986. Washington, D.C.)

While it is true that direct action is often the best means to accomplish our goals, the way we conduct those actions can be an impediment to long term change. Early militants in the animal liberation movement were inspired by the aesthetics of groups like The Angry Brigade, and we have been saddled with that sort of ski-mask and army jacket imagery ever since. The problem is this: that appearance is heavily associated with anti-social behavior, crime, and random violence. While we may romanticize the bolt cutters and balaclavas, the general public does not. If our fashion sense harms the propaganda and recruitment value of our actions, than perhaps we need a makeover.

There have been efforts to part with the bank-robber-meets-gun-nut costumes, however. One of the most dramatic involved a spectacular raid, and… um… mime masks. This attempt at softening the imagery of underground activism was carried out by the aptly named “True Friends.” The video below, Breaking Barriers, was produced by PeTA in their more radical days, and acted to publicize the liberation of four baby chimpanzees from isolation chambers at the SEMA lab in Rockville, MD. While the effectiveness of their eerie masks and wigs is questionable, the beauty of these young primates being freed from a life of torture is not. This was a notable raid that garnered considerable public sympathy when it occurred, and just because the attempt at re-inventing our look failed in this instance doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying.

In: Earth First! Journal, Most Popular, Periodicals

Earth First! Journal Volume 7, Issue #1-8 (Tucson, AZ.)

One of our dreams here at Conflict Gypsy has been to build a complete collection of the Earth First! Journal, the radical environmental movement’s longest running periodical. While we are still missing some key issues, we have managed to gather enough of this classic publication to begin posting them one year at a time, starting with 1986.

The eight newspaper-format volumes printed by the Journal collective in 1986 are filled with fascinating tales of our eco-warrior progenitors, including Paul Watson’s epic telling of The Raid on Reykjavic in issue two. It is tempting to spend several paragraphs discussing the contents of these yellowing tomes, but perhaps it is more important to spend these words discussing the fact that the journal is still being produced- AND IT NEEDS OUR SUPPORT!

The Earth First! Journal has been documenting environmentally motivated direct action for more than 30 years, but it struggles to pay the bills these days as fewer and fewer people read print magazines. Here at CG we believe wholeheartedly that history should be “told from below,” that the words of our comrades are more important to our understanding of past events than the musings of academics and professional historians. The Journal is still the best source for this kind of news- the written accounts of actual participants in our struggle! Please do not let it disappear like so many other publications in the last decade. Subscribe to the Earth First! Journal by clicking here!

In: Videos

Animal Liberation: The Movie (1992, England)

An early and wonderful example of DIY video production and anonymous distribution, Animal Liberation: The Movie was brought to the US by Freeman Wicklund in the early 90s. Often sold on the same tape as the moving Kieth Mann documentary “Angels of Mercy,” it quickly became a must have in the video collection of activists everywhere.

Documenting the high-water mark of daylight raids, department store arson, hunt sabotage, and undercover investigations in England, this sub-rosa video remains one of the best catalogs of direct action in the 80s and early 90s.

In: Periodicals

Action For Animals newsletter #1-3 (1985 – 1986. Queensland, Australia.)
Agitator #1 (1987. Eltham, Australia.)
Action Reports #1 (1987. Eltham, Australia.)
Direct Action for Animal Rights newsletter #5-6 (1985 – 1986. Lutwyche, Australia.)

Despite his denouncement of most forms of illegal direct action, Peter Singer has played an interesting and unintended role in the history of the underground in his native Australia. After the success of his seminal utilitarian philosophy book, Animal Liberation, he founded a group by the same name in the land down under. This left some activists with an interesting question: should they continue using the name “Animal Liberation Front?” Many cells decided to forgo the confusion of a nearly identical moniker and instead acted under the banner of Action for Animals and Direct Action for Animal Rights.

Australia was one of the first countries outside of England to see resistance movements dedicated to non-humans. As raids and economic sabotage became more frequent, above ground supporters started small press publications to publicize the tactics and activities of these Aussie warriors. Later, as arrests began to mount, these publications also served to raise defense funds and promote acts of solidarity with animal rights prisoners.

Conflict Gypsy is hoping to track down complete sets of all the magazines featured in this post. If you can help us find them, please contact us at conflictgypsy (at) gmail (dot) com

In: Books

Targeted (1992, University of Oklahoma Press)

“This planning is done in a very professional manner because the perpetrators are highly skilled in terrorism.” (52)

Published 11 years after the Silver Spring Monkeys investigation, in the same year as the Animal Enterprise Protection Act and 14 years before the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, Targeted, was intended as a vivisectors manual for managing animal rights philosophy. 



Lengthy and replete with victimization, which includes comparing vivisectors to Jews in Nazi Germany, the book is a vital resource for two reasons; it signals the beginning of a new industry, the animal enterprise security industry, and also provides a starting point in charting the rhetoric of “terrorism” to explain animal rights activism.

The animal enterprise security industry, and it’s growth, comes as a fairly predictable response to campaigns, investigations, releases and sabotage. The industry has raised security costs for animal enterprise, however, fails to provide much in the way of relevance. Current publications, like Extremist Watch in the United States, do little more than assauge the conscience of the industry and Targeted can be read in this vein. As a psychological study, the book is written more as a rationalization of vivisection, and the victimization of vivisectors themselves, than a real manual. Unsurprisingly, vivisectors could learn more from content on this site than they ever would within industry manuals, and even still, that knowledge would not be sufficient to prepare them. In terms of efficiency, one has to question if these manuals and the security industry has the desired effect. 


The most troubling message to chart in the book is the framing of animal rights activists as “terrorists.” Written in the same year as the Animal Enterprise Protection Act was passed, the manual would be foreshadowing that the industry was not about to stop short of this language. It is frustrating to see the amount of organization and lobbying that has happened since the book was published, as the authors main strategic point is that the industry itself must be united and it must develop it’s political network and backing. That strategic line can be traced back to publications like this and explains the current situation wherein the vivisection industry is allowing small public relations reform that drains animal advocacy resources (releasing animals for adoption instead of euthanizing them, usually done within a time frame and without aid from the institution) alongside education campaigns (namely billboards) while solidifying their political power by uniting with other animal enterprise industries with designer bills like AETA, AG Gag Bills, etc.

This manual is a must read for those interested in charting the vital work of people like Will Potter, who, with his book Green is the New Red, has chronicled industry response and Government repression. Also, for those interested in the psychology of vivisectors and the vivisection industry, in between the lines this manual reads like a diary and is full of useful information.

In: Most Popular, Periodicals

Live Wild or Die # 1-3 (Published in various locations along the west coast of the United States, 1989-1990s?)

Edited by rotating teams of anarchists and espousing an anti-civilization perspective a decade before the rise of Eugene’s primitivists, Live Wild or Die was the most radical environmental journal of its time, and perhaps, of all time. Featuring articles with names like “The Eco-Fucker hit list,” which “wise use” guru Ron Arnold later erroneously claimed to have inspired Ted Kaczynski’s choice of targets, LWOD presented an uncompromising vision of a future without industrialism and domestication brought about by train hopping tree spikers, nomadic punk hunt saboteurs, and feral warriors. It was exciting, naive, inspiring, and sometimes a little bit stupid. Still, flipping through it’s over-sized, busily decorated pages you can not help but feel the optimistic spirit of that era. Earth First!ers and animal liberators, monkey wrenchers and black clad messengers run wild across the pulp, heralding a revolution to free the world of exploitation, drudgery, brutality and boredom. Cries for the destruction of corporate property vie for attention alongside snarky comic strips, screeds against new age pseudo resistance, and now un-distributable diagrams for building incendiary devices. The authors believed in their hearts that something better was on the horizon if they could fight hard enough to get there. That deep and passionate longing for utopia is all but dead nowadays, washed away by delusions of “Hope” and “Change” at the ballot box and a green consumerism that only takes us deeper into the pit of shallow lives and dying eco-systems. But somewhere out there I am betting that there are a few young people who pine for a planet that is joyous and just, and I hope they smile, conspiratorially, when they see what the generation who made LWOD was planning.

In: Books

Love and Anger, 1st and 2nd Editions (1980?, Westport, CT. USA)

“Animals have rights, interests, desires, and needs equal, within the context of their lives, to those of humans, and we have an obligation to recognize this, and act accordingly. Animal Rights is a philosophical orientation, and a practical necessity if creatures are to be spared the systematic cruelty to which they are currently subjected. But perhaps most importantly, the designation of and agitation for animal rights is part of a revolutionary process aimed at restructuring the major institutions of our society. Indeed, in struggling to change the way humans treat animals, and one another, we work towards nothing less than the transformation of the world.”

– Richard Morgan, from the introduction.

For the last several years, I have been trying to understand why the animal rights movement rode a wave of success in the early 80s, only to fall so sharply by the end of the decade. This inquiry has led me to read old books and magazines, to interview participants from that time period, and even to reading the history of other causes in an attempt to find parallels in their peaks and troughs. I still have not arrived at a conclusive answer to the question, and it appears that many factors played a part in our recession. What is more clear, though, is that one figure played a major role in our rise, only to be quickly forgotten. His name is Richard Morgan, and after working towards civil rights and an end to the war in Vietnam, he took up the cause of animal rights in the late 1970s.

Early figures in the movement speak of Morgan as a pioneer, and his group, Mobilization for Animals, planned some of the largest and most visible demonstrations of the time, drawing thousands of people to multiple locations across the United States. He introduced his organizing model in 1979 with the the first edition of Love and Anger, a book which many people in the fledgling animal rights community cited as their inspiration to start a local group.

Written in a style that blends 70s leftism with 80s self-help jargon, Love and Anger can, at times, be a frustrating read. Morgan certainly has a touch of the arrogant liberalism that repulsed the generation of activists that followed his into the 90s. Scattered throughout the book are unsupportable claims, like American pacifists ending the war in Vietnam with sit ins, and new-agey feel good calls for demonstrations to provide “spiritual nourishment.” Some of the book’s advice is remarkably egalitarian, including calls for work within a group to rotate and for everyone, even supposed leaders, to do “shit work.” But some of the book is strangely authoritarian, with calls for “marshals” at demonstrations to squelch the spontaneous actions of others present. If a reader can get past these snags this book also contains a lot of wisdom.

Written at a time when there was almost no movement to speak of in the United States, the author set out to make a handbook to teach people who had never held a sign before to grow a resistance from scratch. He was concerned about the personal and political development of each new member of this tiny cause, and wanted them to think big. Four years before the first civil disobedience action for animal rights (which took place in New York at the Macy’s Fur Department, not in Sacramento as widely reported elsewhere), Richard Morgan wrote about developing personal courage to face law enforcement and overcome private doubts about organizing ability. He gave practical advice on bringing out large numbers to demonstrations, making literature, contacting media and writing press releases, and other basics that helped make animal rights the breakout issue of the 1980s.

Richard Morgan disappeared from activism in the mid 80s. Attempts to track him down have been fruitless, and even his old friends don’t seem to know what happened to him. But, before he walked out of view, he left us with some powerful advice. I hope young activists will read this book with a critical eye, and consider how these words helped lay the foundation for the movement they participate in today.


(first edition)

(second edition)