Category: Unoffensive Reports

These past few weeks have been intense and wonderful all at the same time. We had a conversation with everybody putting together LoD and published the event online, we gave talks in Germany, Austria and Slovakia and we filmed stuff with Michal Kolesar and his team.

You folks are already aware of our workshop project and know how it works; people contact us wanting to organise a talk, we try and fit it in the calendar and with the help of local humans a venue is found and promotion is done and we spend a few hours talking about whatever the fuck people want to talk about. Pretty simple isn’t it? We put a pot out for donations, but the workshops are ALWAYS free. We tend to always lose money on those talks, but we do not care, education should always be free.

What you might not know is how we are operating in relation to the microdocumentaries we are filming. The idea is simple, we find people that are not normally in the spotlight but that are doing awesome work and we work with them to tell their story via video. The aim is to publish one every six weeks, but we will see how it actually develops. At the moment we have two episodes of the series that we are working on, one of Michal Kolesar and his team and another one on Kent Animal Defenders. We do not know when we will be able to start releasing the project, but we are putting a lot of effort into creating something that is educational and inspiring, so others feel empowered to also take action whilst learning from folks who are at it already. 

In the next few days we are going to bring you a few posts on arrest support and prison support as because we’ve been very busy it has been a little more difficult to get them sorted. And that, really, brings us to the main point of this post.

Throughout the past three years, we’ve had three main focus points as a collective; educating the public, bringing direct action news to social media and doing prison and arrest support. We used to have a lot more support when we started, and slow and steady that has gone down. In fact, we send HALF the amount of money to prisoners than we used to  send just a year ago. And there is more and more actions were folks are being arrested and we are struggling to help with fines.

We have tried producing different merch, doing discounted merchandise (on items where people can already choose how much they pay), we plaster Patreon and PayPal in many posts… But the reality is, we must be doing something wrong, because it isn’t working. We do not do this job for the money. None of us in fact gets any money for their personal life out of Unoffensive. We don’t have wages or buy food or clothes or pay rent with the money from the collective.

So we are struggling and we fail to see why. We can imagine that many of the folks who used to support us a couple of years ago have grown towards the mentality of “support sanctuaries not individuals” and we also believe that concept to be true. What we don’t think to be true is that Unoffensive falls under the “waged full time activist” that people are avoiding to fund. In fact, different people from the collective do different things to survive, and none of us have a wage from Unoffensive.

So it would be wonderful if you could tell us what we could change to make things better. Should we be posting more content? Or more diverse stuff? Should we be trying to reach out to bigger platforms that might be able to help us out with promotion? How can we convince *just* a 10% of our followers to drop ONE dollar a month on Patreon? Whatever it is, we are open to criticism and to learning more because we would not want the project to die out.

For anyone interested, our PayPal address is unoffensive_animal(at)tutanota(dot)com and our patreon is:
www.patreon.com/animalliberation

See you in the next riot

UA. 

Read below an open letter that some humans who went to prison after the SHAC campaign want people to read. This is an important change in legislation that everybody should be aware of and actively opposing. Share far and wide, contact the media and start working towards stopping this backwards law.

“In a knee-jerk reaction to an act of terrorism, anti-terror measures are being introduced in the UK which will end automatic release (EDITOR’S NOTE: automatic release is a measure in the UK ‘justice’ system that releases people serving prison for the first time half way through their sentence) for terror offenders and will also apply to animal rights prisoners. It is a dangerous and slippery slope when non-violent activism begins to be equated to terrorism.

There has been a sinister update regarding the recently proposed amendments to automatic early release for those detained on terror charges.

Whilst there has been much attention to these laws being aimed at stopping those who would cause very real and violent harm to citizens in our streets, what has not been mentioned is how these laws will also target non-violent political prisoners of all stripes. 

A non-violent animal rights activist, currently serving a prison sentence has already been informed that they will be affected by these changes and will not be released as expected.

This prisoner has never, and would never, caused harm to anyone. They are certainly not the kind of knife wielding terrorist that these legal changes are claimed to be targeting.

Concerned that Prevent have included peaceful campaign groups such as Extinction Rebellion on their watch lists, we approached Minister of State for Justice, Robert Buckland to ask whether activists from such campaigns would also be affected. He has refused to comment, and blocked us from his social networks as well as silencing legitimate dissent by turning off commenting. 

It is clear that protestors who pose no threat to the public, but who the government find inconvenient, are due to be rolled into this new terror legislation, not by unfortunate oversight, but as a deliberate decision by senior politicians and the police.

It is outrageous that an act of terrorism is being used to gratuitously punish political prisoners who pose no physical threat to members of the public.

The signatories of this letter are all ex-animal rights prisoners who were released from prison between 2010-2012. Had this law change happened then, it would have also affected us.

As it was, we were all released halfway through our sentences, none of us have reoffended, and have all started successful ventures, which would have been much harder had we not been released from prison when we were. 

In love and liberation,

Tom Harris,

Nicola Tapping,

Gerrah Selby,

Jason Mullen,

Alfie Fitzpatrick.

20th to 25th May, Hambacher Forst, Germany. 

Last year’s five day event was a blast. People shared and learnt, told the cops to fuck off and a bunch of dirty activists blockaded a slaughterhouse. What is going to happen this year? It is up to you to decide! 

For any of you who might not know, Liberate Or Die: From Cage to Freedom is a five day event filled with workshops, skillsharing and actions. The event is free (including the food!) although donations are welcome. The event is hosted in Hambacher Forst as an attempt to bring together not just the animal liberation movement but also the anarchist, anti-capitalist and ecological struggle.

There are many, many “vegan festivals” to choose from and we would like to say that we’ve checked the calendar to ensure this one doesn’t clash with anything major, but to be honest we would be lying. Basically, if you are into taking action, if you want to learn about something else than outreach and if you want to share a space with like-minded people who don’t simply fall for the standard mainstream vegan, make it to this event.

We will be posting updates and more information about it all, but for now just have a look at the event either on Facebook or on our website. The text has been translated to eight or nine different languages too so that should make things easier.

See you in the next riot, or in Hambacher Forst.

Unoffensive Animal. 

Check the event on our website:

www.unoffensiveanimal.is/lod

Or over Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/119883792679370/

Also, please consider supporting us if you like the work we do. We really could do with more folks donating a dollar or two a month!

www.patreon.com/animalliberation

So in the last few days, we’ve received many complaints about reports we’ve published. Starting with the critique to the Channel 4 documentary and the animal liberation movement’s current state of affairs to the rat traps found at Karamel London and even about that last report where 23 lambs were rescued from Little Oakhurst. 

 It seems like we’ve not made this clear enough, so we will say it once again. Unoffensive Animal is a MEDIA COLLECTIVE. We do not partake in illegal activity, we do not promote illegal activity and we do not hold knowledge about who is involved in any of those activities. We serve as a platform for activists who need to remain anonymous to explain to the wider public about actions they have taken. When we receive those anonymous reports we DO NOT censor, edit or change anything from them. Unless the report contains explicitly racist, sexist and or transphobic remarks, we are not going to censor the reports that come in. That means that some reports we publish we agree with, and some others we don’t, but it is not for us to decide what the ALF (or any other anonymous direct action group) wants to say or do. 

To ensure that people are well informed about everything relating to those reports we will be sharing some related information. This is not our standard and we will not be doing this on a regular basis, but we feel that if we are making (yet again) another very clear remark on what we do and don’t do, we should allow for the platform to explain itself. 

Even tho the report never mentioned the activist in question, Wesley Omar took offence to the action and report that mentioned two pigs rescued from a farm. We cannot see how that report was an attack on them (or any other specific activist) and more of a critique on the current estate of the animal liberation movement, but we are also aware that the mainstream media is fucking trash and will aim to fuck with absolutely anyone they can, so to hear a different version of the Channel 4 documentary “How to steal a pig” you can check Wes’ YouTube and watch their response video. We cannot endorse that response video as we have not watched it ourselves. 

The report coming from Karamel where someone had found poison mice traps in the venue also created some controversy. Karamel has made a statement explaining that it is not the restaurant, but the landlords, who placed the traps. You can read about it on their Facebook page. 

 In relation to the 23 lambs (or any other rescue in general), Unoffensive doesn’t know more than you do. The report that gets sent to us is the report that gets published. We guess (as they were not mentioned) that no adults were rescued with the lambs. We also guess, and hope, that those involved in the action have enough knowledge to take care of lambs. Most people who are involved in these kinds of actions either have the knowledge or can transport those animals to places where they will be cared for and brought back to life. Let’s remember specifically that the campaign in Little Oakhurst is showing that all animals in the land are continuously dying of malnutrition and other diseases. Ewes are probably unable to feed their young if they are just fleece and bones. 

 Now that all that is clear we will repeat this again: Unoffensive Animal is a MEDIA COLLECTIVE. We are not responsible for the actions or the reports. We do not have any strange and secret hatred against Wesley Omar, Karamel and baby lambs. 

Now, to more interesting and useful information. There are four workshops coming up in the next few weeks! We are in Germany this weekend and we will be in Slovakia and Austria on the 8th and 9th. All the event information and workshop locations can be found in the event listings. 

 Finally, because we need to afford the workshops (and we literally have 60 quid in the accounts!) we are doing a merch sale. All Antispeciesist Action and Liberate or Die merch has been discounted to 10 quid per t-shirt and 20 quid per hoodie. Grab them whilst you can! All orders over 50 pounds will receive a bunch of stickers for free. Also, there still are a few flags left. Don’t miss out!

You can get all the merch here:

https://www.unoffensiveanimal.is/collections/

 If you can help us out with money but do not want any merch, you can donate via PayPal on [email protected]. 

You can also join our Patreon account (and we could really do with a few more donors!) on:

 www.patreon.com/animalliberation  

We have some serious projects coming up that we really want to share with you. To start with we should be mentioning the workshops coming up. Next week we will be in two different cities in Germany, and in three weeks we will be visiting Bratislava and Vienna. All the information is on our events on Facebook. You can find it also on our website or you can check our Instagram stories.

We are talking about organising two-week-long activist events this year. For anyone that has been to Liberate or Die this will sound familiar, but basically, we like organising activist camps where people come (FOR FREE!), mingle with activists from around the world, listen or give talks and take action together. Although we cannot give the specifics right now, we will be uploading the dates and rough locations soon, so be on the lookout and get ready for it, last year’s Liberate or Die was amazing and we are really excited to be pushing and attempting to organise two!).

We have a couple of media/art projects coming up soon. One of them is still secret, but we can talk about the second one. For a while, we have been sneezing our brains about how to bring you more stories and we have decided that video format is the way forward, so we are going to attempt to publish a mini-documentary every 4-6 weeks featuring a campaign, a grassroots group or an individual working towards animal liberation in whatever way they believe is right to be able to share the skills, the action and the focus. We also want to turn the spotlight around from the usual faces and towards the vast amount of people who do the groundwork whilst being able to feature people who aren’t just charismatic men in front of a camera. This project makes us very excited and we cannot wait to release the first episode. If you know of a campaign or a grassroots group that should feature in this series, comment below!

Now, all this requires a little bit of funding (not much, we’ve learnt to get by with very little), so after being asked over and over and over about flags we decided it would be a good idea to get them printed for people to enjoy whilst we fundraise. Have a look at our merch page quickly as if they sell as fast as the bandanas did, we will not have any left in 24 hours!

https://www.unoffensiveanimal.is/…/defend-direct-action-f…/

Our Patreon has actually gone downhill quite a bit and we are receiving a lot fewer donations than we were this time last year. We understand that many people have e other commitments and we do not want anyone to struggle whilst giving Unoffensive any money, but if you can afford it, please consider joining for even one or two dollars a month. If you cannot afford it, please share it with your friends and family, it would mean the world and having a steady amount of monthly donations helps us massively do the work we want to do in the future whilst sustaining prison support donations and helping folks with fines and legal fees.

www.patreon.com/animalliberation

That is all for now. To sum it up, long week events coming up soon, video projects coming up soon, there are flags for sale on our website and if you can, join our Patreon!!!!

Love, rage and biodegradable glitter,

Unoffensive Animal.

Part of what we do is to try and give tools to people to be able to take action and to feel more empowered in their activism. At the beginning of the year, we have four workshops lined up in Germany, Austria and Slovakia. If you’re close by you should come and have a chat, share your thoughts and learn from everybody attending! Our event are always for free as we believe knowledge should always be for everybody. We never charge anyone for travel, for accommodation or for any other silly shit.

As our workshops are logged on Facebook, we will create a Story Highlight on instagram for anyone who cannot access that platform to be able to get all the details they need. We would truly appreciate for people to share around the events to anyone local who would be interested in joining.

25th January, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany:

Who are the ALF? + Security culture: In this talk we will focus on the history of the animal liberation movement and its links to direct action as well as how security culture works and how people can keep themselves and others safe. This talk is not just for those interested in taking part in direct action and everybody can benefit from the knowledge shared.

https://www.facebook.com/events/2250896578543106/

26th January, Wuerzburg, Germany:

Security Culture + From a chair to a raid in 90 minutes, hypothetically: As well as talking about security culture, we will try a new talk for the first time! This talk is tailored to analyse actions from the past and learn what difficulties people face when deciding to take action, how they overcome them and that with the right state of mind, anyone can take whatever action they want to.

https://www.facebook.com/events/885929795157651/

8th and 9th February, Vienna dan Bratislava:

We are super excited about this weekend event, split into two different locations. The talks are as follow:

Saturday 8th:

– “Who are the ALF? A history of the animal liberation movement” (90 min) 

– “From your chair to a raid in 90 minutes. Hypothetically”. (90 min)

– Screening + Open Discussion (maybe Behind the Mask, or if people haven’t watched it yet, The animal People, or If a tree Falls, or maybe we can analyse the soon-to-come new documentary by We Animals.

Sunday 9th: 

– “Security Culture for the Conscious Activist” (60 min)

– “Getting into places and causing havoc; a look to the past”.

– Violence and direct action, What is justified in the path to liberation? “What is violence and what is self-defense? What can we justify on the path to liberation? Guided open discussion.”

We cannot wait to see what comes out of that weekender as there is a lot of work and thought put into it, so if you’re around, please come by!

https://www.facebook.com/events/541160253137718/

Check our stories to see all the event details and share it around if you know people who would be interested in it!

As always, we would like to remind people that we cannot do all this without your support. Our patreon is sadly at an all time low and we could really do with folks joining for even a dollar or two. If you have to spare, please consider doing so! You can have a look at our tiers on the link below: 

www.patreon.com/animalliberation.

If you’re unable to join a monthly donation scheme but you still want to send some coins to help us with our work, we have a PayPal. You can send your donation over here: [email protected]

See you in the next riot, or in the next workshop! 

Unoffensive Animal.

Although we were going to post a Hit Report, we’ve had to change our schedule to let folks know about last day to order merch before the holidays. We do not want anyone to be disappointed if parcels don’t arrive in time.

For anyone ordering merch outside of the UK to anywhere in Asia, Central and South America, Far and Middle East, Royal Mail cannot guarantee your parcel will arrive before the 25th of December. 

For anyone ordering merch outside of the UK but somewhere else than in the above list, the last day you folks can place an order is Friday, 13th of December. Australia is not guaranteed but we will do our best from our side.

Anyone ordering merch to the UK, last orders is the 19th of December.

If you’re grabbing yourself some peng merch or want to gift it to anyone during the holidays, it is your chance now before it is too late.

Email unoffensiveshop(@)riseup.net with any merch enquires or if you have any trouble receiving your parcel.

As per the raffle winner, we’ve already contacted them and they were super happy to have won. Thank you so much for your support and for buying tickets, you make our job a lot easier and we truly, truly appreciate it.

Back tomorrow with banging direct action news.

See you in the next riot.

UA. 

We have a few workshops coming up in the next few months. Even though none of them have confirmed dates and locations (we will upload them all in our events), we though we should mention them in case nearby cities are interested in talks too and want to help organise.

At the end of the month we have a lock on workshop in Nottingham, UK. In January we will be in the German part of Switzerland for another talk (and maybe a visit to one of our favourite sanctuaries ever). Then in February we have been contacted to give a talk in Bratislava. As it is very close, we are looking at organising another talk in Austria and maybe also visiting Czech Republic, so if you live in any of those two locations please PM us or send us an email and let’s organise something!

We are always happy to organise talks, workshops and skill share. As we have heard certain “celebrities” like to put weird rules to their talks, we want to make sure that people understand how we operate. We do not charge for talks. We do not charge for travel. We do not charge for accommodation. We believe knowledge should be free and we would never dream of charging anyone to share knowledge alongside us. That would make the revolution a very middle class concept. The only thing we ask for is to help out with a venue to give the talk and with local promotion. We are always happy with donations (either via PayPal or face to face) to help with travel costs, but those are not compulsory in any way. We also appreciate when someone offers a sofa to spend the night, but again, that is not necessary and we are always happy to sleep wherever, including your friendly city park bench.

So if you fancy organising a talk with UA and think people around you would be into it, please contact us!

You can see the talks we offer on our website:

https://www.unoffensiveanimal.is/workshops/

Once we know more specific dates we will make them public for people to join. 

As always, if you want to support us you can drop us a couple of coins over PayPal on unoffensive_animal @ tutanota.com

You can join our Patreon team on www.patreon.com/animalliberation

And you can buy yourself a couple of raffle tickets (LITERALLY 24 HOURS LEFT BEFORE THE RAFFLE IS CLOSED!)

https://www.unoffensiveanimal.is/product/unoffensive-raffle/

UNTIL WE WIN.

UA. 

PHOTO: 2011 raid in an Italian university, where three rabbits and many mice were taken away from a lab. 

This is a merch post. This post wants you to grab yourself some merch so we fundraise cash before half of our patrons cancel their sponsorship because of the holidays. If you want to give a nice present to someone or if you want to represent with our banging designs, you’re in the right place!

Merch has been fully stocked again. That means all sizes, all designs. And that includes our historical bandanas!

Folks have been asking for bandanas since the first time we printed them. Because they are handprinted it is difficult for us to find the time and the space to do so, but there are 15 ready in the website for you to grab! 

We’ve also added a short sleeve t-shirt with the For The Wild design on it. We didn’t have it, now we have it, go grab it and show off!

All orders over £50 will include a sticker pack and, until we run out, an ALFsg Magazine.

Check all our designs and grab yourself some stuff on the link below:

www.unoffensiveanimal.is/collections

If you’re getting merch as a present during the holidays, we would not recommend you leaving it for later on. We’ve started a new method to package and send the orders that will be tending to the shop ONCE a week, so the sooner you order stuff the more chances to get it on time.

For anyone that has experienced any trouble with their orders up until now, orders that have never arrived and whatnot, please email unoffensiveshop(at)riseup.net.

Remember that we have a raffle going on with a banging little price. 70 tickets have been issued and our goal is 200. There are twelve days to go. Get yourself some raffle tickets here:

https://www.unoffensiveanimal.is/product/unoffensive-raffle/

So go grab yourself some peng merch and a nice bandana, get some free stickers in the process and help us carry on doing our work.

UNTIL WE WIN.

UNOFFENSIVE ANIMAL. 

We are writing this post for two main reasons. The first one is that we believe people should be transparent with the money they fundraise, specially when talking about activism. The second one is because recently we received a major donation totalling 10,000 British Pounds. That’s a fuck load of money. So let’s talk about it.

We’ve been at it online for over two years now and peopler are aware that we are obviously anticapitalist and that we struggle dealing with money. We are not stupid either and know that we need funds to run many of the things we like doing as a collective. So let’s break this down in two parts. 

1- What does Unoffensive do with the money received on a monthly basis? 

We have a Patreon account. At the moment it is sitting in just over 300 US dollars a month. We also sell merch on the website that produces anything from 50 to 200 GBP a month. That monthly money is mainly used to send support to prisoners (for commissary, for phone calls or stamps, legal fees or whatever they need it for). Some of that money covers the website hosting and other small outgoings related to website and technology. Sometimes, when it is needed, we use some of the money to travel giving workshops or talks. We barely make enough to be able to cover all the prison support we would like. It is rough, but we do as much as we can and accept that we will not solve the world’s problems on our own. Money will never be used for personal profit of any of the members within the collective. We don’t pay for food, housing, clothing or anything related to our personal needs out of that money. It would not be fair on people donating.

2- What the fuck has Unoffensive done with that huge donation?

Ten Thousand British Pounds. We received it without warning and our reaction was mixed between confusion, euphoria, sickness and fear. No one asked for that money, but it came to us. It is scary holding that much money flow at once and we needed to make decisions about how to use it, so we developed a system of multiple filters where we could not simply spend any of that money without other folks checking on it first. We’ve used it all in about three weeks and we want to explain how:

5.500 GBP has been sent to prison support and legal support. Some folks like Eric or Walter need basic commissary cash. Someone needed covering a bit of a fine issued after coming back from Rojava. Someone needed some money after being sentenced for criminal damage. Over half of the money was sent in all directions in the first couple of days. It feels good to be able to send the money we believe folks in prison deserve, at least once! 

2.500 GBP was spent in a Thermal Imaging Scope for our comrades in Underground Badger Syndicate. They struggled massively working nights during the badger cull as they had no night equipment of any kind. They now will be able to see in the dark, and we hope that helps them immensely in their fight against hunting. 

Slightly under 1000 GBP has been used to restock Unoffensive’s merch. Flags, bandanas and patches are coming, all sizes will be restocked again and there is fresh stickers and leaflets coming soon. We hope that helps us fundraise some of the money back.

About 500 GBP was used on IT security. Website Host changes, hardware encrypted hardrives, a couple of smartphones that will be tweaked to increase security and handed over to groups that have requested them… 

We have a few hundred pounds still sitting as an insurance when the latest arrests get sentences, in case the fines are very high. 

This is the reason why we keep fundraising, non stop, every week. Because we believe we can do good with the money we receive. We hope making this public helps people see how we manage money and maybe realise why we are here, still pushing. 

If you want to help us, we have a raffle going. Each ticket is 5 pounds and we are hoping to sell 200 before the 10th of December. Good luck winning that banging box! 

Even better, if you want to join our patreon support network, that would be incredibly useful. You can join for even one or two dollars a month and it all helps towards our work. 

www.patreon.com/animalliberation  

This has not been a very easy post to write, but we believe it is fair for folks to know what we are up to. Thank you very much to every person that shares, donates, gets merch, talks about us or sends us love.

Until we win.

Unoffensive Animal Collective