Defend Direct Action
January, France.
received anonymously via email:
“We took action in a hen breeding place in France. We rescued five young hens so that they could avoid a short life of exploitation before being slaughtered. These lucky people are now far away from this speciesist farm and will hopefully live a long life full of joy with other species friends.
Liberate, sabotage, block, destroy, let’s end this oppressive system!”
This week in The Frontlines we would like to talk about CAFT (Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade), which restarted in November 2020 making a huge dent against the fur industry.
Since its inception, CAFT has played their part to force fur-free policies on Saint Laurent, Oscar de la Renta, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Alice + Olivia, and Monique Lhuillier. Alice + Olivia only lasted for 11 days when CAFT started targetting them when large nonprofits had been at it for the past ten years.
Their secret? Good old decentralised pressure campaigning and some strategic thinking.
CAFT insists that one of their key strategies is their decentralised campaign model. Instead of dictating, restricting or controlling what independent local groups decide to do, they aim to provide support, information and coordination. Any local group can organise against the target and the only agreed notion is the importance of consistent and focused action.
Secondly, they do not shy away from expanding their target pool. When a company is resistant to activist pressure, they will target secondary and tertiary businesses associated with the fur producing company. No one is safe; subsidiaries, investors and even board members are acceptable targets, and by destroying the company’s ability to do business in peace they manage to get the targetted company to drop fur from their portfolio.
For that reason, there have been many different and colourful actions to put pressure on the fur trade. From peaceful leafletting and demonstrations outside the store to in-store disruptions, writing messages in fake blood, attaching alarms to helium balloons to be released inside the shop and even noise demos in front of managers and corporate executives’ homes, local groups take initiative and decide by themselves what the best course of action is.
CAFT insists on a couple of important points, the necessity of security culture and the zero-tolerance policy against those talking to the cops, but also that they believe all their campaigns are 100% winnable using legal methods.
CAFT’s current campaign is against Moncler group (handy little store locator link just below):
https://www.moncler.com/en-gb/storelocator/
And they have recently expanded their target to Stone Island, being a subsidiary of Moncler. (also handy store locator below:)
https://www.stoneisland.com/experience/en/the-brand/stores/
They are asking for you to start a local group and put pressure on the business however you think is best, or if it already exists, to join your local group and take action!
You can find out more about them or donate to their campaign on monclerkillsfoxes.com, and you can find them on Facebook at Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade https://www.facebook.com/caftusa or on Instagram at @CAFTUSA.
So now you know our political background and intentions (if you don’t check out Part 1!), and it is time to talk about what we do.
Unoffensive serves as a platform for a multitude of things, and one of them is reporting on animal liberation direct action from around the world. We receive anonymous reports submitted via secure means and publish them on the platform, allowing those taking action to explain what, how and why they took action whilst remaining anonymous. This means that individuals and groups can remain safer whilst having the opportunity to reach out to wider audiences and express themselves however they want.
We also try to help as a prisoner support hub. This translates in a few different ways. We collect (and try to keep up to date) addresses for those locked up in prison, so people can write letters. We give updates about their current situation, and we try and send money for their commissary or legal fees as much as we are able to.
But prisoner support isn’t just about prisoners! We also try to publicise court cases and sentencing of activists that have not ended up in prison, as well as help fundraising or sending money for their legal fees. This helps create a culture of solidarity, but also it is useful as a “sentencing comparison” so folks understand previous sentencing attached to actions and are able to weigh up the risk-reward factor.
Lastly, we try to also be an education hub. Be it by talking about history, or about anarchist concepts, or even about security and technology, if folks that follow us learn something new that will further expand their knowledge and help them keep fighting, that is our biggest and most important objective.
Now that you know what we do and who we are you should be able to paint an image of what Unoffensive is. In a future post, we will cover what we do not do.
Until then;
SEE YOU IN THE NEXT RIOT!
Porgreg was a farm in Canada set up in the 80s that was able to exploit up to 3500 pigs at any one time. In December 2019, a group of twelve activists decided to occupy the farm, demanding that the conditions of the pigs be publicised. What they found inside was nightmarish. The farrowing crates were littered with dead and decomposing piglets. The fattening pens, swimming pools of shit and piss. Pigs had nowhere to be warm, or dry, and their food simply sunk into the puddle of their waste.
The group of activists occupied the farm for six hours, asking the press to come in and film the conditions of the place. The police did not care and arrested all, charging them with breaking and entering and impeding a police officer.
After the action, the footage obtained was publicly released, causing a huge ripple effect. MAPAQ (the Ministry of Agriculture in Quebec), had never once inspected the Progreg farm in their forty years of existence. They visited the farm just a week after the occupation for the first time since the farm had opened.
Investors lost trust and pulled out. Meanwhile, retailers decided they were no longer going to buy pigs that were reared at the farm.
During the action’s trial in October 2021, which lasted seven days, the farmer explained; “we can no longer profit from farming pigs and had to close down”.
The activists will receive their verdict (and possible sentencing) on the 24th of February. We will make sure to cover what the results are.
SOLIDARITY!
During the holidays a lot of new people found us on the internet and we believe there is a need to explain who we are and what we do. We have written a few short posts that will help new people know what we are up to and why we are here!
Unoffensive Animal started a little over five years ago as a platform to breach the gap between direct action for animal liberation and the fast-growing number of activists using social media. We felt there was a need to collect reports from the Animal Liberation Front and other groups and show them to folks who were organising above ground actions on social media but maybe were unaware of a whole other world outside of Facebook!
We set off with two objectives. To radicalise (that is, to bring it back to the roots) animal liberation activists by exposing them to direct action news and anarchist concepts, whilst putting effort into elevating animal liberation concepts in the anarchist discourse that we felt was hugely missing.
So we are anarchists (shock horror, we believe that the current system does not allow anyone to be free) and anticapitalists, we firmly believe in animal liberation as part of a much broader struggle for the betterment of our societies and of the earth we inhabit and we think that direct action is a very good tool to use in order to fight back against oppression.
We believe in total prison abolition and in the creation of systems that allow for conflict resolution and restorative justice. No one is free until all are free!
So you can see Unoffensive Animal for what we truly are, an unapologetically radical press and media platform, heavily dependent on the information submitted by people who read us that is trying to add a little dressing to the salad that is total liberation.
In future instalments, we will explain how we operate and how people can get involved, but until then;
SEE YOU IN THE NEXT RIOT!
January, Europe.
via NAALPO:
“NEW YEAR” CELEBRATED IN OUR WAY: 10 PIGS LIBERATED FROM A FARM LAST NIGHT (EUROPE)! WHAT DO WE WANT FOR 2022 ? THE ADVENT OF A REAL REVOLUTIONARY ANTI-SPECIESIST STRUGGLE !
LE “NOUVEL AN” CÉLÉBRÉ À NOTRE FAÇON : 10 COCHONS LIBÉRÉS D’UN ÉLEVAGE LA NUIT DERNIÈRE (EUROPE) ! CE QUE NOUS VOULONS POUR 2022 ? L’AVÈNEMENT D’UNE VRAIE LUTTE ANTISPÉCISTE RÉVOLUTIONNAIRE !
While everyone was busy celebrating the new year, some comrades of the collective broke into a farm last night to free 10 pigs for which private sanctuaries had been found beforehand.
For obvious security reasons, we will not mention any indication of the target location, nor its geographical situation. These details are not important anyway, because we have a systemic, materialist, and internationalist approach of speciesism. This action took place somewhere in Europe, that’s all we can tell you.
Entering these places – slaughterhouses, farms and laboratories – means daring to face the reality and to get rid of abstract speeches. Our oppressed comrades are in front of us and we suddenly have the responsibility to make a decision that can change their lives.
We need to overcome the failure of the “animalist movement” that complies with reformism, to attack the structures of the speciesist domination and to act concretely in solidarity with our exploited comrades.
Last night, with our desire of action, our rage, and our determination, we broke into a farm that we had already spotted several months ago in order to join our words with actions.
The symbols and structures of the speciesist domination are everywhere if we dare leading concrete actions linked to our ideas and values of liberation, our complicities, our knowledge, and our ingenuity in strategy.
This is the perspective of our collective that supports a revolutionary antispeciesism based on direct action and built with the oppressed animals. We want to get rid of the civilisational, paternalistic, and bourgeois animalist movement supported by most of animal rights activists and associations.”
1st January, Stuttgart Germany
received anonymously via email:
“Exactly while others caused senseless noise and dirt and animals thereby got killed and disturbed, we ended the danger for many rats by 22 abnormal poisoning murder stations to die miserably!
Around the city hall and the adjacent rich quarter no rat will die anymore while people are happily walking around and buying fur or meat and milk.
Fuck your speciesism!
#totalliberation”
2021, Czech Republic
received anonymously via email:
“Darkness has fallen down. I can hear only my own breath and steps in a muddy field. It is a couple minutes before the action. The spotter gives us a green light. We are coming closer to the place of torture. The closer we get, the heavier the odor gets.
Last look back and we are inside the hall. Routine is still the same. Take the animals and get them out, seeing what they had to live through in between those concrete walls soaked by the smell of despair. A screenplay for the action is identical, but the feelings are a little different, mixed and always depressive. Dead bodies lying on the floor. Sorrowful looks of mutilated animal beings with no space to move around, spread their wings, no chance to feel fresh air and a solid ground beneath their feet. Even though the only thing separating them from freedom is fucking door and fence. We are on our way out, carrying a few saved lives. Feelings are still depressive, but slightly better because of the survivors.
Last year we managed to liberate 190 animals from factory farms and 38 from laboratories.”
1st January, Sweden.
received anonymously via email:
“FOR THE WOLVES – A FIRE BURNS IN THE SWEDISH FOREST! HUNTING HIGH SCHOOL VANDALIZED! HUNTING TOWERS SABOTAGED!
Hunters in so-called Sweden began this year with the mass murder of wolves. The snow is stained with blood. SCUM! Unfortunately we were unable to prevent the wolf slaughter, this time. Yet ALF went out into the woods. On the first day of the year we vandalized and sabotaged, against the hunters. We caused financial damage to a hunting high school! Vile hunters should not teach children to kill nonhuman animals. We destroyed five hunting towers! Death monuments do not belong in the wild. Hunting is murder! We lit a, fitting, fire in the night! In honor of the wolves killed in the forests. To show our anger.
We will never stop fighting hunting, saving lifes.
FCK HUNT!
UNTIL EVERYONE IS FREE!
ALF”
received anonymously via email (translation):
ENGLISH:
31st December, Argentina.
“The human species has a disgusting capability to exploit and destroy all life forms.
Insects are no exception and that is why they exploit bees in a very peculiar way; they kidnap the queen and from her, they build a new hive. They steal their honey, made through strenuous labour collecting pollen from flowers. When they steal their honey they make the bees work overtime until they die of exhaustion.
Whilst bees are pollinators, those bees are not endemic and were imported from Africa. For that reason and being aware of the very little biodiversity left on the planet, honey bees mean competition for native pollinators.
In one of our walks, we walk by multiple hives of exploited honey bees, living in one of the only areas around with actual flora and fauna endemic to the region.
We did not doubt and took as many bees as we could without harming them and without being harmed, to leave them somewhere else where they will not be exploited, will live in harmony and will not damage the biodiversity. We also took multiple boxes used to attract bees and to build new hives.
For animal liberation, and for the liberation of nature from human domination.
Animal and Earth Liberation Front.”
SPANISH:
31 Diciembre, Argentina.
“La especie humana tiene la macabra capacidad de explotar, rebajar, destruir, todas las formas de vida.
Los insectos no son la excepción, por eso explotan abejas de una manera peculiar, secuestran una abeja reina, y a partir de ello genera un nuevo enjambre, les roban su miel, que producen en base al arduo trabajo de recolectar polen de las flores. Al robarles la miel, genera que las abejas tengan que trabajar constantemente hasta su colapso vital. Si bien las abejas polinizan las flores, estas abejas son de origen africano, por lo que, con la poca biodiversidad que queda en el planeta, las abajas pueden suponer una competencia para otrxs polinizadores nativxs.
En uno de nuestros paseos, nos cruzamos con muchos enjambres de abejas explotadas, las cuales estaban en una de las pocas zonas con flora y fauna nativa de la region.
No dudamos en usar nuestro ingenio, para llevarnos toda las abejas que pudimos sin lastimarlas y sin salir lastimadxs nosotrxs, para dejarlas en algún lugar donde no sean explotadas, puedan vivir bien, y no perjudiquen a su entorno. También nos llevamos varias cajas que utilizan para atraer abejas y construir nuevos enjambres.
Por la liberación animal y liberación de la naturaleza del nauseabundo dominio de la humanidad.
Frente de liberación animal y de la tierra”