ANDY STEPANIAN - THE INTERVIEW
By Claudette Vaughan

This interview took a year to reach us but finally it arrived. We can’t stress enough how important it is to support prisoners of conscience – how much a letter or card means when one is incarnated. Drop them a line. An update of the other SHAC addresses are given at the end of this interview.

Andy Stepanian #26399-050
FCI Butner Medium II
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 1500
Butner, NC 27509

Sentence: 3 years

Visit Andy's support website at: www.AndyStepanian.com

What’s your daily routine like in prison Andy?

I, like most other inmates have a job during the day. I sweep and keep the compound clean of litter, I break down cardboard boxes in attempts to recycle them, and I take out trash, as well as odd jobs during the day. I run five miles every evening and I have been working a great deal on writing for three projects I intend on publishing. Every night I read letters from supporters, and I must say support in the way of letters and well wishes has been astounding. Please accept my most heartfelt thanks for letters, books or well wishes and if you have yet to receive a letter from me please know that I am trying to write to everyone, and you are in my thoughts every day. I owe so much of who I am to people like you. You help me keep hope, pride, and a positive outlook even in the grimmest of circumstances.

Let’s talk about that book you’ve been working on…

Well, as I mentioned I am working on three projects. I had no idea it was going to turn out this way, but as my ideas coalesced I realized I had far too many concepts to include in one work. If I was to combine the ideas into one work the thoughts that I would hope to convey would seem jumbled to readers and not have the desired impact. This is why they have become three separate projects. With that said, all of my efforts are now in a stage of mass regurgitation for the first of three projects. I am writing more than I intend on finishing with and I will go back and streamline the project later. The project will most likely be entitled The Blueprint. It has no concrete release date yet as it is still a work in progress, but you can keep up-to-date with its release by visiting http://AndyStepanian.com

It is fiction, but even as fiction it’s a collage of situations with roots in real life events. The story follows a character named Keagan from a bright-eyed childhood, through years of passionate teenage activism and into an eventuality of federal prison in his young adulthood. Keagan is charged as a “terrorist” not for substantive events or crimes, but rather for his conceptional knowledge of the current socio-economic political game. Keagan comes to this realization in his last days of freedom and intends on writing a book, partly as catharsis and partly as revenge. “The Blueprint” is that book and it is scrawled on napkins by Keagan while in solitary maximum custody and becomes what he calls a ‘surgical map of the Achilles’ heel to capitalism.’

It is part memoir and part strategic dialectic. What is set forth in a way of tactics applies not only to the toppling of the animal industry but also as a way to subdue the profit motives behind military conflict and intern stop wars. Keagan explains while looking at his ‘napkin diaries’…

I have already received offers from a few small publishing houses, and that was without making an effort to look. I am keeping all avenues open and I am currently building bridges within the literary world. I am exceptionally grateful to those who have already made me offers. Ultimately I am going to make my choice based on how much I can saturate the public with the message and not how much money I can get out of a contract.

Is your book based upon your experiences with HLS?

Hmmm, well I’ll say that every piece of writing has been plagiarized and that every bit of art is in some way inspired by something else. I see this book as a collage of sorts, and when at a loss for words I write from experience. It is fiction and needs to stay that way for myriad reasons, but parallels to real life could be drawn by the discerning reader.

Keagan’s group of friends are arrested and imprisoned for their alleged economic disruption of an animal testing laboratory called “Alconbury Contract Tests”(draw from that what you will), but the focus is less on the company and more on the potential of their campaigning tactics. Their tactical model is applicable to derailing the funds and momentum behind the west’s drum roll for war in the Middle East, and Keagan watches as their tactics leave their hands and begin to change foreign policy and ultimately the future of the world. There is tactical truth in the words of the book, but it’s woven amidst hopeless romanticism, silly plays on words, and trips through a suburban New York underground music culture. It’s more fiction than fact, it’s slower to write, but I’m having a lot of fun doing it that way.

What is your involvement in the US underground music scene. It’s something that’s important but has not been taken up in a big way with other forms of animal activism – what are your thoughts?

I grew up in the suburbs of Long Island – New York, about 25 miles out of New York City. The city has always been bustling with activity of some sort or another, especially with music and the arts. Long Island from 1992 –2000ish had a booming underground all ages music scene. I came in contact with it in roughly 1994. I was in high school and already active in a school environmental group and I was already a vegetarian.

I went to my first show at the local YMCA and was taken aback. I had no idea there was like-minded individuals that were my peers and liked fast music as I did. Some shared the same hobbies that I had – art, surfing, etc. I quickly felt at home with this scene and began playing an active role in its growth. I helped promote all ages shows. I silk screened merchandise. I helped upstart bands find agents or logistical help. I helped touring bands from other countries find places to stay and shows that they could hop on when other gigs were cancelled. I loved to help. Most importantly my peers were gracious enough to help me find a space within the shows for activism efforts I was helping to organize. People on the way in the door would get fliers for an upcoming protest, or a member of our affinity would get on stage before a headlining act and talk about vivisection, or the benefits of a vegan diet, the horror of the fur trade, or ask for folks to come and cook food the next morning for the local “Food Not Bombs” chapters who may have been short handed that week. There were times when shows and demonstrations were often coordinated with one another. I remember one such day when a Silent Majority show with over 800 people in attendance was across the street from an independent fur retailer. Try getting 800 people to your local fur shop any other way!

At some point I began to see that music is a tremendous medium to deliver a message by. It’s not the only medium, but sometimes can unintentionally take away from the seriousness of your issue. Still, more often than not it is fed directly to a passionate and often liberal audience who may be more inclined to act than the next. This led to my continued involvement with music culture and activism all the way up until my freedom was lost, but in the years after 2001 there was an outside element that came into play. Shows were becoming increasingly sponsored by corporations, or funded and invested by outside parties, or even changing names from “shows” to “productions” or “concerts”. Part of the majesty was lost in this, and much of the message went out with it. I too moved up in the game by leaving Long Island to travel all summer with the vans warped tour and its “producers” in hopes to bring an activist message once a day to 20,000 youth, or by leaving my local affinity groups for contract work at People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals where again the focus was to use music, musicians, touring and music culture as a medium for an animal rights message. I got to see the inception of our own department within PeTA’s education department (PeTA2.com) and watch our small group there grow into a shining gem of animal advocacy. I stayed only a year (2003) but since then PeTA2.com has become one of PeTA’s most successful outreach programs to date, reaching more than 3 million young people, and retaining over 1 million youth on PeTA-2 ‘street team”. Much of this is owed to Pulin Modi and Jason Balis who through all the project’s ups and downs stood faithfully by it. If you ever cross paths with them, give them each a pat on the back.

What would you like to say to all of the people who have written to you thus far?

I would like to say, I love you. Seriously, you all have such a special place in my heart. The amount of well-wishers and notes of support that have been given to me at prison mail call have been astounding. It was once said that “the greatness of a movement can be seen in the way it treats its prisoners”. If that is true then we are clearly the greatest movement and only so because of people like you. But please remember to keep active. The best prisoner support that any of us can receive is seeing all the institutions that abuse animals and break our hearts fall together. When I got a letter saying that a local slaughterhouse closed, or that the national spending on vivisection has decreased by 3 billion dollars in the past 3 years, I smile wider than any other letter allows me to. Prisoners need to see that the cause did not come to prison with them, that it is out there alive and kicked with steel toed boots. Again, I love you, and if you have not received at least one letter from me please know that you will get one and I will keep trying. I love you all.

What are your dreams, ideals, hopes and thoughts for the future of animal liberation?

Whew, that was a loaded question. Animal liberation to me is part of a totality of liberation. We were at one time free as were the animals. Without us nature will still harbor cruelty. We as a Movement can never avoid this reality, but without humans there would never be the reality of institutionalized cruelty in the first place.

We live in a commodity culture, one that extends the idea of the commodity onto all living things living and non-living. A sink, a car, a burger, a woman’s body are all viewed as a commodity for sale or used as a means to promote profit. I would hope to see all animal liberationists see their fight for animal liberation as a fight against capitalism. I am not a socialist, a communist, Marxist, Stalinist or any other form of “ist” with the exception of real-ist.

In our reality everything is being assigned a dollar value from the shape of a woman, to a mountain top claim for mining, to a chicken en-route to slaughter. Life itself is being commodified. I certainly know I am not a commodity, and I consider animals as much of the same. As for the future of the Movement, well I hope people will start acting more and talking less. We spend so much time critiquing tactics and methodology or organizations. The animals don’t care about our tactics, our organizations, or our dialectics; they are in cages or having their throats slit, or being taken apart on necropsy tables as we debate in forums. They need to get free. We should morally support every one from litigants, to HSUS, to the most radical factions; anyone doing anything has my love, because the animals need to get free.

How will the Movement move forward do you think?

That’s a very good question. I don’t have any Movement crystal ball, but those of us in the US clearly know that we are in a recession of sorts. Outreach is increasing, and will be with the various media that is becoming available through new technology, but will eventually plateau again. Action, particularly radical action seems to be at an all-time low, but consciousness and awareness to issues of animal, human and earth liberation are at an all-time high. We as a Movement just need to couple the two. In the US and Britain we see a reflex of our Nation’s “war on terror”. Those are synonymous with fear mongering to their own people and includes activists there. My case is in many ways part of all that. They hope to scare you into inaction. We need to stay creative and we need to be active and vigilant all of the time because ultimately the animals have no one else. We are ambassadors to the animals, and we recognize that they need to get free. That part will never change. The Movement will move and it will move forward. This may be on a legislative front, or a civil front, or on a radical front, but it will move.

How are you coping with prison life? Do you have good neighbors in prison?

I am coping. Needless to say I have never done well with confinement. I have been in jail twice before and both times were very hard. This time has been different. I have seen an overview of the tentacles of what in the US we call the Federal Bureau of Prisons. I surrendered earlier than the rest of my defendants and experienced a bunch of custody levels. I was in a detention center similar to a county jail in New York City, then I was in a maximum security penitentiary in Pennsylvania in Pennsylvania, a city jail in Washington, D.C., the hole in a medium security prison in Virginia and lastly the prison I have spent the last year at: FCI Butner. Butner is a medium-high security prison and sees its share of fights, but it is still nothing like prison is depicted on television. On the whole, I am well liked here but I stay reserved and quiet in order to avoid problems before they start. We are locked in our cells while we sleep but we are free to move around a large campus for most of the day and are offered a lot of programs and recreational opportunities. The prison makes an exceptional effort to provide a vegetarian option at every regularly scheduled meal which I see as promising. Ultimately though, prison is still prison and is exceptionally taxing on the soul.

I am very far from home, my family, my fiancée whom I love with all my heart. I went from advocating for caged creatures to becoming one, and it is a lot for me to internalize. The officials here treat me more often than not with dignity, and I have grown to see prison as a pit stop in this race for liberation. I have some good neighbors in here as well, often getting together to discuss politics, or to go running, or working out together.

Are you relatively happy in your circumstances? Are you planning to study while in prison?

No I am not happy with my circumstances. No one in my position should be. I intend on taking my appeal to the highest court if necessary. I will fight to get this charge off my record. My co-defendants and I are in the process of appealing to the third circuit court of appeals right now as I write this. Our legal team is quite happy with the efforts so far and I have been told to expect a reversal on my verdict. However this reversal may not come until after my sentence has already been served, so I am not too impatient. I also don’t know if the government will want to retry my case a second time if the appellate panel grants a motion for mistrial or retrial as opposed to a full reversal. These are all unanswered questions.

I have been studying while in here. I have been working on several topics and I am studying the Paris commune and the understanding of humanity’s cultural breaking point. I am also studying global warming and humanity’s resource allocation. This I hope to apply to my future studies once I am free.

I looked into participating in a correspondence based grad school program but it not only costs too much, it also requires being incarcerated one year longer than I am already serving – so I have decided to wait. I also have been in contact with a professor I hold very dear to my heart, Professor Scott Carlin of Long Island University. He and I intend on working on environmental projects when I return home and I hope he will help me shape my studies from this point forward.

What are your politics Andy?

Wow! I could write a dissertation in response to that or just say “how dare you!” I won’t be long-winded though!!

I believe in freedom, I believe in something I saw in the world as a child and watched as the world slowly tried to erode it in all of the world’s social elements. I believe that every single one of us had this as a child. I believe that it’s not a uniquely human characteristic to experience this. I once saw a fox sit atop a rock overlooking a sunset. He watched that sunset in all its majesty, the very same way I did. Love is a feeling that we all share and I want to see a whole lot more of it in this life. We don’t need to look further than our televisions to see that there is a serious love deficit in this world right now; it manifests itself as a wanton disregard for animal life, or as the carpet bombing of an Iraqi neighborhood, or as rape. I believe in love and liberation – I’m not sure if that is even political. I believe in liberation.

Jacob Conroy #93501-011
FCI Victorville Medium I
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 5300
Adelanto, CA 92301

Sentence: 4 years
Visit Jake's support website at: www.SupportJake.org

Darius Fulmer

Sentence: 1 year, 1 day

Update: Dari was released from prison on September 28, 2007!

Lauren Gazzola #93497-011
FCI Danbury
Federal Correctional Institution
Route #37
Danbury, CT 06811

Sentence: 4 years, 4 months
Visit Lauren's support website at: www.SupportLauren.com

Joshua Harper #29429-086
FCI Sheridan
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. Box 5000
Sheridan, OR 97378

Sentence: 3 years
Visit Josh's support website at: www.JoshHarper.org

Kevin Kjonaas #93502-011
FCI Sandstone
P.O. Box 1000
Sandstone, MN 55072

Sentence: 6 years
Visit Kevin's support website at: www.SupportKevin.com