- Last week, a top FBI official cited violence by environmental
and animal rights extremists as "one of today's most serious domestic
terrorism threats." Down the road from Capitol Hill, People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals released the results of an 11-month undercover
investigation into a primate laboratory in Vienna, Va., run by Covance,
Inc. Between the Covance employees who strike, choke, slam and curse at
terrified monkeys and the people who illegally liberate similarly situated
animals, who is more violent (watch the footage at www.covancecruelty.com
and decide for yourself)?
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- This week the government of Brazil released disturbing
figures showing that the Amazon rain forest is being destroyed at the rate
of nine football fields every minute. The plants and animals that comprise
more than 30 percent of the Earth's total biodiversity are being evicted
to make room for ranchers and herds of cattle. How will we explain to our
grandchildren that we traded environmental diversity for bacon double cheeseburgers
and Big Macs?
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- Closer to home, George W. Bush opened up 58.5 million
acres of pristine national forest land to vested interests who want to
transect those forests with roads so they can drive around in search of
oil. In addition, House Republicans are preparing to eviscerate the Endangered
Species Act.
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- Covance, loggers, factory farmers and members of our
own government are terrorizing the Earth and its nonhuman animal inhabitants.
If these people did a better job of safeguarding our world, groups like
the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front would be less
inclined to take the law into their own hands. Vested interests and the
politicians who represent them have no one but themselves to blame for
desperate activists taking desperate measures.
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- Fomenting violence
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- The fact that activists are resorting to criminal behavior
does not surprise me. John F. Kennedy said it best -- "Those who make
nonviolent revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
For years, animal and environmental organizations have begged, pleaded,
sued and attempted to reason with industries that exploit the Earth and
its inhabitants. These struggles have proven one thing: Capitalism does
not have a functioning conscience. Apparently neither do some politicians.
Reason and compassion are no match for greed and free trade. Activists
that inflict serious financial damage are communicating with vested interests
in the only language they understand: the bottom line.
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- It is a sad statement that criminal activity is needed
to get these people's attention. No one wants to fight like that. These
people are only doing what any observer of history could have predicted:
They are adopting lawless behavior because they feel they have no other
choice. I suspect that groups like ALF and ELF would love nothing more
than to refrain from engaging in illegal activity. They reluctantly embrace
these tactics as a last resort because "traditional" avenues
of social change have failed.
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- It is also regrettable that activists who do not engage
in illegal activities have become targets of domestic terrorism investigations.
Several months ago I learned that law enforcement officers were stealing
my garbage. I have been photographed and videotaped by law enforcement
officials at legitimate educational events. This landfill subterfuge and
video surveillance is due to my vocal opposition to animal research following
the break-in at Spence Labs. Such are the consequences of exercising my
First Amendment rights in post-Sept. 11 America. My opinions may be unpopular,
but as an American I have every right to express them. The wide net that
federal law enforcement officials have cast following the break-in at Spence
should frighten anyone who values the civil liberties that this country
was founded upon.
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- Feeling safer?
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- Frankly, the notion that animal rights activists are
"violent terrorists" would be laughable if the magnitude and
ubiquity of animal suffering today was not so heartbreaking. More than
1 million animals are killed in the United States every hour for food.
That comes to 10 billion animals per year. The animals' lives are marked
by abject misery, and they are slaughtered in unspeakably profane ways.
Millions more are killed in hideous experiments, hunted and slaughtered
for their fur. It is sublimely perverse that by openly sharing my ethic
of compassion, I could be considered a suspect of terrorism. My work with
animal rights and other social justice movements aims to save life, not
to indiscriminately destroy it -- which is what real terrorists do.
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- I only can assume that the FBI now knows my dirty, and
for that matter, smelly secret. My garbage has undoubtedly provided law
enforcement with prima facie evidence that I consume my fair share of veggie
burgers and soy milk, and I have several cats that make dutiful and regular
deposits to their litter boxes.
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- Do you feel safer knowing that federal law enforcement
resources are being spent sorting through my discarded soy-milk containers
and cat litter? I know I don't.
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- - Reach Leanna Stormont, a recent University of Iowa
law graduate and former president of the Iowa Law Student Animal League
Defense Fund, at leana stormont@aol.com.
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- Copyright 1999-2004 Iowa City Press-Citizen
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- http://www.presscitizen.com/apps/
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