EMPATHY, EDUCATION AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

By Gary Yourofsky

For the first time in history, animal rights activists are facing an era of unprecedented repression by the US and UK governments. With active ALF liberators hard to find, those who publicly support the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) along with former ALF activists have been receiving the brunt of the discriminatory power that these governments routinely wield against social justice activists.

"Terrorists or Freedom Fighters", a recent collection of ALF essays edited by UTEP philosophy professor Steve Best has ignited debate about the nonviolent liberation and arson tactics of the ALF, and the violent threats of injury or death aimed at those who directly abuse animals put forth by The Animal Rights Militia (ARM), Revolutionary Cells, Justice Department and Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a California trauma surgeon who espoused violent views to Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes in November '05.

The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works conducted a McCarthy-esque hearing on May 18, 2005 , about Dr. Best and other activists - including me - because of our outspoken support of the ALF. On August 24, 2005 , the British Home Office (BHO) permanently banned the Texas professor from entering the UK because of the "intellectual justification" he routinely gives on behalf of the ALF. Former ALF liberator Rod Coronado and Animal Defense League of LA activists Vlasak and Pamelyn Ferdin were banned by the BHO in '04.

Most people are unaware of this, but the great pacifist Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, "I am only effective as long as there is a shadow on White America of a black man standing behind me with a Molotov cocktail." King's position on arson - not just the fire of the incendiary Molotov cocktail - might surprise most people as well. He believed arson was a nonviolent act because buildings - made of brick, wood, metal or some other insentient material - were incapable of feeling pain.

When it came to activists engaging in violence or people doing nothing at all, King and the other great pacifist Mohandas Gandhi both chose violence. Please do not misinterpret what they meant. King and Gandhi were the utmost pacifists and firmly believed in nonviolent activism. However, both iterated time and again that something (violence) would be better than nothing (apathy).

I feel the same way. Without question, I prefer nonviolent activism like classroom presentations, tabling events, leafleting, sign-carrying protests, op-ed pieces, undercover investigations and civil disobedience. It takes a wider array of tactics, however, to achieve substantive change. Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over apathy any day of the week.

Radical tactics have been righteously implemented throughout history to produce immediate results. The Allied Forces violently broke down the gates of Hitler's death camps, killing Nazis in the process, and forever destroying the gas chambers of Buchenwald and Auschwitz . When the North took up arms and violently killed thousands of Southern racists, those justifiable homicides committed on behalf of black slaves were unchallengeable. Gandhi achieved Indian independence even though many Indians killed British soldiers, rioted in the streets and routinely set fires. The Black Panthers tactics of intimidation and Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" philosophy did not hinder the civil rights movement or the exaltation of Dr. King. In fact, when asked to stop X's radicalism, King replied, "Don't ask me to stop Malcolm X. Malcolm X will stop when racism stops!"

As one of the nation's most outspoken animal rights activists, I take the same approach. When a meat-eater or news reporter whines, "The ALF breaks laws and burns buildings and the ARM supports violence," I simply reply, "The ALF and ARM will stop when the abuse and murder of animals stops!"

Those who actively seek to end injustices should always be praised, not vilified. Gandhi once said, "There have been murderers and tyrants, and at times they have seemed invincible. But in the end they always fall. Always!" Arsons, liberations, or acts of intimidation and justifiable homicide cannot impede the animal rights movement because nothing can hinder the truthful, benevolent push to liberate animals from their human captors.

When the ALF liberates animals and makes an immediate difference in their lives, I am not sure how any rational individual does not side with the ALF. Should we instead wait for politicians and society to gradually find time to fit animals into their greedy, selfish agendas? In the same way Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad liberated blacks by stealing the "property" of whites, the ALF liberates animals by stealing the "property" of furriers and vivisectionists.

Furthermore, during the hundreds of ALF arsons over the last 30 years, no human has ever been injured or killed. This spotless record of economic sabotage is not accidental either. Members of the ALF adhere to a strict code of nonviolence, and have risked their freedom - harming no one in the process - for the animals who have no freedom.

Tens of thousands of foxes and mink have been given the chance to avoid anal electrocution and neck-breaking by the reprobates who provide skin to the fur industry, while dogs and mice have been liberated from sick, vicious experimenters and placed in loving homes.

However, since violence is an essential part of activism, even if an abuser of animals perished during a fire or other form of direct action, I would unequivocally support that, too. Empathy is not for those who enslave and kill animals, the guilty victimizers. Empathy is for innocent victims, the animals.

Animal rights is not about being nonviolent to humans anyway, even though nearly every activist embraces a nonviolence-to-human-ethic. Animal rights is about freeing animals from violent, avaricious, heartless thugs who profit off of animal misery and murder.

It is important to remember that the animal rights movement has been completely nonviolent since its inception yet people still view us with derision. Luminaries, oracles and contemporaries like Pythagoras, Gandhi, Schweitzer, Tolstoy, Plutarch, da Vinci, Dick Gregory, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Alice Walker, Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez have espoused the compassionate message of animal rights. Animals still remain enslaved nations killed by the billion. If peacefully protesting and educating the masses were the sole factors for compassionate change, animals would have been freed by now. Sadly, love does not always conquer hate. Reason does not solely conquer ignorance, or flat-out stupidity. Nonviolent protest does not always conquer institutionalized violence.

Those who truly care about animal rights must begin to view all animals as family members. We should try and reason with those who enslave and kill animals in order to liberate our nonhuman family. But that process alone cannot produce freedom. The time has come to forcibly free our family members from their captors, even if that means injuring or killing someone in the process. It is not violent to physically stop someone from killing someone else. Using force to stop abuse or murder is a noble, justifiable act of vicarious self-defense.

Liberations, arsons or violence only evoke negative reactions because very few people - activists included - truly view cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, mice and deer as family. Until everyone accepts that animals deserve the same treatment as our mothers and fathers, the killing of animals will not cease, and people will continue to condemn activists, instead of abusers.

Once animals are viewed as family, it becomes appropriate to do whatever it takes to gain their freedom and stop their torture. Society disagrees with liberations, arsons or violence on behalf of animals because no one thinks animals are worthy of such generosity. I've often said that if I liberated children from a pornography ring in 1997, I would have been carried down the streets of Detroit as thousands cheered in support. Instead, I liberated 1,542 mink from an animal concentration fur camp, spent 77 days in maximum security and was branded a terrorist.

If mentally-retarded children were in tiny cages at the National Institutes of Health waiting to be mutilated, blinded, burnt and killed by a vivisectionist, the tactics of the ALF and ARM would be unassailable. If black people were being hung upside down at a slaughterhouse as someone sliced their throats and dismembered their bodies, society would embrace the tactics of the ALF and the Revolutionary Cells. If our mothers and sisters were traipsing through the woods as someone fired an arrow or a bullet destined for their chest, then we would all give thanks to the compassionate revolutionaries who call themselves ALF and Justice Department activists. If you honestly placed yourself in any animals' position, anything would be acceptable to prevent your torture, enslavement and eventual murder.

This piece is not a call to abandon nonviolent activism and solely take up arms. The violent actions of past social justice movements were carried out by only a few, just like the violent actions of the animal rights movement that will one day be carried out by only a few.

Just to make everyone aware of my activism, in the late '90s, I was arrested 13 times for civil disobedience and direct action, including the ALF liberation of 1,542 mink from the Eberts Fur Farm in Blenheim , Ontario . As of 2006, I've given 956 lectures about ethical veganism in 130 schools in 27 states to more than 30,000 carnivorous students because I believe veganism and education are the most effective forms of activism. I have yet to engage in violence but believe violence has its place alongside peaceful education and nonviolent protest. It is the amalgam of these methods that will result in the eventual freedom of animals.