Intersectionality (Page 2)

The Complete The Beast

The Beast International Times Supplements 1-2, The Beast 1-10 (1978-1981. London, England)

On the 5th of November of 1947 a baby lowland gorilla, stolen from his home and family in West Africa, arrived at the London Zoo. As it was Guy Fawkes day, this newest prisoner was named in his honor. Guy the Gorilla went on to become one of the biggest money makers for his captors, and thousands of visitors would gawk at him, occasionally throwing him sweets to eat. Eventually the candies rotted his teeth, and during a surgery to repair them, he had a heart attack. The budding animal liberation movement in the UK took notice, and a group of people began producing buttons with Guy’s face on them. As the buttons grew in popularity, this small group decided to make a newspaper, and soon The Beast became an insert in International Times. After two such inserts the editors struck out on their own, and soon this beautiful publication was on newsstand racks in England and abroad. It was produced for two short years, and remains one of the best animal liberation (and anti-nuke!) publications of all time.

The Beast began it’s run during a time of global social and political decay. As the voters of the west fell under the spell of charismatic and brutal conservatives, a broad coalition of anti-nuke, anti-fascist, union, conservationist, environmentalist, and animal lib activists entrenched themselves to fight back. As things “hotted up” in the streets, the staff of the magazine followed the action and ideas of an astonishing number of people and groups. The tone in the early issues is optimistic, brave, and intelligent, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the psyche of activists during the era.

The history covered is equally incredible. Articles offer the story of the first animal liberation raid in the United States, the origins of the Hunt Saboteurs Association, and the early days of the Animal Liberation Front. Lost figures, like OG U.S. Hunt Sab and eco-prisoner John Walker, come back to life in these old pages. Important thinkers, such as Henry Spira, Peter Singer, Richard Adams, and Paul Watson were regular contributors. Then, there are the images! Between the full color, glossy covers are amazing pictures of early raids, movement legends, and epic moments on our movement’s timeline. One such photograph, taken in 1980 and shown in issue #10, captures a small group of Animal Liberation League activists standing with banners in a field, bandannas covering their faces, fists in the air. More than 30 years later young people still show that same spark of rebellion and hope.

Targeting the information inside to a wide variety of “animal protection” ideologies, The Beast quickly drew the attention of people ranging from old school anti-vivisectionists to environmentalists. This new readership included people like McLibel defendant Dave Morris, Animal Liberation Front co-founder Ronnie Lee, and open rescue pioneer Pattie Mark. By the time the full size magazine had an existence independent from the International Times, foreign correspondents were already on board and writing about the emerging movement for animal liberation taking place globally.

The Complete No Compromise

No Compromise 1-30. Includes Strategic Non-Violence for Animal Liberation insert included with issue #8 as separate publication. (1996-2006, Sacramento, CA / Minneapolis, MN / Caldwell, NJ / Old Bridge, NJ / Santa Cruz, CA / San Francisco, CA)

Text postNo Compromise, which billed itself as “The militant, direct action newsmagazine of grassroots animal liberationists and their supporters,” was the most important animal rights publication of the 1990s. Despite its many problems, frequent delays, and constant changes in editorial staff, the magazine energized the movement in a way that is difficult to explain to a generation that never witnessed pre-internet activism.

In the mid 90s there were a few, isolated groups around the country who were participating in civil disobedience actions and staging loud protests against local labs and fur stores. These groups were largely unaware of each others’ existence and without a gathering like Earth First!’s Round River Rendezvous, unable to share tactical advice or co-ordinate targets.

In 1996 there was a national meeting of animal rights activists in Washington DC dubbed World Animal Awareness Week and March for the Animals. The event was considered a failure as only 3,000 of the estimated 100,000 participants materialized. But staff from No Compromise were present passing out the first issue and asking grassroots organizations for their contact information. Suddenly groups like the Animal Rights Direct Actions Coalition were meeting with the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, the Animal Defense Leagues, and the Student Organization for Animal Rights.

As the grassroots grew increasingly aware of the efforts of other organizations, regional demonstrations began being planned. The first such demonstration after the March for Animals took place at the Seattle Fur Exchange, where activists used bike locks to attach themselves to each other and block the drive way of the fur auction. All of the action got reported on in No Compromise, and suddenly bike locks gave way to lock boxes, which gave way to super boxes and barrels and tripods as civil disobedience tactics spread across the country wherever the magazine was distributed. There was an explosion not just in voluntary arrest scenarios, but also in underground direct action. The print runs of No Compromise kept climbing and it became the must read publication for animal rights militants.

The tone of the magazine at its start was hopeful, and each issue was packed with increasingly daring protests and direct actions. As the movement struggled to find focus and dealt with the departure of founder Freeman Wicklund, the the mood shifts to frustration and confusion, only to be plucked back into hopeful territory with the rise of SHAC.

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

Earth First! Journal 1987

In: Earth First! Journal, Periodicals

Earth First! Journal (1987, Issue #1-8. Tucson, AZ.)

Writing about Earth First! during its 1980s heyday is a delicate matter. I want to celebrate their best tendencies without ignoring their worst. 1987 is a particularly difficult year to do the former.

After the publication of an article called “Alien Nation” called for a closing of the US border to immigrants (strictly for environmental reasons we are told, not because EF! icon Ed Abbey advocated the use of the term “wetback” and used “cultural chauvinist” to describe his particular brand of racism) anarchists challenged the authors at a gathering in late 1986. So began a years worth of letters to the editor defending the piece. More than one missive in this volume praised AIDS as a positive development for the environment, and various racist, classist, and macho arguments bleed into many of the pages. Given these facts it feels callous to point to the positives that this volume also contains, so I will leave it to our readers to discover those for themselves.

Earth First! is a complex non-organization that has gone through many incarnations, changes in direction, and has never had a political consensus on any issue during the entirety of its history. If I can point out one mitigating factor for these eight issues it is that at least some Earth First!ers fought back in print and in person against the most backwards opinions of their peers, something still needed in the movement today.

Earth Liberation Front 97-02

In: Books

Earth Liberation Front 1997-2002 (2003. Second printing with new dedication and layout 2007. Portland, OR)

Leslie James Pickering grew up in Buffalo, NY. In the mid 90s he became involved in the local hardcore music scene. While attending shows in the surrounding area, he began reading the literature distributed there by local animal rights groups. Zines such as Holocaust (published by Animal Defense League founder Kris Qua) were his introduction to radical politics and support for underground direct action.

Like most kids who grow up in smaller cities, Leslie James left Buffalo as soon as he had the means. After a brief stint skateboarding in San Francisco (during which time he filmed for the underground skate video rarity “Heat Zone”) Pickering landed in Portland, OR. There, he met Craig Rosebraugh, and after a few years the two of them began publishing a newspaper called Resistance with other members of a group called Liberation Collective. At this same time, a group calling themselves the Earth Liberation Front began a series of arson attacks against companies involved in logging and other environmentally harmful practices. They sent their first media statement to Liberation Collective, and the rest of the story is what Pickering documents in Earth Liberation Front 97-02.

Consisting of reprints, interviews, and some original material, Earth Liberation Front 97-02 is a must read for those who wish to understand the beginnings of the Green Scare.

War At Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists And What We Can Do About It

In: Books

War At Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists And What We Can Do About It (1989, Boston, MA.)

During the advent of illegal animal liberations in the United States the FBI had very little in the way of actionable intelligence on those responsible. That all changed when a mentally ill-former activist with a history of violence and stalking began speaking with the Bureau. His name was Bill Ferguson, and while he is best known as the activist who shot Last Chance for Animals founder Chris DeRose in the back, his legacy as the first North American super snitch is far more obscure. Once he began cooperating grand juries sprung up all over the country, homes were raided, and the dirty tricks experienced by other movements began entering the militant vegan arena. In response many grassroots animal organizations began to distribute Brian Glick’s excellent booklet, War At Home.

Clocking in at under 100 pages, War at Home covers all of the most important moments in the FBI’s Counter-Intelligence program, (Better known as COINTELPRO) including the events which occurred after COINTELPRO was supposedly shut down. In plain language and with surprising detail Glick discusses the means and aims of the FBI’s attempts at ending domestic dissent. More than a must read on past abuses, War At Home is also an invaluable handbook on security culture and support for those targeted by law enforcement harassment campaigns. The current wave of crackdowns on the Occupy movement make the free distribution of this booklet more important than ever- please share it with your friends.

Copse

In: Books

Copse (1998, Kate Evans, Chippenham, England.)

“The direct action campaign against road building in Britain is the most successful revolutionary movement in Western Europe in the Second half of the 20th Century. Never before in this period have such radical aims been so comprehensively achieved in so short a time. Never before has a central component of government policy, to which billions of pounds had already been committed reversed, without the need of a change of government, by citizen politics. The humble, impoverished people who fought and won this war have plenty to be proud of.” -George Monbiot, from the introduction.

Sometimes a social ill can become so prevalent that it is sewn into the fabric of our society, normal in all senses, and so common that invisibility is reached. So it is with the car. Whether fueled by gasoline or electricity, bio-diesel or hydrogen, the automobile is one of the most destructive things on earth. Cars emit more than half the world’s air pollution, and kill more animals every year than the fur and vivisection industries combined. But that is only the beginning of the problem. You see, cars require roads, and they travel on them at deadly speeds. What this means is that the streets– a commons where people once gathered– are no longer a place to live and interact, but a place to pass through. The automobile has completely altered our social structure and harmed the ability of normal people to meet and share their discontent with the existing order. Roads now take up more than 1/3rd of most cities, and when parking, garages, gas stations, and other things necessary to feed and house cars are taken into consideration, more than half of our urban space is dedicated to traveling metal boxes. This is an ecological and social catastrophe that goes largely ignored even amongst those who care about human community, wilderness, and non-human animals.

But, it wasn’t always this way. Less than 20 years ago thousands of people fought against the building of new roads in England and elsewhere, and the actions which they undertook are greatly inspiring. From complex villages of tree sits and blockading devices to mass daylight arsons, the anti-roads movement was tremendously successful in preventing the furtherance of car culture and its corollary social and environmental impact.

There were many attempts at documenting this exciting people’s struggle, but none of them were quite as fun as Kate Evans’ Copse. Comprised of interviews, photographs, essays, and plenty of comics, Copse distilled the spirit of the protests onto each page. Part history lesson, part graphic novel, this book is a great starting place to understanding an important piece of the recent history of mass direct action.

On the Road

In: Primers

On The Road (1995, North America)

Though it may now seem impossible, there was a time in our recent history when armed revolutionary groups operated inside North America with the intention of ending US imperialism. While many people may be aware of the Weather Underground and their symbolic bombings, fewer know of The George Jackson Brigade, the New World Liberation Front, the Armed Action Unit, Direct Action, the Black Liberation Army, or the United Freedom Front. These groups all occupied that chimerical realm known as “the underground.” On The Road described how these groups could somehow exist in plain sight while maintaining anonymity. While many of the tactics described herein are now obsolete, this short pamphlet provides us with a valuable peek at the creativity and discipline used to provide cover for hundreds of people at war with the United States and Canada.

It is also telling that there was a time when this pamphlet was widely distributed to animal rights and environmental militants. Starting at the end of the 1980s and continuing well into the present day, FBI surveillance and harassment of above ground activists reached levels intense enough to make many people consider whether or not they would be safer resisting omnicide from a more shadowy place.

Stronghearts

In: Most Popular, Periodicals

In 1995, Rod Coronado was serving a prison sentence for conspiracy charges related to an arson at Michigan State University. During his incarceration he produced four issues of a wonderful cut and paste style zine called Strong Hearts.

I was a young anarchist living in Portland at the time, and obsessed with the writings of Alexander Berkman. Most notably, I was intrigued with his secretly produced prison publication known as Prison Blossoms. Written on various scraps of paper and clandestinely distributed to both prisoners and the outside world, there were no known copies available. One day, while discussing what treasures might have been held on those random bits of smuggled pulp, someone told me about Strong Hearts. I picked up a copy of the first issue at Reading Frenzy and felt like this time around I hadn’t missed out.

Rod’s writing was passionate and avoided much of the juvenile machismo that was endemic to the militant animal rights movement at the time. He bristled at single issue politics, and the magazine covered a spectrum of analysis, news, and tactics in the struggles for wilderness, wild life, women, and indigenous peoples. He was a prisoner, but the cluttered pages of Strong Hearts shined with the cheerful beauty of his intelligence and attitude. As each new issue came out those of us on the outside got a clearer picture of the author. We knew he was a warrior in the best sense of the word, and life behind bars had not yet taken his spirit of resistance.

Time has marched on, and whereas most of the old AR zines from this era seem dated, Strong Hearts largely holds up. The first hand accounts of the sinking of whaling ships, liberations of captive animals, and other direct actions are timeless, and when I fault much of anything about the rest of the writings, it is foremost their legibility. Most issues and articles managed to be inspiring without being fanatical, educational without being preachy, and accessible without being simplistic. Typically I would spend more time analyzing a zine like this, but Strong Hearts speaks for itself. I hope it brings as much to your life as it brought to mine.

Contention Builder

In: Periodicals

Contention Builder (Publication dates unknown, likely 1997. San Diego, CA)

Although the mid to late 1990s brought a resurgence of participation to the animal rights movement, the new generation of liberationists also had an unfortunate tendency towards posturing, machismo, and puritanical language that bordered on the cultish. These newcomers plagued AR culture with cartoonish militant names such as JIHAD (Justice through Insurrection by Humans for Animal Defense), CLAW (Committed Liberation Activists of the West), ARMY (Animal Rights Militant Youth), Vegan Frontline, and the Vegan Militia Movement. It was the latter that brought us two issues of the eclectic, and at times frustrating, Contention Builder.

Many of the members of the Vegan Militia Movement went on to do excellent activism. Their early attempts at publishing, however, were somewhat rough. Packaged between artistic, eye grabbing covers, the interior pages of Contention Builder were filled with reprints, PETA fact sheets, vegan recipes, and the occasionally an original article attacking the credibility of bands like Earth Crisis. Worst of all were the heavy handed admonitions at the back of each issue for people to embrace the “Hardline movement,” a bizarre spin off of Straight Edge that rejected drugs, homosexuality, sex without procreation, abortion, and which later incorporated aspects of Taosim and Islam. Hardliners threatened to use violence against people who abused animals, but these statements were never acted upon and now appear to be the juvenile venting of angry young men.

Issue #1 of Contention Builder came packaged with a tract advertising the mission statement of the Vegan Militia Movement. Chuckle along with these earnest but silly run-on sentences: “WE BELIEVE IN ONE ETHIC- THAT ALL LIFE HAS THE VIRTUE TO LIVE OUT LIFE FROM BIRTH TO NATURAL DEATH – FREE FROM ALL UNETHICAL VALUES. WE MUST STRIFE [sic] AGAINST THOSE WHO ARE DESTROYING THIS WORLD WITH IMPURE AND WARPED VALUES BY VOICING OURSELVES AND TAKING ACTION AGAINST THEM.” Ah, yes, the good old days when hardcore lyrics replaced political discussion and the caps lock was permanently depressed.

But CB is worthy of notice not so much because of its content, but its regional importance to the movement in Southern California. For all the oddball rhetoric and over-reliance on reprints, the magazine still inspired young people to get active and attend protests throughout San Diego and Orange County. Space was given to examining issues ignored elsewhere in the animal rights movement, and violence against women, repression of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and US Imperialism all received coverage. In the end, the sincerity of many members of this group was proven outside of the pages of the zine. All these years later many of them are still active and contributing to animal rights. Perhaps that is the best legacy of their old publication.

Eat Me

In: Most Popular, Periodicals

EAT ME (1997-1998 New York, NY USA.)

Before the term snacktivist became derogatory, several amazing publications such as Soy Not Oi and Raggedy Anarchy promoted veganism and protest alongside recipes for tasty food. One much more obscure publication, EAT ME, was written by best selling vegan cookbook author Isa Moskowitz. Although the content doesn’t match the focus of most of our site, there is certainly a fun archival nerd collector value to seeing one of the most prominent faces of veganism during her radical youth. And yes, each issue contains a recipe. We are happy to have a new introduction to these newsletters from Isa herself.

“I made these as newsletters for the Anarchist Women’s Potlucks in 1997/1998. It was weird timing, because people had email and stuff but it was still a real privilege to have internet at home, so everything was done word of mouth. If you read a few issues, you can see that we used voicemail to let people know when they next one will be. So we were kind of cutting edge technology for the 90s, if only we had a beeper! I wrote them on a word processor, then cut and paste and just filled in some of the art with pictures of lips or whatever. I would love to try some of the recipes now, I was a pretty shitty recipe writer back then. So many awesome things came out of those potlucks, including Bluestockings Books which is still standing today. It was really the end of an era! Pre-internet activism, where you kinda had to know everyone face to face. There is definitely something valuable in that. I love seeing these because they seem so innocent, even though I felt jaded back then.”