{editor’s note: We are aware UA is mentioned in this article and will address this issue as well as another not mentioned here in the coming days}
Anonymous submission:
Not long ago, a horse that had been locked up in an Atlanta police station was released into the city to fend for themselves. Today I check news from around the world to read that the Atlanta Police Department’s recruitment meeting was sabotaged by pulling a fire alarm AND releasing 300 crickets.
But this is not exclusive to the Atlanta forest struggle. Just this year, the animal rights organisation Viva! UK came under fire for parading a purchased whole pig dead body around London to make the point that animal murder is not OK. Just last week I saw the announcement of National Animal Rights Day 2024, where dozens of groups around the world will organise activists to stand in the centre of their city holding dead bodies in a macabre show to discourage people from eating animals.
These are not made up situations and we need to do much better. As anarchists, anti imperialists and anti capitalists, we cannot buy into the grossly hierarchical notion that animals are props we can use to shock the public, any more than we can buy into the notion that animals are tools to sabotage or inconvenience our enemy.
The mistreatment of dogs and horses (and other animals) by the police is a great injustice that we should be addressing, but releasing a domesecrated animal into a city is irresponsible, not cute and liberating. Those who released crickets in the hotel signed as “the horde of locusts that will destroy you”. You’re not a horde of locusts, in fact you see insects as disposable tools you can condemn to die to make a point.
Until the wild is wild again and we stop the ongoing abuse that is domestication, we have a responsibility to all the animals around us. Not only must we fight for their freedom by any means necessary, but we must understand what that freedom means and make the sacrifices necessary to ensure their safety and well-being.
When we analyse the hierarchy imposed by speciesism, lack of consent is the main explanation for the blatant injustice that is the subjugation of animals for food, entertainment, experimentation or any other use. The excuse that corpses are buried or cremated after being used as shock props does not change the fact that they are completely incapable of consenting to being used as shock props.
Finally, I cannot in good faith send this statement without acknowledging that I am enormously disappointed that platforms such as Scenes from the Atlanta Forest and Unoffensive Animal are platforming these kinds of actions. Do better, because your promotion of animal use only means more animal use.
When I die, you must use my entrails to stink up the ventilation systems of the CEO of RWE, the owners of Faccenda and any police station you like, and I hope you dry my bones and use them as ammunition to smash as many butcher’s shops as possible with a catapult. That is consent. The animals have not given you theirs.
Dismantle your speciesist hierarchy to fight a system that is stronger when you hold oppressive thoughts.
For anarchy, for antispeciesism.
An anarchist.
