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;
As you might’ve read, we have been trying to raise enough funds to cover the fines to a comrade in Sweden who was sentenced after being charged with criminal damage and theft. We are very happy to announce that thanks to the incredible generosity of people, those fines have been paid in full and the person will not have to take on a loan to cover costs. We are immensely grateful to all that donated, shared and showed solidarity one way or another. Thank you!
Heading into the new year we would like to create a good “emergency” fund that can be used for situations like this. It is difficult for us to get it done because expenses are constant and because folks (be it prisoners, campaign groups or people’s sentencing) always need support, so we distribute everything that comes in and there is never some extra cash to put aside.
If you like the work we do and think you can spare a few coins, we would be really grateful for your support. In the new year we will break down exactly how we work with money and explain a bit more how we intend to create that emergency fund, but for the time being, any new patreons and or PayPal donations are very welcome. We also have a Monero and a Bitcoin wallet if you prefer to make donations over cryptocurrencies.
We are going to continue with normal schedule, but this is probably the last UA Update of 2021, so we wish all of you a very merry fucking riot. May the new year bring the revolution, and with it, all your intention to not be a show watcher, but an action taker.
We have new merch on our website! For the first time ever we have printed designs on the front of tees and hoodies, for all of you that have asked for years to have something printed other than the back!
NoBonzo did an amazing design against vivisection where rats rebel against the cages and make mini Molotovs out of the lab’s glassware.
Praxis drew a collab design a year ago that was so popular on prints that we decided to make tees and hoodies with.
To try and support comrades, we have also agreed to sell Underground Badger Syndicate and Smash Speciesism t-shirts through our website. We do not take any of those profits and everything goes straight to their campaign work.
As well as the new designs on tees and hoodies we have printed enamel pins and embroided patches with the classic Defend Direct Action logo, so if you want to be a little more subtle, there is something for you!
Of course, loads of art prints are available the website as well as tote bags, face covers and the classic Praise Be, Defend Direct Action and Animal Equals hoodies and tees.
If you want to support unoffensive, you can do that by heading to the website and grabbing yourself some merch. Be aware that we are not a shop, you can choose what donation you would like to give for the stuff and we will parcel and post it to you whenever we are free, but be patient as we do not work on the merch stuff every day!
So it has taken us a little while, but we have managed to restock all sizes of tees and hoodies on all designs. If you’ve been waiting to grab yourself a hoodie or a tee but we did not have your size, you can now find them on the website!
There is an important change to note about our merch. We have changed suppliers and instead of printing on Earth Positive, we are now sourcing our garments through NoSweat, which run a campaign to empower workers cooperatives and fight back against sweatshops.
Although it means we spend a little more per garment, we have not changed our prices whatsoever. It is worth noting that the size chart might change slightly, but we think the change is positive and necessary. For a transitional period, you might receive either Earth Positive or NoSweat.
There shouldn’t be too much of a difference, but if sizing does not feel right after receiving the garment you can reach out to the shop and they can see what would work best. Reach them in our email: unoffensiveshop (at) riseup (dot) net.
As well as hoodies and tees, we have restocked on flags and face coverings, we still have a bunch of beanies and a handful of tote bags and the folks at Wildfire hooked us up with a bunch more magazines so we have both volumes back in stock!
As we need to fundraise after a couple of months of not making much cash, all orders over 50GBP placed for the next seven days will receive a free print. We will choose the print at random. For anyone ordering over 100GBP, we will send a whole set with the four prints included.
Thank you once again for all the support you folks shows towards unoffensive. Just as a reminder, all the profit turned by the collective helps support prisoners as well as supporting folks facing court cases or campaigns that might need some form of support.
It’s been three years since Daesh murdered you. Once again, through the badger cull, we bash yet another cage on your name.
Three years is a very long time, yet we still remember you every fucking day, and we talk about you often. I don’t think you ever realised how much of an impact you had in so many people. Our shared experiences and adventures fighting coal, sticking the middle finger at cops and ensuring animals got to live another day will forever mark a pivotal point in the way I understand the struggle.
Waka understood that duality between radical action and approachability more than anyone else I’ve ever met. His understanding of optics and his way of acting radically whilst taking care of how it was perceived was something we all should strive for.
And that is probably your biggest legacy, and one that we shall try and learn and try and teach. You taught us so much more than you would’ve ever imagined.
So to everyone that might’ve met Waka, and to everybody else that didn’t, remember that you can lorry surf with a newt onesie, so that the kids like it. Apparently if the kids like it, everybody will.
We shall shoplift on your name, we shall bash the fast on your name, and we shall keep fighting for animal liberation and against the destruction of Mother Earth on your memory. You are never forgotten.
PS: To the mountains and via punk mail, I am sure you will end up reading this. Howling at the moon tonight in the hope that one day we can plant a Waka tree together. Be well.
As every year, the badger cull is in full swing in the UK. For anyone who is not aware, the badger cull is a government organised murder of badgers. The government says they do it to reduce bTB in cattle and they allow for the trapping and shooting of badgers as well as the free shooting during the night.
Thousands of people organise to stop the killing of badgers in many different ways, from groups walking footpaths and keeping tabs on badger setts to folks who will sabotage traps or find the shooters to politely ask them to fuck off.
A few years ago, some folks within UA set up a little splinter group called Underground Badger Syndicate that focused on sabotaging the badger cull, like many other groups around the country. Now, a collective in its own right, Underground Badger Syndicate is a direct action group sabotaging the murder of wildlife not only in the UK but throughout Europe. During the badger cull, they spend every day and night sabotaging the cull activities in whatever manner they believe is right, and they always need our support.
We have in the past supported UBS with gear and funding, but certainly, during the cull, they are in constant need of economic support.
For anyone who has not heard from them, you can find their socials here: Instagram: @undergroundbadgersyndicate Facebook: When The Wild Things Come At Night.
They genuinely could do with more followers on their social media, so if you are not following them, get on it! If you are, make a little post and ask folks to have a look at their socials. It doesn’t get any crustier than that!
And if you’re able and can afford it, consider sending them some fuel money. UBS keep saying money is for outrageous stuff like submarines and torpedos. In reality, their funds constantly disappear due to the sheer amount of kilometres they drive every day to stop wildlife from being murdered. www.paypal.me/fuckthecull1
Always defend direct action. FOR THE WILD!
Photo: By Underground Badger Syndicate, posing with a couple of badger cages.
Many of you have been requesting the shop to be back open, so today you can head back to our website and buy some merch again!
Not only the shop is open, but we have a bunch of new stuff you can grab! Tote bags, recycled face snoods, Wildfire Vol. 2 and a bunch of high quality art prints in collaboration with JaviFuego, Praxis, PDuthie and NoBonzo!
There are two new tshirts and hoodies coming in within a month as well as a general restock of all our classics, but for now you can grab youself some stuff before the snoods or flags sell out once again!
Remember that all profits we make from donations, patreons and shop sales help us carry on doing our work, but more importantly support prisoners, folks facing court trial and grassroots campaigns around the world. We are not for profit and we have zero intention to make money out of Unoffensive.
Please be aware that Unoffensive is not a business. For that reason, we do not parcel/send merch straight away. Any orders placed will be posted within 2 weeks of ordering.
If this is tempting to you, pop into the shop here:
We have received a new influx of followers on all our social media platforms so there is a need to reintroduce ourselves once again! Unoffensive Animal is a collective project focused on prisoner and arrest support, on education for activists and on working as a platform for underground actions that are reported anonymously.
We are not the ALF, we do not take part in illegal actions (regardless of how righteous they might be) and we are unable to put you in touch with people that do as the reports we receive are anonymous.
Folks can send reports through our website and should never do so via private message on social media.
Some of you might’ve noticed that our merch shop has been shut for a couple of months. This is due to redistributing responsibilities and finding a manageable workload. We certainly have felt the change considerably and it is only thanks to patrons and some private individuals that we have managed to still send some of the donations we normally do to different prisoners or folks that have been fined during actions.
It would be very useful to hear from you about our merch store. Have you missed it? Would you like to see it re open soon? Do you think we need new designs, or we should reprint our classics?
Unoffensive has always run as a not-for-profit initiative. We are not interested in financial gain and we don’t pay our lives with it. The project has always been an outlet of mutual aid and an attempt to empower activists to keep fighting for animal liberation and for human liberation.
All money made through Unoffensive Animal is used to upkeep the infrastructure necessary to exist on the internet (website, servers, domains and whatnot), it is sent to different prisoners serving time for being involved in the fight for a better world and occasionally (when we can afford it) is put towards projects of active overground groups fighting for animal liberation.
If you like the work we do, you can support us. As well as our patreon where you can donate as little as you want every month, you can make donations over PayPal, and as of today, you are also able to send donations with crypto. We currently accept both Bitcoin and Monero, but would recommend the use of Monero to keep transactions as private as possible.
Here are our links, you can also find them on our website!
Wildfire is back with the recent release of its long anticipated second volume. Brought to you by fellow dirty anarchists with a much needed focus on direct action relating to animal liberation.
Their zine includes an ALF highlight, info on post-liberation vet care, an exclusive interview with huntingleaks.is, another brilliant Black Mask comic by @praxis_vgz and much more.
It is really cool to see people working on projects like this so be sure to support and if you want to contribute with a write up, your art, photos, campaign, whatever them email them at: [email protected]
You can purchase volume I and II from @wildfire.zine on Instagram. Contact them to get an individual copy or buy bulk! Grous can buy bulk from them to help with the next print and to be able to resale and fund their own projects. Drop them a DM and get ordering! We will also be selling both volumes of their zine once the UA shop is up and running again.
Keep reading and keep fighting. Be inspired to make what you’ve read on the page a physical reality.
We received a very elocuent submission writing about the current anti vivisection campaign hitting the UK and about the history of social change as well as specifically the history of anti vivisection. It is a fantastic read and we think you should give it ten minutes of your time!
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“How inspiring it is to the see the wave of activists who have spent more than fifty continuous days so far trying to free the MBR Beagles. Sure, some correct-discourse “anti-speciesist” literature would tell you there are more important fights in the struggle for animal liberation. And clearly my feelings are tinged by a personal history and my love of collective community based spikey grass roots direct action. But this is an historic opportunity for the animal rights movement, and it provides us with a vital component for social change: momentum.
Previously, the hunger strikers, blanket men and women and political prisoners of Long Kesh and Armagh held my inspiration. The example that the prison cell, and the sacrifice of a gaol sentence, can be turned on it´s oppressors and used to heighten political conscience and militant action. When I found myself in a lonely prison cell, I remembered the thinking of such prisoners: “The first priority was escape, after that was education.” With my relatively short sentence escape was unrealistic but education was a privileged use of my time. Where else can people afford the time, lack of distraction and clarity of mind to study in the UK these days anyway? Through the prison library and correspondence from those amazing people that write to animal liberation prisoners I became somewhat evangelistic about education. University followed prison and as for my dissertation I researched the history of the animal rights movement, looking at campaigning against vivisection and in particular the emergence of radical and popular but planned, organised and intelligent direct action. Whilst my research into such a grand and glorious history is finite, I formed the opinion that in the late 1960s and early 1970s a core group of people emerged inspired by third-world and post-colonial liberation struggles. With a mother´s love for the animals and unstoppable desire akin to a revolutionary´s spirit – they were serious about helping those trapped in such unimaginable circuits of torture. Richard Ryder´s Animal Revolution documents elements of this history quite well, but only the original 1989 edition, as the millennial reprint did´t survive censorship.
These activists had an idea about what they wanted to achieve, and they were committed to realising that goal. It was one of the most noblest apologies a human can make to animal – to liberate them from the miserable enslavement humanity has inflicted upon them. This was their goal, and they never lost sight of it. Whether this could happen in our current social media dominated world is a question for the historians. But political activism in the social-media age can appear to be so based on slogans, attention or reaction, devoid of the principled, heart-pulling beliefs and pure empathetic feelings of solidarity that are essential for realising the goal of animal liberation. Remember the war; loose lips sink ships, walls have ears and I´ll keep mum! These activists hit their targets, and they hit their targets hard and often. They gained press coverage, and they engaged with that press coverage on their own terms. They provided a reasoned and rational explanation for their actions, in which their so-called “crimes” against property were contrasted against such an endless catalogue of human-on-animal violence. They used it to get across their message, not appeal for whatever support that floats by with the clouds or build relationships with politicos that would have lead them down the garden path. They were unapologetic and spoke from the heart. And they gained support.
When they first started to get persecuted by the law and imprisoned for defending the voiceless they understood it for the victory it was. Sure, they were imprisoned and there would be smug grins from petty men in grubby suits, but the movement blossomed. They inspired people to take action. They inspired the press to discuss the long ignored issue of institutionalised and systematic murderous scientific curiosity. And they made animal rights and animal liberation a serious, political and social issue once and for good. There will be no going back. It was not the philosophers in the university, or the social media influences with their theories and commentaries. It was the people in the streets, in the fields, getting ridden down by horses and bashed over the head by bumpkin scum, getting pushed around by odious police officers at the docks as babies were being freighted off to their continental death, getting strip searched and spat on in police stations up and down the country, and it was the anonymous, often talked about but rarely seen, moving around and hitting those people where it really fucking hurt. Animal liberationists could no longer be dismissed as hippie cranks or sentimental old women, middle-class liberals, weak, soft or overly sentimental. They were out there in the streets, they were getting arrested and imprisoned and they were disrupting the public consciousness and the official narratives on human-animal societal relationships. They were placing the importance of animal liberation among the most important life decisions a human can make. They were making trouble like all those glorious troubles makers who made history in making the world a better, kinder, more empathetic and intuitive world. They were serious, sincere, credible political activists for a righteous cause – and they became this because of the actions and experiences they were prepared to go through.
As I said it is so inspiring to see the development of this new campaign, and what an incredible thing to see a group of mostly women, presumably from different communities across the country, act so obstinately dignified in the face of scumbag-moron-cops. But be sure for sure, as I write, the state and industry, with a big shit-fingered poke from the police are calculating long winded and carefully planned strategies to eradicate your campaign, not to mention the side attractions of bad press publicity, scandal and gossip which can´t help but draw the attention away from your goal and gain the commentors and rubber-neckers who suck the life out of action like a leach sucks blood from the body. But remember this, you have rightness and justice on your side. Your fight is just, you are in the right and as long as you remember that, then you can withstand anything and you can achieve anything. The grass roots animal rights movement has the power to finish this disgusting business. In fact, it is the only force that can do it.
