neoliberal capitalism, political repression as discipline, and the

© COPYRIGHT
by
Jennifer D. Grubbs
2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
QUEER(EY)ING THE ECOTERRORIST: NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM, POLITICAL
REPRESSION AS DISCIPLINE, AND THE SPECTACLE OF DIRECT ACTION
BY
Jennifer D. Grubbs
ABSTRACT
The following analysis forges an innovative and interdisciplinary bridge between
theory and practice that brings together an anthropological lens emphasizing local modes
of knowledge, a communication lens underscoring rhetoric and environmental
communication, and a digital media lens that stresses social media and e-communities.
Through a mixed-methodology of critical discourse analysis, ethnography and
performance studies, this project examines the ways in which anarchist antispeciesists coconstruct and negotiate identity and power within physical and digital communities
through disidentification. The project relied on a strong commitment to collaborative
engagement with the research population and a queer disengagement with traditional
social movement theories to expand the political imaginary through political theater.
Activists utilize performative protest as both a methodology to disrupt hegemonic
speciesism and also a playful solidification amongst politically repressed, geographically
dispersed, oftentimes clandestine non-State actors.
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following project would not have been possible without the dedication and
support from Dr. Daniel Sayers, Dr. William L. Leap, and Dr. Stephen Depoe. I am
grateful for their theoretical guidance, their willingness to invest time and energy in my
scholarship, and their confidence in my ability to succeed. I am eternally grateful to my
mother, who provided countless hours of childcare while I typed away in my office. I am
humbled by the community of anarchist antispeciesists that risk it all for the liberation of
all beings. I am inspired, intrigued, and energized by their resolve and I am encouraged
by the potentiality for change. Lastly, I express my gratitude to my family for their
patience and understanding while I was absent from their adventures to complete the
project. My partner and source of encouragement, I would choose you again and again.
My beautiful daughters, Emory and Simon, let my sleepless nights and relentless efforts
remind you that your worth is your own, and that obstacles are but merely triumphs in the
works. And let the revolutionaries described in these pages remind you that if there is
oppression, there must be resistance.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..................................................................... 1
CHAPTER TWO: METHOD ............................................................................... 33
CHAPTER THREE: ETHNOGRAPHY .............................................................. 60
CHAPTER FOUR: NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM AND CONSTRUCTING
THE ECOTERRORIST ...................................................................................... 134
CHAPTER FIVE: DIRECT ACTION AS SPECTACLE .................................. 160
CHAPTER SIX: DIALECTICAL DISCIPLINE AND PERFORMATIVE
POWER .............................................................................................................. 197
CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION ................................................................ 240
APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 254
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 277
iv
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Baby, what’s that confused look in your eyes? What I’m trying to say is that I
burn down buildings while you sit on a shelf inside of them. You call the cops on
the looters and piethrowers. They call it class war, I call it co-conspirators.
‘Cause baby, I’m an anarchist…You watched in awe at the red, white, and blue
on the fourth of July. While those fireworks were exploding, I was burning that
fucker and stringing my black flag high…You have faith in the elephant and
jackass, and to you, solidarity’s a four-letter word… ‘Cause baby, I’m an
anarchist, you’re a spineless liberal. We marched together for the eight-hour day
and held hands in the streets of Seattle, but when it came time to throw bricks
through that Starbucks window, you left me all alone. [Against Me! 2002]
This project examined the ways in which anarchist antispeciesists in the animal and earth
liberation movements (AELM) in North America, as an example of leftist social
movements, queer [rearticulate and reconfigure] traditional forms of protest through their
oppositional articulations and resistance to constructed social and ecological hierarchy12.
The project will further interrogate the mechanisms of repression deployed by the StateCorporate Industrial Complex to silence anarchist antispeciesists through the construction
of the ecoterrorist. Anarchist antispeciesists advocate an intersectional analysis of the
exploitation and commodification of beings and ecologies within capitalism, the State,
1.
There is significant overlap in philosophy and tactic between the two movements, thus the
following analysis will refer to them as one movement. The conflation has been made by many activists
and scholars throughout the movement’s history (Nocella and Best 2004; Loadenthal 2010).
2.
The application of queer theory and queer linguistics is discussed later in the chapter, as well as
in Chapter Two: Method and Chapter Three: Ethnography.
1
paradigms of power, and speciesism3 (Foreman 1993:27; Rosebraugh 2004:120). In order
to gain an in-depth understanding of this subset of leftist resistance, I conducted a multisited, multifaceted ethnography of the decentralized, clandestine movement for 18
months. The methodological and theoretical framework was built on the anthropological
understandings of standpoint theory and the value of studying up (Nader 1972; Naples
2003).4 Through an emphasis on individual standpoints and performativity, I engaged in
participant-observation during demonstrations, convergences, general assemblies, and
legal proceedings. The following project utilized ethnography as an anthropological
method to connect local modes of knowing with larger, structural and ideological issues
of power through performativity.
Anthropological literature on social movements emphasizes political positionality
within normative party categories such as: republican, democrat, libertarian, moderate,
conservative, and liberal (Hodges 2011). This analysis, however, adopted a queer
understanding of direct action and activist identity that is based on tactic in combination
with political positionality5. Queer, as both a concept and framework, provides a
productive epistemology to examine the ways in which activists both destabalize and
rearticulate the State’s repressive paradigm of good versus bad through performance.
Specifically:
3.
The term speciesism, coined by Richard Ryder in 1973, is used to describe the systematic
privileging of the constructed category human over the constructed category animal (Singer 1977:7).
4.
This project solely uses Nader’s concept of studying up and strongly disassociates with her
history of problematic interactions with critical anthropologists. Without giving credence to her dismissive
treatment of queer anthropologists, I have fractured studying up and do not align myself in any sort of
trajectory of her scholarship.
5.
Direct action is not defined solely by the physical act, but also the ideological underpinnings and
symbolic meaning the act represents. Thus it is not a label of tactic demarcation, but rather it is an inclusive
framework to conceptualize activism (Graeber 2009b:210; Thompson 2010:57).
2
Eve Sedgwick’s recent reflection on queer performativity ask us not only to
consider how a certain theory of speech acts applies to queer practices, but how it
is that “queering” persists as a defining moment of performativity. The centrality
of the marriage ceremony in J.L. Austin’s examples of performativity suggests
that the heterosexualization of the social bond is the paradigmatic form for those
speech acts which bring which bring about what they name. “I pronounce you…”
puts into effect the relation that it names. But where and when does such a
performative draw its force, and what happens to the performative when its
purpose is precisely to undo the presumptive force of the heterosexual
ceremonial? …The performative is thus one domain in which power acts as a
discourse…The term “queer” emerges as an interpellation that raises the question
of the status of force and opposition, of stability and variability, within
performativity. The term “queer” has operated as one linguistic practice whose
purpose has been the shaming of the subject it names or, rather, the producing of a
subject through that shaming interpellation.”
The deployment of queer as a liberal binary of assimilation and transgression, however,
has also called into question the contradictions and complicities that warrant reflection
(Puar 2007:24). The potentiality of a queer inquiry is expanded through reflexivity and
the creative rearticulation of what constitutes “assimilation” and “transgression.”
The research population, anarchist antispeciesists, is constituted by individuals
that are geographically dispersed throughout North America, and politically overlap and
diverge on particular campaigns, and do not cohesively self-identify as anarchists or
antispeciesists. The population is unifyingly distinct, however, in its use of
confrontational direct action such as: undercover video investigation, harassment,
sabotage, physical blockades, property destruction, and demonstrations. The tactics
challenge neoliberalism, capitalism, speciesism, and State authority. I focused on the
activists’ strategies and tactics as a primary indicator in selecting research participants.
The first stage of research involved participant-observation in Washington, D.C. with
leftist activists from November 2012-January 2013. The second stage of research
overlapped slightly with the first stage in which I gathered ethnographic data in Toronto,
3
Canada with the anarchist collective Marineland Animal Defense (MAD) from April
2013-August 2014. Throughout the ethnographic data collection time period (March
2013- August 2014) includes several anarchist antispeciesist collectives (campaigns and
monikers) including: DARTT, MAD, The Bunny Alliance, Resistance Ecology, Earth
First!, Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and 269Life.
The project expands on three anthropological areas: neoliberal capitalism, direct action as
spectacle, and political repression and punishment. I interrogated how neoliberal
capitalism functions to manipulate State authority and how leftist activists resist through
confrontational direct action.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
The ethnographic study focused on the AELM and provides an in-depth analysis of an
understudied area of anthropology. Despite a vast anthropological literature on
environmental advocacy, animal welfare, and social movements, there lacks an
anthropological discourse on liberation and confrontational tactics. Further, the use of
ethnography as method provides an in-depth tool to examine the everyday ways of
knowing within these leftist circles to, “…diminish the exoticism rampant in
anthropology (all that magic, all that ritual and scarification taken out of context) by
focusing upon (accepting) the everyday...” (Rapport and Overing 2002:373). There is a
growing discourse within anthropology regarding the role of neoliberal social structures
in naturalizing structural violence (Farmer 1996; Farmer 2004; Gusterson, Besteman, and
Ehrenreich 2009; Scheper-Hughes and Philippe I. Bourgois 2003). The contemporary
moment, as elaborated on in Chapter Four: Neoliberal Capitalism and Constructing the
Ecoterrorist, examines the obfuscation of visible centralized sites of power through
4
globalization. The neoliberal reshaping of global capitalism and the nepotistic overlap
between government and corporate entities facilitates the decentralization of
corporations, ambiguous loci of accountability, and the façade of individual agency
(Leitner, Peck, and Sheppard 2006:3).
The decentralization of corporations negates accountability by creating an illusive
web of interconnected international entities. With the increasing prevalence of lobby
front groups and multinational conglomerates, the task of corporate-mapping and
identifying a singular target has become increasingly difficult (Graeber 2009b:xii). It is
difficult to identify a central site of government that can be held accountable for
monitoring “the market,” let alone a singular regulatory body responsible for a single
function within the market (Graeber 2009b:81). The abundance of regulatory groups and
committees has meant the obfuscation of actual regulation and accountability.
Globalization has increased that terrain through the global borders that place further
restrictions on who and what laws can apply to the market, depending on its location.
Neoliberalism facilitates a façade of accountability through the rhetoric of market
democracy. The challenge for those hoping to dismantle this oppressive reality relies on
deconstructing the illusive web of corporate-State alliances that decentralize the
deregulated industries.
Neoliberal capitalism facilitates the reconceptualization of sovereignty to include
corporations as a global power with State protection. Contemporary legislation
anthropomorphizes corporations and awards a protected status similar to those awarded
minorities in Hate Crime Legislation (Lovitz 2010). The transformation of corporations
into sovereign entities was naturalized through the process that Althusser terms
5
Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser 1971). Ideology, a process both reinforced and
reified “upward” and “downward,” reproduces the conditions and the means of
production (Althusser 1971:132–134). The state enforces its sovereign power through
different forms of the Repressive State Apparatus (consent is gained coercively upon
threat of violence) whereas the Ideological State Apparatus is a more neutralized site of
power. Schools, religion, family units, and arguably, the media- are larger Ideological
State Apparatus’ that use subtle and discrete ways to garner hegemonic consent by
framing legislation as vanguard rather than profit and power motivated6.
Although the U.S. government still maintains a [neoliberal] performance of
democracy, corporations operate as the exception through “corporate sovereignty” (Ong
2006:7). The term corporate sovereignty refers to the exceptional status of capitalist
entities awarded through the deregulation of industry and hyper-regulation of public
scrutiny (Lovitz 2010:38). The corporate sovereignty granted to animal industries is
affirmed through activist repression such as surveillance, harassment, arrest, and
subsequent prosecution. The public “Green Scare” campaign unveils the sovereign
powers of animal industries, and attempts to promulgate the fragmentation of activists
through fear (Potter 2011:178). Within speciesist capitalism, the animal body is brutally
dismembered through the processes of commodification while the perpetrators of
violence are granted impunity by lack of industry regulations. Speciesism permits a
6.
Although contemporary discussions of sovereignty take issue with Althusser’s assertion that
State power manifests in centralized sites, I argue that neoliberal capitalism creates the façade of dispersed,
fragmented sites of power. Ultimately, the Corporate-State Industrial Complex does monopolize
institutionalized power in centralized sites. Thus, Althusser provides a useful way to understand the
essential functioning (production and reproduction) of power ultimately lies in distilled concentrations that
are veiled by the appearance of agency via neoliberalism (Butler 1997:110, 117–129; Holtzhausen
2013:50–51, 225).
6
naturalized sovereign power over animal bodies, and recreates a discourse of justice
around penalizing animal liberators. George Lakoff synthesizes how “terrorism” and
“evil” are articulated within the frames of metaphor (Lakoff 2001:3). The reappropriation
of terrorism rhetoric through the metaphor of ecoterrorism demonstrates the wide scope
of repression targeting the animal and earth liberation movement (Liddick 2006:102).
Critical anthropologists have focused on how these discourses of “terrorism” and “war”
are used to silence dissent (Price 2004:25). Patricia Dunmire and INCITE! Women of
Color Against Violence expanded on the dichotomization of individuals as “good/bad
activist” through the State’s use of metaphor in the construction of “victims/terrorists”
(Dunmire 2011:61; INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence 2009). The trials of
liberation activists including Eric McDavid, Daniel McGowan, and Walter Bond all
relied on the use of terrorism rhetoric to convict the activists as ecoterrorists. The public
trials reinforced the repressive conflation of activism and terrorism, and affirm the
sovereignty of agri-vivisection industries.
Anthropologists have engaged State sovereignty as it pertains to various layers of
governmentality.
Sovereign power is the central, often unrecognized, underside of
modern/liberal forms of codified/regulated government, whereas de facto sovereignty is
the ability to kill, punish, and discipline with impunity (Hansen and Stepputat 2006:297).
The body is always the site of the performance of sovereign power, and this performance
is most visible during states of war, marginality, extreme conditions, and fragmentations.
Giorgio Agamben’s idea of the dual body of the citizen—the citizen is an included body
with rights because s/he is included in the greater political community but there is also a
biological body, a life that can be stripped of symbolization and humanity and reduced to
7
“bare life” by a sovereign power (Agamben 1998:6). Agamben makes clear that we need
to theorize the relationship between power and one’s bare life. This point contributes to
the de facto sovereignty to place leftist activists under surveillance, in interrogation cells,
and in solitary confinement within federal prisons.
Michele Foucault focused on the social functioning of power and it’s relationship
to discipline throughout the shifting modes of State punishment. With the birth of the
modern prison, Foucault argued there was a move away from monarchical punishment,
the repression of a group through violent public performance (Foucault 1977:200).
Foucault believed there was both symbolic and physical significance within the body/soul
divide during this shift from monarchical punishment to disciplinary power. The
surveillance of activists represents a systematic disciplining of dissent. On the other hand,
the targeted legislation, use of Federal Grand Juries, surveillance, and terroristenhancements represent an explicit coercive punishment more in line with monarchical
power. The rhetoric of terrorism itself serves a disciplinary function to discourage dissent
(Herman and Chomsky 2002:155; Hoffman 2006:32; Lovitz 2010:109; Jackson et al.
2011:2). The combination of disciplinary conditions that activists engage in includes selfcensorship of communication, clandestine operations rather than in networks, and a
proliferation of “security culture” demonstrate an internalization of the panopticon.
However, coercive legislation such as the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and
State authority that protects neoliberal capitalism unveils the violent nature of political
repression7. Direct action activists are publicly punished through Federal Grand Jury
8
subpoenas, home raids, government infiltrators, and terrorism enhancements. This
dialectic of both disciplinary punishment and monarchical power represents a particular
type of political repression targeting anarchist antispeciesists.
Communication scholars, Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery, proposed the
theory of relational dialectic to explain the presence of tension and contradiction within
relationships between individual (Baxter 1988; Baxter and Montgomery 1996; Baxter
2010). The theory was based on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin that focused on the ways in
which humans experience overlapping and contradicting needs within relationships
through the concept of dialogism (Bakhtin 1982; Bakhtin 1984; Bakhtin 1986). Bakhtin
argued that the dialectic of human experience is a dualism with centripetal and
centrifugal forces that create tensions between unity and divergence (Bakhtin 1982).
Baxter and Montgomery expanded on this approach to understand the tensions within
human relationships. For example, an individual may express to their partner the desire
for space, while also communicating the need for intimacy. This tension is oftentimes
captured in cinematized representations of heteronormative relationships where one
person asks the other for space, but still expects them to contact them to maintain
closeness. Baxter and Montgomery proposed four components within relational
dialectics: contradictions, totality, process and praxis. Relational dialectic, within this
logic, is interplay of sorts between behaviors and needs that are both unified and
7.
The AETA is federal legislation that amends the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act (Butler
1997:110, 117–129). It granted federal oversight to investigate, prosecute, and sentence crimes that were
previously handled by each state. The AETA facilitates the use of grand juries in ecoterrorism trials,
terrorist enhancements to increase prison terms and fines, and the placement of nonviolent activists in
Communications Management Unit prisons. It also increased the existing penalties: allowing animal
enterprises to seek financial restitution for the amount of financial damage inflicted (Potter 2011:131).
9
opposing, internalized and external. This project expands upon the ways in which
confrontational tactics queer traditional modes of protest and create solidarity amongst
activists facing political repression. The methodological framework, expanded in Chapter
2, provides a detailed discussion on how both performance studies and linguistic analysis
to provide a valuable lens to interrogate the use of political theater to challenge structures
of power.
STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
This project interrogated how activists engage in and articulate the use of direct
action in both physical and digital spaces. The use of digital media, complementary to
physical direct action, allow activists to organize, mobilize, engage in, and articulate the
use of direct action before, after, and during an event. The available means and modes of
protest to social actors in radical leftist movements threaten the hegemonic nature of
disciplinary punishment. Activists engaged with direct action and utilized digital media
as a means to challenge State surveillance and the role of security culture. The
ethnographic data show how activists utilize a range of tactics, including political theater,
to effectively challenge the State’s reliance on disciplinary punishment. In turn, activists
resist disciplinary punishment by engaging in direct action as monarchical punishment.
The volley of political action and repression demonstrates a shift in power; perhaps solely
in the realm of rhetorical power, that offsets the presumed powers of the State. The
ethnographic data gathered examine how activists differentiate direct action from
traditional forms of protest, how activists situate their strategic and tactical role in
revolutionary change, and the ways in which activists respond to political repression and
punishment. The State relies on the constructed binary of good protestor/bad protestor in
10
the construction of anarchist antispeciesists as ecoterrorists and assumes that activists will
make the conscious decision to engage in mechanisms of dissent that fall within this
dichotomy. Following Pêcheux (1982: 159), this analysis lends the possibility of a third
type of protestor that is simultaneously engaging and disengaging with ideology as the
process of interpellation of individuals as subjects. The third type of protest(or), through
the refusal to submit to the State’s dichotomy of good versus bad protestor, work to
create forms of disidentification outside of this framework. Through a reapproriated
rhetoric of terrorism that is naturalized through neoliberal capitalism, the State engages in
repressive acts by interpellating the disidentified third type of protest(or) into
ecoterrorism.
Queering Subject Formation
Michel Pêcheux, a French philosopher, expanded Althusser’s theory of
interpellation and subject formation with particular emphasis on the discursive functions
of ideology. Pêcheux argued that there are three modalities in which the subject is
constructed
by
ideological
practices:
“good
subject,”
“bad
subject,”
and
“disidentification” (Pêcheux 1982:158). The “good subject” freely consents or accepts
through identification with the discursive and ideological forms. The discourse of the
“bad subject,” in contrast:
…the subject of enunciation ‘turns against’ the universal subject by ‘taking up a
position’ which now consists of a separation (distantiation, doubt, interrogation,
challenge, revolt…) which respect to what the ‘universal subject’ ‘gives him to
think’: a struggle against ideological evidentness on the terrain of that
evidentness, an evidentness with a negative sign, reversed in its own terrain.
[Pêcheux 1982:157]
11
Pêcheux refered to the third modality, the type of modality invoked through anarchist
antispeciesist direct action, as disidentification. The modality has been expanded upon by
the Performance and Queer Theorist, José Esteban Muñoz, opts to resist and tries to
reject:
…the images and identifactory sties offered by dominant ideology by reinforcing
its dominance through controlled symmetry of “counterdetermination.”
Disidentification neither opts to assimilate within such structure nor strictly
oppose it; rather, it is a strategy that works on and against dominant ideology.
[Muñoz 1999:11]
The three modalities, however, does not imply desubjectification in that to resist, reject or
disidentify does not circumvent the reality that all individuals are always-already
interpellated in processes of subject formation (Pêcheux 1982:90, 106). Queer linguistic
anthropologist, William Leap, has utilized the concept of disidentification to examine
what he calls a, “DC-based gay geography,” in so far as the:
…reconfiguration of the arrangements of sites in the sense detailed in
conventional sources, the addition of imaginary features of the local gay terrain,
the emphasis on movement and other first-person experiences to ensure that gay
terrain has personalized meaning, as well as the references to disconnection.
[Leap 2009:217]
This project follows in the vein of Muñoz and Leap with particular interest in how
anarchist antispeciesists, “resist the social matrix of dominant publicity by exposing the
rhetorical and ideological context of State power (Leap 2014:129; Muñoz 1999:168;
Muñoz 2009). Disidentification provides a useful extension of queer theory in the
analysis of how anarchist antispeciesists engage in direct action despite the State’s acts of
interpellation. The performative function of direct action facilitates disidentification not
only for the activists, but also for the onlookers and targets of the actions themselves. In
12
this sense, queer is the verb that succinctly describes the rearticulation and reimagination
of resistance to authoritarianism and speciesism.
Queer theory emerged in the realm of political activism in response to the
constant conflation of sexuality and gender when discussed by feminists (Voss
2000:184). Sexuality studies, as a separate discipline, was emerging by the 1990’s, with
the foundational texts including Eve Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet (1990),
Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) and Bodies that Matter (1993), Teresa de Lauretis,
and later, the many works of Judith (Jack) Halberstam 8. The years that followed,
however, were plagued the practical challenge of maintaining the revolutionary potential
of queer within the normative spaces of the academy wherein theory lie (Halperin
2003:341–342). Despite the contentious evolution of both the activist and academic
deployment of queer, the term powerfully connotes questioning, challenging, and
disrupting normative discursive practices. Anthropologist Sara Ahmed situates “the
perverse” as a useful starting point for queer theorists, “…for thinking about the
‘disorientations’ of queer, and how it can contest not only heteronormative assumptions,
but also social conventions and orthodoxies in general” (Ahmed 2006:78). This
destabilization of normative categories that queering has been utilized by postmodern and
poststructural theorists to challenge normativity that lies in, “…creating an alwayscontested and re-negotiated group identity based on difference from the norm- in other
words, a postmodern version of identity politics” (Voss 2000:184).
8.
The term queer theory has been credited to Teresa de Lauretis to serve as a conference title at the
University of California, Santa Cruz in 1990. She had heard the term used by activists and knew it would
de “deliberately disruptive” because of the provocative challenge the term made to lesbian and gay studies
(Halperin 2003:340). The use of the term catapulted the already-published texts of Butler and Sedgwick to
the forefront of the growing field.
13
Queer theorists posit that because of the destabilization of normativity that is not
exclusive to sexuality or gender, the theory is accessible across disciplines and global
spaces. Specifically, there has been an emergence of activists and scholars that are
engaged in various projects of destabilization in the AELM. There has been a dramatic
increase in the number of available conferences, activist convergences, academic
publications, zines and leaflets, and other-than-human animal sanctuaries that in one way
or another connect themselves to the political project of queering the boundaries of
species (Activists Hold Conference in Support of “Queer Animal Liberation” |
Progressives Today n.d.; Harper 2010; jones 2006; Loadenthal 2011a; MortimerSandilands and Erickson 2010; Queering Animal Liberation n.d.). I served as a guest
editor for the Journal for Critical Animal Studies and published the first journal issue
dedicated to queer theory and activism. The introductory essay provides a snapshot of
contemporary attempts to queer, rearticulate and reimagine through the act of
destabilization, the boundaries of species:
It is inherently queer to disrupt the normative tropes of hierarchy that naturalize
speciesism. Or is it? How queer is critical animal studies? If speciesism is the
normative ideology, then anti-speciesist thought functions as a queer act within
academia. Although a great deal has been written on queer thought and critical
animal studies, these discussions primarily exist in isolation from one another.
Thus, we, as critical animal studies scholars, should ask ourselves how critical
thought itself is intercepted, co-opted, re-appropriated, and constrained to fit
within a single-politic agenda. Further, we must interrogate the ways in which we
are alienated from our colleagues and insurrectionary comrades who contribute to
queer thought. The ability to collaborate between critical discourses and
movements are impeded by the capital control of the Academy itself. Through a
process of intellectual commodification, the ability to produce and consume
critical thought is marked by privilege. The attributes used to demarcate critical
thought from academic critical thought are marked by the capital value of thought
itself. In the competition-driven neoliberal Academy, intellectual thought is
constrained by a market-driven individualism.
The following issue advances the destabalization of species privilege within a
discourse of queer thought. Each author interrupts hegemonic understandings of
14
speciesism through a queer framework. This special issue of the journal provides
a range of ways to think about the possibilities of a queer critical animal studies.
[Grubbs 2012:4]
The following analysis reasserts the premise that it is not only inherently queer to
challenge the species boundary of human and animal, but it is also a queer project for
anarchist antispeciesists to engage in confrontational direct action as a disidentification of
the State’s acts of interpellation.
The performativity of political action transgresses the boundaries of physical and
virtual spaces through digital media. Screens always already mediate the frames in which
individuals internally and externally make sense of their political realities. While
attending a demonstration or convergence, activists engage in physical conversations
which simultaneously engaging in digital communities through technological screens.
Thus, I maneuvered the disintegrating divide between physical and digital
communication throughout the data collection period, and the following argument show
that activists use digital spaces to also foster a physical sense of connectedness amongst
geographically-fractured anarchist antispeciesists. Direct action challenges the State’s
reliance on the punitive prison system through activist-run support websites that publish
essays, raise funds, and disseminate updates on incarcerated political prisoners rely on.
Queering Political Theater
This project contextualized the use of political theater and play within history of
subversion through exaggeration in drag performance as a queer mode of
disidentification (Conquergood 2002; Goffman 1959; Muñoz 2009; Taylor 2003).
Activists engage in confrontational direct action, such as home demonstrations, to queer
the paradigm of good versus bad protestor and to create disidentifactory thoughts through
15
the protest as a spectacle.9 Guy Debord of the Situationist International famously
critiques “the spectacle” (Debord 1967). Debord argues that authentic social life has been
replaced by mediated representation. We no longer relate as humans, but as commodities
that are filtered, or mediated, through the confluence of capitalism, advanced
technologies, and mass media. As Debord states, “the tangible world is replaced by a
selection of images which exist above it, and which simultaneously impose themselves as
the tangible par excellence”; the spectacle “is not a collection of images, but a social
relationship among people, mediated by images" (Debord 1967:36, 74). The performative
nature of direct action creates a spectacle that in turn creates what Kenneth Burke refers
to as terministic screens within Irving Goffman’s metaphor of theater. Relying on the
metaphor of a photograph to illustrate his concept of terministic screens, Burke explains,
“When I speak of “terministic screens,” I have a particularly in mind some photographs I
once saw. They were different photographs of the same objects, the difference being that
they were made with different color filters. Here something so “factual” as a photograph
revealed notable distinctions in texture, and even in form, depending upon which color
filter was used for the documentary description of the event being recorded” (Burke
1966:45). Terministic screens are comprised of a set of symbols that create a screen or
framework through which the world makes sense. Burke adds:
Not only does the nature of our terms affect the nature of our observations, in the
sense that the terms direct the attention to one field rather than another. Also,
many of the “observations” are built on implications of the particular terminology
in terms of which the observations are made…. much that we take as observations
9.
I have expanded on this point in conference presentations and publications (Grubbs 2012d;
Grubbs 2012c; Grubbs and Loadenthal 2013; Grubbs 2014a).
16
about “reality” may be but the spinning out of possibilities implicit in our
particular choice of terms [Burke 1969:46]
Speciesism itself, for example, is naturalized through ISA’s and represented as spectacle
through metaphor. The presentation of the human-over-animal hierarchy is depicted in
movies, songs, commercials, billboards, political metaphors, and everyday sayings and
practices. These representations (or screens) maintain and perpetuate both the idea and
practice of exploiting animals for human use. In this sense, then, many humans relate to
nonhuman animals as commodities, as mere representations of actual sentient creatures
that have lives and existences of their own.
However, despite Debord’s persuasive critique of mediated society, the spectacle
can be appropriated for positive and profound social change. According to social theorist
Stephen Duncombe (2007), media technologies are here to stay. Rather than shunning
such technologies, activists must learn to critically appropriate those technologies in the
service of progressive causes and liberatory practices. Media technologies not only are
imprinted in daily existence, they also contain powerful tools for subversion (Shepard,
Bogad, and Duncombe 2008). Duncombe agrees that the overarching, dehumanizing
spectacle, as described by Debord, must be critiqued and overturned. However, he also
agrees that there are liberatory elements within the spectacle. Learning to tease out those
elements can enable activists to disidentify, to create an alternative spectacle, one that
teaches people to be reflective, ethical, conscientious, and active creators rather than
passive consumers. For example, despite a primitivist resistance to technologies in the
anarchist antispeciesist movement, activists have critically appropriated those
technologies in the service of progressive causes and liberatory practices. Washington,
D.C.-based journalist, Will Potter, launched a Kickstarter campaign in response to
17
repressive legislation in six states that made it illegal to take photographs or video
footage inside agri-vivisection industries (Potter 2014). Potter proposed purchasing
drones to capture aerial footage of these industries as a way to reapproriate the
technology primarily used within a context of State violence. It is within Duncombe’s
framework that anarchist antispeciesists employ direct action strategies.
The home demonstrations are an attempt to amplify the problem (animal
exploitation) and the motivation (profit) by creating an alternative spectacle (one based
on truth-telling and the adoption of an ethical relation to nonhuman animals).
Demonstrators do this by creating a public performance. The demonstrators use their
bullhorns to amplify their message and turn a public sidewalk into a public theatre. The
power of the spectacle lies in its ability to demand attention and render abstract concepts
into accessible courses of action. The method is both confrontational and invaluable. As
Jean Baudrillard states, “This is our theatre of cruelty, the only one left to us—
extraordinary because it unites the most spectacular to the most provocative” (The Spirit,
2001, n.p.). The following project addressed the growing gap between anthropological
discourses regarding political theater, theoretical critiques of neoliberalism and
capitalism, and the specific use of direct action in the AELM. Although there are
significant contributions within the field of anthropology to these areas separately, there
remains a lacking discourse that weaves these areas together cohesively. The
understudied population, anarchist antispeciesists, both theorizes and engages with
anthropological theories of power and resistance. Thus, it is within the interest of
producing relevant, contemporary critical scholarship to examine the population and the
18
changing terrain of political engagement and performativity through political terministic
screens10.
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The research was guided by a central research question: How is anarchist antispeciesist
resistance strategized and actualized within the ideological, social and economic [super-]
structures of the State and neoliberal capitalism, and how does such a positioning impact
effective activism from the left? The project was further guided by a series of secondary
questions that address key issues identified in the central research question. Under what
conditions do anarchist antispeciesists engage in confrontational direct action? How do
anarchist antispeciesists perceive their role in the AELM? In what ways do these activists
articulate the State’s use of terrorism rhetoric to punish dissent challenging agrivivisection industries? What are the mechanisms by which AEL dissent is repressed? In
what ways do AEL and leftist activists, broadly, resist political repression? The research
is dialectical through an ethnography that will study-up and focus on local, subjective
experiences of activists, while interrogating how ideological, social and economic [super]
structures of the State and neoliberal capitalism punish leftist activists.
OVERVIEW OF METHODOLOGY
There is great emphasis on ethics in research design within activist anthropology.
Specifically, anthropologists exercise reflexivity when measuring their potential impact
on research subjects. Lila Abu-Lughod and Nancy Naples interrogate ethnographic
10.
These concepts are explained and focused on in Chapter Five: Direct Action as Spectacle.
19
methods within the growing discourse of feminist anthropology, which have been
adopted and expanded by many contemporary anthropologists. Abu-Lughod insists
anthropologists utilize local modes of knowledge and expression, such as song and prose
(Abu-Lughod 2008; Abu-Lughod 2013). Activist ethnography incorporates flexibility
and reflexivity into the research design. The uses of deductive ethnographic methods
make space for alternative modes of expression rather than demarcate which modes are
not visible. Naples provides a transparent manuscript detailing her experience with
ethnography in various social justice movements. Feminist anthropological research has
attempted to subvert traditional ways of knowing that perpetuate patriarchal assumptions
about ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ (Naples 2003:15). Elly Teman’s ethnographic study that
examined pregnancy and childbirth through the experiences of surrogates and intended
mothers challenged the academic tendency to fracture empathy and compassion from
anthropological research and infused this throughout her analysis of troublesome
metaphors (Teman 2010:31–39) These anthropologists provided a useful framework to
be applied in the examination of the relationship between political repression and the
State’s interpellation of anarchist antispeciesist use of direct action as disidentification
through the construction of ecoterrorism. I attended demonstrations, fundraisers,
convergences, and informal gatherings immersed in local modes of knowledge and
expression. I kept extensive field notes of the observations, focusing on the ways in
which activists perform their social and political location within anarchist anti-speciesist
movements. The data includes visual observations (clothing, nonverbal communication,
and social cliques), informal conversations with activists, and the chants, songs, call-andreturns, and proclamations delivered during demonstrations.
20
The use of activist ethnography facilitates a critical engagement with repression.
Rather than adopt a top-down approach, anthropologists such as Melissa Wright, Iris
Marion Young, Lila Abu-Lughod, and Nancy Naples implement a praxis approach to
social justice research. Iris Marion Young reexamines the hegemonic construction of
social justice as redistributive (Marion Young 1990). The interrogation of the distributive
model facilitates the subsequent discussion of radical social restructuring. Anarchist
antispeciesist confrontational direct action asserts that oppressive structures cannot be
reformed into equitable structures. Young’s conceptualization of “rights” further
complements the earth and animal liberation movement’s critiques of environmental and
animal “rights” activism, “Rights are relationships, not things, they are institutionally
defined rules specifying what people can do in relation to one another (Marion Young
1990:25). Young’s framework was useful to analyze the ways in which activists
politically position themselves with non-confrontational and confrontational modes of
activism. The data collected during demonstrations and informal conversations expands
on how respondents articulate their use of either confrontational or non-confrontational
protest.
The dissertation project is constituted by multi-sited and multi-focal participantobservation ethnography. The “field” remains a flexible construct, though I remained
within North America. For the first component of research, I identified an anarchist
antispeciesist collective in the Washington, D.C. area that actively engages in
confrontational direct action. From March 2013-August 2013 I conducted a participantobservation ethnographic study by attending general assembly meetings, fundraisers,
public events, and demonstrations with DARTT. I took extensive field notes, archived the
21
video footage taken by legal observers, and activists, and onlookers. The key organizers
served as interlocutors that helped connect me with other organizers in various
collectives, locally and nationally.
The second component of research involved data collection various anarchist
antispeciesist collectives from March 2013-September 2014. Specifically, I traveled to
Toronto, Canada to attend the MAD Opening Day demonstrations in 2013 and 2014,
spent two months in the Pacific Northwest United States and attended national
convergences, and attended demonstrations with The Bunny Alliance throughout Ohio.
During the data collection period, I also relied on digital media to follow the use of social
networking sites by activists. The anarchist collective, MAD, conducts an aggressive
campaign targeting the sea animal amusement park Marineland and the park’s owner,
John Holer year round. I was in contact with the co-founder and organizer with
Marineland Animal Defense, Anonymous A, and he was an interlocutor for the activist
community there. While in Toronto I relied on the snowball effect to interview anarchist
antispeciesist activists in the area. The interviews were informal conversations and I did
not use any recording devices. Their oral narratives provide a historical context of both
political activism and political repression Linguist William Labov examined the ways in
which in African Americans in the “inner city” utilize a well-formed set of rules that
constitute African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and he argued it was a distinct
dialect that ought to be included in larger discourses surrounding language (Labov 1972).
This politically important piece both validated and institutionalized what had previously
been dismissed as slang. Anthropologist Charlotte Linde provided an intersectional
bridge to examine how life stories are formed and told to co-construct our sense of self
22
(Linde 1993). Linguist Stephen Levinson provided a useful, pragmatic approach to the
study of language in his insistence that the analyses of speech acts and the presentation of
technical linguistic tools such as deixis and presupposition should be approachable
(Levinson 1983). The analysis focused on units of discourse that go beyond the unit of a
sentence (Levinson 1983:18). The interviews and field notes collated a diverse range of
life stories from activists, capturing the external social exchanges and the internal
narratives (Linde 1993:51). I utilized Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson’s framework
to look for evaluative clauses that address the secondary research questions focused on
how activists understand their activism in relation to the State (Hunston and Thompson
2001:2–25; Hunston 2002). Evaluation can be found anywhere in the ordered structural
parts of the text, and will provide insight into how respondents perceive their activism in
relation to anarchist antispeciesist movements. In effort to preserve local modes of
knowledge and expression, and the subjectivities of the respondents, the data analysis
focused on evaluation (Hunston and Thompson 2001:6). The demonstrations themselves
follow an ordered structure with optional abstract statements that summarize the purpose
of the demonstration, can offer evaluation, or serve an interactive function (Linde
1993:69). The demonstration proclamations and chants also include orientation, narrative
clauses, and the coda to conclude the spectacle. There are distinctions made between the
demonstrations carefully scripted and rehearsed and those spontaneously delivered
without premeditation. The focus on narrative and evaluation within the corpus facilitates
a rich anthropological discourse on social movements, subjectivities, and perceptions of
State repression.
23
Similar to how Motschenbacher (2010 as cited in Leap 2015) investigated
normative discourses of gender and sexuality found in French and English translations in
the Eurovision Song Competition (ESC), this analysis utilizes a queer linguistic approach
to examine how anarchist antispeciesists engage in direct action as disidentification
despite the repressive State acts of interpellation (Motschenbacher 2010:96–99; Leap
2015:665). The ethnographic description of events not only provide textured detail, but
these lend particular value when analyzed through queer inquiry because they illuminate,
“…the conditions that lead the song-writers or performers to retain or suspend (or attempt
to do both) normative authority of national linguistic tradition in such instances” (Leap
2015:665). Though this analysis does not focus on linguistic discrepancies between
translations, nor does this analysis focus specifically on how anarchist antispeciesists use
language to challenge normative discourses about sexuality or gender, the analysis falls
within the linguistic trajectory of both queer linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis
because I am interested in how activists engage with, “…how language enables (at times
disguises) the intersections of sexuality, gender, race, class, and other forms of social
inequality” (Leap 2015:661). I am particularly interested in anarchist antispeciesist
because of the intersectional interrogation of paradigms of power that address species.
The interrogation of social issues that follows was guided by the written, spoken, and
performed texts of anarchist antispeciesist insofar that this inquiry, “…must be discourse
centered, and that that the analysis of discourse must take the form of a critical inquiry;
that is, it must engage, not obscure the conditions of the speakers’ experience as located
within structures of power” (Leap 2015:661). Further, the analysis is antinormative in its
aim to disrupt subject formation and interpellation through disidentification and fulfils
24
the themes of queer linguistics if we can extend these themes to address normative
discourses of dissent:
…(1) the normative authority associated with sexual discourses, (2) the
performative and metaphoric expressions of normative authority in discursive
practice, (3) normative authority and institutional practices; and (4) the tensions
between global vs. local voices expressing normative authority in everyday life
(Leap 2015:676)
The methodological approach facilitated a queer inquiry, or queer(ey)ing of the use of
direct action by anarchist antispeciesists to produce and reproduce disidentification in the
face of State repression, as well as the State’s retaliatory interpellation of that
disidentification through the construction of the ecoterrorist.
Throughout the ethnographic data collection I archived social media sites. The
collectives rely heavily on social media sites to promote demonstrations, promulgate
movement literature, and engage in anonymous debate. Because of the large number of
clandestine activists in the movement, encrypted websites provide the invaluable ability
to remain anonymous. I utilized the public information shared on Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Anarchist News, and DC Indymedia. These web pages remain public
knowledge and thus provide a wide range of respondents. The performative function of
political theater exists within digital realities constituted by screens, thus I relied heavily
on the screens as a site of analysis. I participated in the digital realities by maintaining a
Facebook page, Twitter handle, Instagram account, and public blog. The accounts were
integrated through hashtags, overlapping social networks, and similar account names11
11.
Each account integrated three social markers: anarchist, vegan, and mother. Though the
Facebook page is simply my name, I created an Instagram account and Twitter handle with the name
AnarcaVegMama. I am the co-contributor to a blog hosted on WordPress called
Thoughtsofapregnantvegan. These digital spaces were consistently mediated through various forms of
contributions (images, repostings, video, and essays).
25
The data included ethnographic observations during demonstrations and general
assemblies, thus I paid careful attention to the polysemy of the message (Fauconnier and
Turner 2003:112). Stuart Hall points to the issues of disconnect with message encoding
and decoding in television, and argues that messages are always already interpretive (Hall
1980:173). The research interrogated the activists’ intention in the encoding process, but
also the public audience’s role in the decoding process. The messages from the speech
event are negotiated through performance and audience reception, “Importantly,
repetition and subversion are not properties ‘of’ text but reflect the engagements of
speakers and audiences with text production and reception…” (Leap 2011b:562). The
sidewalk is the activist stage and can become a site of disidentification that can elicit
disidentifcatory thoughts from the audience (Muñoz 2009:1–15). The ethnographic data
will capture the tensions between intentionality and audience reception, which is an
informative source of text for analysis (Hill 1995; Hill 2005:159) The data collected
before, during, and after public events, such as a demonstration, will be analyzed for
inconsistencies, tensions, consistencies, and cohesiveness in their responses. The
transcripts of these public events will constitute the corpus. Preliminary research with the
DC-based animal liberation collective indicates several key words used in
demonstrations: “you” “us” “animal” and “they.” I will look for the collations with these
terms to examine how activists articulate their politics and positionality in relation to the
targeted individual/corporation (Baker 2008:76). Through critical discourse analysis of
the participant-observation ethnographic data and digital media, the following project
addressed the ways in which activists attempt to recapitulate structures of power through
direct action.
26
SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH
Confrontational protests in Iceland, Portugal (Movimento 12 de Marco), Iran,
Bolivia, South Africa, Greece, Spain (Movimento 15-M), and throughout North America
(Occupy Movement) have challenged economic instability and injustice, government
corruption, environmental degradation, privatization, and resource depletion, exploitation
of labor, and diminishing sovereignty through global capitalism. Although the local
contexts of each movement are unique, there is an international solidarity amongst nonState actors publicly critiquing ideological, social, and economic [super] structures of the
State and capitalism. The confrontational tactics used, ranging from Twitter-organized
demonstrations to occupying public spaces to puppet shows in Washington D.C.’s
Malcolm X Park, queer the ways in which resistance are articulated and actualized
through public performance. The movements have been effective in [re] shaping public
dialogue on the systemic imbalances of power and the effectiveness of confrontational
modes of resistance. The successes of anarchist insurrectionary revolutions, however,
have elicited violent and visible forms of political repression. Legislation introduced in
North America and throughout the United Kingdom rearticulates and reapproriate
militaristic rhetoric to construct the metaphor of dissent as terrorism (Chomsky
2004:222).
There is a great deal of anthropological research on social movements,
neoliberalism, capitalism, and political repression. There is a growing number of
anthropologists doing engaged anthropology and adapting their classroom and field sites
to the streets. David Graeber, Jeffrey Juris, David Nugent, Maple Razsa, and Andrej
Kurnik have written on the global communities within the Occupy Movement. American
27
Ethnologist devoted a 2012 issue to examining the intersections of social media, space,
and direct action. However, the literature is often written by academics that do not
participate in the movements. There is a need for an in-depth ethnography of leftist
movements that study up from within the local context. This project will utilize my years
of activism and personal connections to activists in leftist movements in North America. I
will focus on the activists how knowledge is created and negotiated within smaller
communities.
Traditional social movement research focuses on single-issue activism rather an
intersectional activism that interrogates neoliberal capitalism, speciesism, and State
authority. Leftist activism is dismissed within traditional anthropological discourses on
dissent. Confrontational direct action is portrayed as reckless property destruction,
misguided protest, non-unified and scattered demands, and delusional visions of utopic
revolutionary change. Anthropologists further distance themselves from intersectional
leftist activists through the valuation of single-issue activism. There is a great deal of
Marxist anthropology that focuses on communities challenging capitalism and how it
manipulates workers, consumers, and further creates imbalances of power (Godelier
1977; Herman and Chomsky 2002; Mintz 1986; O’Laughlin 1975; Resnick and Wolff
1993). Environmental anthropologists have examined communities taking on
governments and corporations that are privatizing resources, degrading ecosystems, and
contributing to climate change (Haenn and Wilk 2005; Pine 2008). But these discourses
exist within fractured literatures on social movements that construct them as individual
entities rather than part in parcel to larger, coalitional networks. This project will
emphasize how activists situate their campaigns within a coalitional of broader social
28
justice work. The research will fill a gap in the literature by providing anthropology of
confrontational direct action that challenges neoliberal capitalism, speciesism, and State
authority.
ROLE OF THE RESEARCHER
Critical anthropological scholarship is an inherently political act that is predicated
on the subjectivities of the researcher(s) to reify or reimagine the lived realities of others.
The selection of research subject, participants, methodological tools, theoretical
framework and analysis consistently place the principal investigator in an active role.
This project is a symbiotic extension of a larger political agenda to strengthen a praxis
approach between the academic anthropological endeavor and activism. Specifically, the
project developed out of personal activism within the AELM as a self-identified anarchist
antispeciesist. The intimate relationship between the researcher and research participants
not only provided rich ethnographic data, but the relationship also required transparency
and reflexivity. Rather than solely be held to academic standards of rigor, the following
project is held to the rigor of authenticity amongst my peers. The research design
embraces this subjectivity as both honest and theoretically valuable, falling within a
history of activist anthropologists that maintain personal and political commitments to the
spaces in which they dually occupy as researcher and participant (Abu-Lughod 1990;
Chomsky et al. 1967; Chomsky 2012; Leap 1996; Leap and Boellstorff 2004; Wright
2006).
Throughout the project, I placed myself within larger context of the
demonstration, convergence, or exchange within digital media. In this sense, the role of
the researcher is interwoven into the narratives included in the study, but not the central
focus.
29
The project began with several key assumptions that were explored throughout
the project. The preliminary research with DARTT addressed the rhetorical efficacy of
political theater with regard to exposing the fallacies of neoliberalism. However, the
preliminary research did not address the rhetorical efficacy of other forms of direct action
or performativity. From the beginning of the project, I was a public figure within the
AELM and had participated in direct actions throughout the U.S. I had already
established a social network of anarchist antispeciesists prior to this project that shared a
similar political critique of constructed forms of privilege including (but not limited to)
racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and speciesism. These assumptions
remain part of the public performance of my own politics, and shaped my ability to
penetrate the secure spaces of activists. The intellectual exercise of examining the
efficacy of direct action used by anarchist antispeciesists is shaped by my personal
interest in advancing the movement aims for radical social change. Thus, in the interest in
advancing the movement aims, I was particularly motivated to apply academic rigor
through praxis-based research. Rather than treat the data as a means to an academic end,
each texts was contextualized and scrutinized to produce tangible knowledge that would
advance radical social change.
The project fostered both academic and personal growth through an immersive
participant-ethnography. The taken-for-granted interactions with colleagues and
comrades were treated as text, turning intimate exchanges into written records that would
later become part of the study. It is of note that my role within the movement also shifted
in personal ways throughout the study. I began this research as a single cisgender woman
in Washington, D.C. with a well-established record in both ecofeminist and anarchist
30
circles12. During the preliminary data collection, I met my partner and gave birth to our
daughter, Emory, less than a year later. I became pregnant again in the middle of the data
collection period for the study, and gave birth to our second daughter, Simon, two months
before the MAD Opening Day demonstration in 2014. In the concluding months of data
collection, I began to experience the isolation of raising children in radical leftist circles. I
also began a full-time job in 2013, while also teaching a 2x2 course load as an adjunct
instructor. The physical constraints on my body from pregnancy and childrearing
oftentimes restricted my ability to travel for demonstrations and convergences as the
study progressed. The economic constraints of maintaining employment also placed
additional barriers to publicly engage in direct action, both because of the public nature
of my job and the inability to take time off of work. Alas, these experiences shaped my
structural analysis in the project through personal narratives that otherwise remain
outside of academic discourses. It became an important political exercise to make space
for these challenges that disproportionately marginalize women and mothers in the
Academy. Though in the interest of avoiding an Oscar speech similar to Patricia Arquette
that attempts to have a white cisgender American woman cry ‘victim,’ I recognize the
ways in which my experiences are shaped by privilege (Johnson 2015; Solomon 2015)
The role of the research must be to localize and utilize the structural privilege of
12.
I have written extensively on the connections between gender, race, sexuality, and species
through the lens of ecofeminism. The literature builds on the significant contributions from Carol Adams,
Greta Gaard, Lori Gruen, Josephinne Donovan, and Marti Kheel. These women have served as both
academic and personal influences on my scholarship and activism. I met each of these women at different
points in my life and maintain a personal relationship with each of them, though Marti Kheel passed away
in 2013. I have been an invited key note speaker to ecofeminist conferences organized by several of them
as well as published in edited anthologies about the connections between gender and species exploitation
(Adams and Donovan 1995; Adams 2004; Donovan and Adams 2007; Adams 2011; Gaard 1993; Gaard
and Murphy 1998; Gaard, Estok, and Oppermann 2013; Kheel 2007; Grubbs 2011; Grubbs and Adams
2013).
31
institutionalized knowledge to produce scholarship that advances radical social change.
In this vein, the following project relies on the dialectic of political commitment and
academic scrutiny.
The methodological framework, detailed in Chapter 2, reflects this commitment
and establishes a transparent process of data collection and analysis. The ethnographic
data throughout this project, distilled in Chapter 3, integrate personal vignettes and social
media archives from the various campaigns, convergences, and collectives. The structural
overlay between neoliberalism and capitalism and how it naturalizes the violent
commodification of other species is teased out in Chapter 4, to establish the specific
paradigms of power challenged by anarchist antispeciesists. The symbolic significance
and revolutionary potential of political theater becomes paramount in Chapter 5
integrates the work of performance theorist, Irving Goffman, with the social theorist, Guy
Debord, to examine the rhetorical functions of direct action as spectacle. The fifth chapter
examines the ways in which anarchist antispeciesists engage with and resist political
repression through a contemporary (re)reading of Michele Foucault’s concept of
disciplinary punishment. Specifically, I looked to federal investigations and surveillance,
public trials and sentencing, and legislation that target leftist activism. Each chapter
advances a critical engagement with anarchist antispeciesist direct action, State
repression, and the performative ways in which activists resist. The project establishes a
necessary praxis between anthropological discourses of power, activism, and the use of
digital media to reimagine the potentiality for revolution in our physical realities.
32
CHAPTER TWO
METHOD
There is a certain lure to the spectacle of one queer standing onstage alone, with
or without props, bend on the project of opening up a world of queer language,
lyricism, perceptions, dreams, visions, aesthetics, and politics. Solo performance
speaks to the reality of being queer at this particular moment. More than two
decades into a devastating pandemic, with hate crimes and legislation aimed at
queers and people of color institutionalized as state protocols, the act of
performing and theatricalizing queerness in public takes on ever multiplying
significance. [Muñoz 2009:1]
This chapter focuses on the methodological approaches used to both collect and analyze
the data included in this study on anarchist antispeciesists in the AELM. These
movements are comprised of many clandestine cells, lone wolf activists, and
aboveground organizations that approach animal and earth liberation from different
tactical standpoints that share a fundamental critique of hierarchical authoritarian
institutions. The movements are not defined by established organizations, but rather
consist of a wide range of clandestine networks around the world13. These social actors
engage in anti-capitalist, anti-speciesist, and anti-dominionist campaigns focused on
radically changing the relationship between “humans,” the “environment,” and all other
species. There are, however, monikers that these clandestine networked cells can adopt in
13.
As a point of distinction, this study does not focus on mainstream hierarchical animal advocacy
organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Farm Sanctuary, People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Mercy for Animals. These organizations functions with
centralized memberships, bureaucratic for-pay leadership, and rely on corporate-media sponsorship such as
celebrity-endorsed marketing material.
33
connection with action if it meets the listed ideological stances from the organization14.
Although my activism with and advocacy of animal liberation predates the analysis, I
spent 19 months following several specific clandestine networks and campaigns15. These
include actions claimed by activists in the name of the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth
Liberation Front, Earth First!, Defending Animal Rights Today and Tomorrow (DART),
269life, and the Bunny Alliance. During the 19 months, I attended demonstrations,
participated in discussions at convergences, and extensively archived and collated
activists’ use of social media closely.
The concept of security culture is palpable in every action and gathering, thus it
presents a challenge to be known as “the researcher.” I structured the research so that I
would not collect information or documents that incriminate activists, including myself. I
struggled with the tension between gathering data for research and maintaining a
commitment to social organizing. For example, I oftentimes was forced to ethically
demarcate the difference between a personal conversation and a casual encounter with
friends or acquaintances at a demonstration and data collection. In addition, research
participants reluctantly engaged with me after I identified myself as a doctoral candidate
focusing on leftist direct action. When activists were asked to become a research
participant they either outright declined to be interviewed, or they set such specific
parameters for the interview that the content was too vague. In effort to uphold my moral
14.
Some of the monikers included in this study include Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation
Front, Earth First!, Defending Animal Rights Today and Tomorrow (DARTT), The Bunny Alliance and
269Life.
15.
Data was collected from May 2013-December 2014. Preliminary research was conducted from
November 2012-January 2013. The data collected in this study was approved through American
University’s Internal Review Board (IRB).
34
commitments to autonomy, anonymity, and illegal direct action, I focused more heavily
on publicly available interviews with activists. I utilized the raw footage of publicly
available interviews, public interactions on social media, and raw footage of
demonstrations. Only the names of particularly visible members of the AELM are
maintained to preserve historical accuracy16.
In effort to maintain my own credibility in the movement, as well as gather rich
ethnographic data in heavily surveilled areas, the following analysis relies on the tools of
ethnography. The demonstrations, gatherings, online debates and forums, as well as
casual conversations place my experiences within the analysis. There are other activist
voices woven throughout, as well as public interviews given by activists and political
prisoners. Whenever I reference my own experiences, all other names and identities of
the activists are made anonymous. In instances where I did record a demonstration or
conversation, all participants were made aware of the project and that all identifying
information would be removed. Because the physical spaces I used are so often resentful
of academics and the extraction of their experiences to produce academic research
inaccessible to activists in language and distribution (rather than radical change), there
were times I did not disclose that in addition to being an activist, I was also conducting
research as a doctoral candidate. In those cases, I only include my own observations
rather than quotes others shared with me.
Ethnography as Method: Activist ethnography
16.
The distinction here is between activists that have presumed, whether by intentional choice or
circumstance, to maintain a nonhierarchical leadership role within an AELM campaign. This includes
activists that publicly moderate prisoner support websites, press offices, direct action campaigns,
journalists, academic authors, and social media pages.
35
As discussed in Chapter One: Introduction, anthropologists can intentionally
structure their ethnography as a mode of activism to facilitate critical engagement with
systems of power.
Aligning myself with Abu-Lughod, I was keenly aware the varying
modes of communication within the AELM such as political tattoos, piercing, hairstyles,
clothing, posture during meetings, and digital media (Tumblr and Facebook handles, for
example). Throughout the study, I consistently “made space” rather than closed off
opportunities to include alternative modes of expression. For example, the initial research
design intended to focus on Facebook as social media. As I learned more about which
means of communication activists relied on, I began archiving other mediums such as
Instagram and Twitter to make space for these alternative modes. Transparency is an
important ethical component to this ethnography. In designing this study, I adopted
Naples framework of producing transparent manuscripts that detail her experience with
ethnography in various social justice movements. The ways in which I balanced my
commitments to both academic and activist integrity was through transparency. I
maintained a public blog throughout this study and posted components of my research as
they were produced17. The blog was linked to my Facebook account, which I consistently
posted to the Facebook page to increase traffic to the blog. Although users rarely
commented directly on the blog, it was oftentimes brought up in personal interactions at
demonstrations. The blog, a public and traceable repository, also held me accountable for
my own political commitments. These anthropologists provide an epistemological
framework to approach ethnography as political action. In order to accommodate the
17.
The online blog can be found at www.thoughtsofapregnantvegan.wordpress.com.
36
range of perspectives amongst direct action activists, mixed-method ethnography
provides an inclusive framework to gather in-depth, thick description (Geertz 1977).
Feminist methodologies provide a value framework that emphasize the ways in
which individuals understand and articulate their identities through Standpoint theory
(Cook and Fonow 1991; Cook and Fonow 1986). Through virtual and physical
performance, individuals further interact with their identities as an exchange and
interpretation of others. As a participant-observation ethnographic study, feminist
methodologies integrate these rich sites of text. Feminist methodologies posit that identity
politics inform our experiences, that our methods maintain a commitment to actionorientated research, and that the researchers uphold a transparent and ethical participation
in the populations in which anthropologists study (Harding 2003:2–17, 55, 103). As an
activist, it is imperative that my research maintain transparency, my methods stand the
critical examination of its subjects, and the research generated is part of a reciprocal
relationship to positively impact the AELM (Oakley 1981; Roberts 1981; Maguire 1987;
Lather 1988). I do not view anarchist antispeciesists or the AELM at large as an external,
contained site of information that I, as an anthropologist, can simply extract from to
produce knowledge in a top-down model. Rather, I locate myself as a collaborator in a
negotiated process of knowledge production that is flawed with power and social
hierarchies. Through feminist methodologies, I attempt to subvert traditional power
dynamics through studying up (Nader 1972:6; Nader 2014) .
The body of research is constituted by multi-sited and multi-focal participantobservation ethnography gathered between March 2013-August 2014. In additional to
personal and political affinities with anarchist antispeciesists, I relied on social media to
37
identify key organizers and follow the ways in which they utilize social media as a stage
to engage with the AELM. During the first stage of research, I identified attended home
demonstrations with the anarchist antispeciesist collective Defending Animal Rights
Today and Tomorrow (DARTT)18. While attending the demonstrations, I made personal
connections with the key organizers and conducted semi-structured interviews. These
interviews were ad hoc and without a narrow framework of questions to address. I
conducted the interviews casually after the demonstration and without any recording
devices. I also did not take notes while the activists spoke, as I felt that would detract
from the intimacy of disclosing political leanings and actions. Further, I wanted the
interview to feel conversational and have a natural flow from topic to topic without my
guidance. It was also important I did not appear suspicious or particularly imposing on
the other activists, as that would be detrimental to my activist credibility. The interviews
were brief, informal, and in public spaces. These activists became important interlocutors
in the Washington, D.C. area because of their connections with other anarchist and
antispeciesist campaigns (Said 1989).
The second stage of research, though is coincided with the first stage, involved
gathering ethnographic data in Toronto, Canada with the anarchist collective Marineland
Animal Defense (MAD), as well as several anarchist antispeciesist collectives
(campaigns and monikers) including: DARTT, MAD, The Bunny Alliance, Resistance
Ecology, Earth First!, Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF),
and 269Life. In addition to traveling to Toronto, Canada, I gathered ethnographic data
18.
I began attending DARTT demonstrations in September 2012, and have published part of my
ethnographic notes in a book chapter and presented the research at several academic conferences (Grubbs
2014a; Grubbs 2012c; Grubbs 2012b; Grubbs 2012e; Grubbs 2012d).
38
throughout the Western region of the United States, attending formal and informal
activist gatherings in Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado in June-July 2014. I
attended and participated in the Resistance Ecology conference hosted by Portland State
University, primarily geared toward activists, as well as the activist training summit,
Earth First! Rendezvous. The anarchist collective MAD conducts an aggressive campaign
targeting the marine animal amusement park Marineland and the park’s owner, John
Holer during the peak season from June-November. I attended the Opening Day
demonstrations in 2013 and 2014. I relied on the snowball effect to interview anarchist
anti-speciesist activists in the area. The interviews were informal, anonymous, and not
recorded. I remain in contact with the co-founder and organizer with MAD, as well as the
founders of the Bunny Alliance. The anarchist collective Bunny Alliance identifies itself
as a grassroots animal liberation organization engaged in an international campaign to
end the transportation of animals to laboratories (Bunny Alliance website). The
campaign, based on pressure tactics used by SHAC, has identified and targeted Delta, Air
France, and ABX Air because of their contractual agreements to ship animals to facilities
within the animal testing industry. These collectives and campaigns are discussed in
greater detail in Chapter Four: Direct Action as Spectacle.
The third component of data collection involved digital media and examined the
ways in which activists engage with direct action in social media. Originally, I intended
to interview activists in the U.K. that had been imprisoned for committing illegal direct
actions connected to the AELM. Throughout the first and second stages of research, it
became obvious that social media is one of the primary means of activist communication.
It was fascinating to follow the ways in which activists engaged with one another on the
39
virtual stages of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Rather than solely analyze the
archived interviews of released political prisoners, and ethnographic texts from
demonstrations and convergences, I decided to generate a corpus based on social media
accounts. Throughout this period of data collection, I would post questions, provocative
statements, and images to my own Facebook and others to generate discussions. I also
followed the activist threads on the websites Anarchistnews, Reddit, and Indymedia. The
included campaigns consist of activists that have been involved with the AELM for
several decades, and span many different collectives that have splintered or emerged
from various geographic concentrations of activists.19 To complement the brief and
performative nature of social media posts, I integrated several public interviews given by
activists in North America. These interviews include both video and written texts that do
not conceal the identity of the participants. I also weave together the informal interviews
I had with activists during demonstrations and convergences. The semi-structured
interviews consisted of open-ended questions about the respondents’ relationship with
anarchist antispeciesist activism and how they viewed their role in the AELM. The
questions focused on how the respondents articulate their political position within these
movements, their perceived role in the movement, their tactical approach to social
change, and what type of social change they advocate. In many cases, these questions
were addressed virtually through social media.
19.
The social media accounts include both centralized campaign or organization pages as well as
individual activists that self-identify as members. The Bunny Alliance, Marineland Animal Defense, Earth
First!, North American Animal Liberation Press Office, 269Life, and Resistance Ecology are among the
campaigns included. In addition, I included activists that expressed an affinity or affiliation with anarchist
antispeciesism, which brought in additional social media accounts from AELM organizations. For example,
[Anonymous A] is the co-founder of Marineland Animal Defense, but he also contributes to the Talon
Conspiracy, a press office and clearinghouse for anarchist antispeciesist direct action news.
40
The ethnographic data, as a starting point, directed the theoretical analysis as it
emerged from the demonstrations, the activists’ accounts of political repression, and realtime language use that took place in physical and digital spaces. Through studying up, I
became aware of several key tensions within the AELM that are less readily visible to
those outside the movement (Nader 1972). I relied on the nonverbal communication of
symbols such as XVX (Straight Edge Vegan), SXE (Straight Edge), 5-point star
(Pentagram), high-lace boots (oftentimes with black laces) in conjunction with a flight
jacket, silk handkerchief, and perhaps suspenders (Oi! Skinheads), knuckle tattoos, and
variations of the circle A (Anarchist). These symbols provide important markers in
understanding how activists articulate their narrative within the AELM. The symbols are
represented through clothing, memes, tattoos and scarification, posters, self-portraits,
patches, and stencils. Anthropologists have long since interrogated the social and cultural
value in how symbols, particularly when integrated with body modifications, are used to
communicate identity politics (Dececco, Williams, and Andros 1990; Pitts 2003; Krutak
2012). One of the larger sites of tension amongst anarchist antispeciesists centers on the
use of alcohol and other drugs. Because I do not identify as a Straight Edge Vegan, but
many of my respondents do identify as such, I was careful not to engage in alcohol use in
front of them. I relied on nonverbal symbols to determine the political leanings of my
respondent, and also to place them within a moral geography of anarchist and
antispeciesist politics. I also maneuvered certain activist spaces with privilege through the
nonverbal symbols of my partner; a circle A tattoo on his forearm and a prominent
septum ring. My interactions with these symbols provide a more comprehensive
41
understanding of how activists communicate identity and politics through in-group
communication.
Narrative, Evaluation, and Critical Discourse Analysis
This project is predicated on addressing a series of central questions: In what
ways does the State facilitate the social power and dominance of agri-vivisection
industries through the ideology of neoliberal capitalism, how do anarchist antispeciesists
engage with and subvert said power of the State and agri-vivisection industries through
direct action, and in what ways can we understand the relational dialectic between the
State and anarchist antispeciesists of political repression through the lens of punishment.
These central questions guided the methodological choices to use a critical framework
and queer linguistic approach that are aimed at uncovering what ideological structures
shape power, how activists engage with ideological structures through language, and why
are both activists and the State engaging with these structures in particular ways. The
following analysis relied on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to address these
questions.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is a type of discourse analytical research that
primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are
enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political
context. With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit
position, and thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social
inequality…CDA is not so much a direction, school, or specialization next to the
many other "approaches" in discourse studies. Rather, it aims to offer a different
"mode" or "perspective" of theorizing, analysis, and application throughout the
whole field (Heller 2003:252–253).
With roots in critical theory, CDA complements the feminist methodologies used to both
collect and interpret data. CDA emerged in the 1970’s out of the Lancaster School of
Linguistics, and is attributed to the work of Normal Fairclough and Ruth Wodak
42
(Jorgensen and Phillips 2002:92). Linguists relied on several notable critical theorists to
integrate the sociopolitical theories of power with the methodological aims of linguistic
inquiry20. As a framework rather than method, CDA emphasizes the ways in which
power and control are reproduced through “language as social practice” within a
sociopolitical context (Fairclough and Wodak 1997; Meyer and Wodak 2009). The main
tenets of CDA, according to Fairclough and Wodak (1997) are:
…1. CDA addresses social problems 2. Power relations are discursive 3.
Discourse constitutes society and culture 4. Discourse does ideological work 5.
Discourse is historical 6. The link between text and society is mediated 7.
Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory 8. Discourse is a form of
social action. Whereas some of these tenets have also been. [Fairclough and
Wodak 1997:271–80]
Anarchist antispeciesists engage with direct action through language both in-person and
through social media as a way to negotiate power. Activist ethnographies that utilize
CDA as a framework maintain that the critical component of Discourse Analysis relies
on a reflexive awareness of the anthropologist’s role of either reproducing or interrupting
power within the context of research. The intimate access I had with the AELM
throughout this study relied on a perceived credibility from activists outside of academia.
In fact, my academic credentials oftentimes proved detrimental to my perceived
credibility with activists. Researchers rely on financial grants to their fund research
studies and travel, however these have political implications. In order to maintain ethical
commitments to my research population (and my own ethical commitments) and ensure
my research did not reproduce the power of the State through academic surveillance, I
20.
The intellectual trajectory of CDA and its influential theorists include a (sometimes contested)
series of contributors, “…depending on the discipline, orientation, school or paradigm involved, these lines
of development are traced back…” (Van Dijk 1993:251). The contributors include Karl Marx, Theordor
Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jurgen Habermas, Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, Foucault, and Michel Pêcheux.
43
did not apply for funding from government agencies21. Further, I did not apply for
research funding from any agency that funded institutions or scholars that bred, housed,
or experimented on animals, engaged in deforestation, the genetic modification of
ecosystems, or the displacement of indigenous peoples22. I did not participate in academic
conferences or publications sponsored by agencies that did so. The methodological tools,
theoretical framework and data are only part of the research design. Largely, this project
entailed a critical engagement with power and the sociopolitical conditions in which
language was used. Critical Discourse Analysis, rather than its predecessor, Discourse
Analysis, is distinct in that:
That all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and
historically situated…That facts can never be isolated from the domain of values
or removed from some form of ideological inscription…The relationship between
concept and object and between signifier and signified is never stable or fixed and
is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and
consumption…That certain groups in any society are privileged over
others…[and] that mainstream research practices are generally, although most
often unwittingly, implicated in the reproduction of systems of class, race, and
gender oppression. [Locke 2004:25–26]
The central questions in this analysis are ones of challenging systems of power, socially
constructed hierarchies and privilege, the ways in which ideology influences language,
and how activists engage with language as an ideological exercise. These questions (and
the political aims involved in adequately addressing them) rely on the critical capacities
21.
This includes working with private security firms, public relations firms, government agencies,
and funding agencies that become stakeholders of the research project itself. For example, the National
Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) offers doctoral
research grants that focus on Terrorism Studies (Terrorism Research Award n.d.).
22.
This includes many university grants, private institutions that fund a broad range of research,
and national grants such as the National Institute of Health and the National Science Fund.
44
of a methodological framework and values-based ethics that aim to alleviate social
inequality and dominance.
From a discourse analytical and sociopolitical point of view it is tempting to study
the relations between discourse structures and power structures more or less
directly…we may assume that directive speech acts such as commands or orders
may be used to enact power, and hence also to exercise and to reproduce
dominance…we may examine the style, rhetoric or meaning of texts for strategies
that aim at the concealment of social power relations, for instance by playing
down, leaving implicit or understanding responsible agency of powerful social
actors in the events represented in the text. However, the relationships involved
and the conditions on reproduction are far more complicated than that…Social
inequality, at the societal level, is not simply or always reproduced by individual
(speech) acts such as commands… [Van Dijk 1993:251]
It is through the detailed attention to context, symbolic action, and a political imaginary
that I engaged with the corpus. The application of CDA provided a necessary critical lens
to understand how the discourse connects to society, and the ways in which discourse
reproduces dominance and inequality by focusing on the role of role of performance
(social representations) in the minds of anarchist antispeciesists (Van Dijk 1993:251). A
queer linguistic framework provides a bridge between the use of grounded theory in
which I focused on neoliberal capitalism, performativity and spectacle, and political
repression and punishment, and the linguistic analysis in which I focused on how
anarchist antispeciesists utilize language to confront and rearticulate power. Foucault’s
contributions to CDA point to the distinction that, “…discourses are not only mere
expressions of social practice, but also serve particular ends, namely the exercise of
power,” which connect more broadly to Foucault’s contributions to understanding power
as not only as a method of discipline but also to understand truth and contradiction
(Smart 1983:80–83). The texts used in this analysis, particular those from social media,
are influx engagements with performing, interpreting, and recapitulating power. The
45
chants at a demonstration or proclamations made in the courtroom are reactionary and
seek to [re]create a discourse of power that offers a different reality through the political
imaginary (Graeber 2009b). These sites of tension between resistance and hegemony are
woven throughout the texts, and incorporated through CDA. As a methodological
extension of CDA, though not a central tool of inquiry, I utilized corpus linguistics (CL)
to analyze the ways in which ideological structures of power are both reified and
recapitulated through language.
The technical method of CL emerged in the 1960’s out of the Speech Act Theory
credited to John Austin and John Searle, though there are historical records of corporabased analyses that predate the 1960’s (Adolphs 2008:7). CL, similar to CDA, provides a
critical engagement with social structures that has been used by critical linguists
interested in disrupting hegemonic interpretations of language (Baker 2008:73; Decena
2008a; Leap 2011a; Leap 2014). There are many approaches to CL that place varying
emphasis on the method as corpus-based and corpus-driven. Broadly speaking, the
various approaches to CL share a basic practice of analyzing a set of machine-readable
texts, or a set of texts refered to as a corpus, in order to address a series of research
questions (McEnery and Hardie 2011:2–5). The use of computational software to conduct
computer-based text analysis allows for large sets of data to ‘study everyday language’
(Tausczik and Pennebaker 2010:24). The corpus in this analysis, specifically the RSS
feed of content from Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, were too large to analyze by hand
and eye within a practical timeframe, thus I integrated two Open Source software
platforms to analyze the data. I utilized the software AntCon to quantify the use of words
identified through preliminary research, and also to conduct concordance research to
46
uncover which words appeared in conjunction with identified words. The concordance
listings demonstrate the linguistic context in which particular words are used (Biber,
Conrad, and Reppen 1998:27–28). These data sets were also run through Wordle to
create visual representations of commonly used words in Word Clouds. Words, however,
do not solely exist within the context of the surrounding sentence, but language itself
intervenes in a social context and the values held in that context. When the frame of CDA
is used with the method of CL, CL, Fowler notes three distinct considerations with the
use of corpora and, “…the context of the social circumstances in which they have been
produced…to reveal ‘the ideology coded implicitly behind the overt propositions…[and
to] challenge common sense by pointing out that something could have been represented
some other way, with a very different significance” (Hunston 2002:109).
The corpus, derived from both social media and ethnographic notes, exists within
a socially and culturally specific context. When taken together, the interviews, field
notes, and texts from social media constitute a diverse range of life stories from activists
that capture the external social exchanges and the internal narratives (Linde 1993:51). I
looked for evaluative clauses that address the secondary research questions focused on
how activists understand their activism in relation to the State. Evaluation can be found
anywhere in the ordered structural parts of the text, and will provide insight into how
respondents perceive their activism in relation to anarchist anti-speciesist movements. In
effort to preserve local modes of knowledge and expression, and the subjectivities of the
respondents, the data analysis focused on evaluation (Thompson and Huntson 2001:6).
The demonstrations themselves follow an ordered structure with optional abstract
statements that summarize the purpose of the demonstration, can offer evaluation, or
47
serve an interactive function (Linde 1993:69). The demonstration proclamations and
chants also include orientation, narrative clauses, and the coda to conclude the spectacle.
There are distinctions made between the demonstrations carefully scripted and rehearsed
and those spontaneously delivered without premeditation. The focus on narrative and
evaluation within the corpus facilitates a rich anthropological discourse on social
movements, subjectivities, and perceptions of State repression.
The data include ethnographic observations during the demonstrations and
general assemblies. In examining the text, I paid careful attention to the polysemy of the
message (Turner 2003:112). Stuart Hall points to the issues of disconnect with message
encoding and decoding in television, and argues that messages are always already
interpretive (Hall 1980:173). The research interrogates the activists’ intention in the
encoding process, but also the public audience’s role in the decoding process. The
messages from the speech event will be negotiated through performance and audience
reception, “Importantly, repetition and subversion are not properties ‘of’ text but reflect
the engagements of speakers and audiences with text production and reception…” (Leap
2011:562). The sidewalk is the activist stage and can become a site of disidentification
that can elicit disidentifcatory thoughts from the audience (Muñoz 2009:1–18). The
audience is veiled through user feedback, however, on social media sites. The ways in
which I interpreted the data from social media included user comments and user
interactions through hashtags, Facebook tagging, and the integration of social media
accounts with one another through coded linkages (#, @, and tagging). The ethnographic
data captures the tensions between intentionality and audience reception, which is an
informative source of text for analysis (Hill 2005:159). The data collected before, during,
48
and after public events, such as a demonstration, has been analyzed for inconsistencies,
tensions, consistencies, and cohesiveness in their responses. The transcripts of these
public events constitute part of the corpus. Preliminary research with the DC-based
animal liberation collective indicates several key words used in demonstrations: “you”
“us” “animal” and “they.” I looked for the collocations with these terms to examine how
activists articulate their politics and positionality in relation to the targeted
individual/corporation (Baker 2008:76). Through discourse analysis of the participantobservation ethnographic data and life story interviews, I attempted to capture the many
voices of activists in the AELM. Although the linguistic methods provide a way to
understand the use of language, the ethnographic data focused on the performance
through language.
Performance as Method: Nuanced modes of resistance
The ways in which activists rely on physical performance, both verbal and
nonverbal, cannot be quantified through an analysis of transcribed text. The tone,
gestures, clothing, sarcasm, and use of physical props oftentimes fall outside the purview
of traditional CL methodologies. More importantly, these features of text exist within the
fractured moments of empowerment during convergences or demonstrations within the
larger structures of dominance and control. Thus, rather than:
…privileging texts and narratives, we could also look to scenarios as meaningmaking paradigms that structure social environments, behaviors, and potential
outcomes…The scenario includes features well theorized in literary analysis, such
as narrative and plot, but demands that we also pay attention to milieu and
corporeal behaviors such as gestures, attitudes, and tones not reducible to
language. Simultaneously setup and action, scenarios frame and activate social
dramas…All scenarios have localized meaning, though, many attempt to pass as
universally valid. Actions and behaviors arising from the setup might be
predictable, a seemingly natural consequence of the assumptions, values, goals,
49
power relations, presumed audience, and epistemic grids established by the setup
itself…The scenario requires us to wrestle with the social construction of bodies
in particular contexts…Scenarios by definition introduce the generative critical
distance between social actor and character. Whether it is a question of mimetic
representation (an actor assuming a role) or of performativity, of social actors
assuming socially regulated patterns of appropriate behavior, the scenario more
fully allows us to keep both the social actor and the role in view simultaneously,
and thus recognize the areas of resistance and tension. The frictions between plot
and character (on the level of narrative) and embodiment (social actors) make for
some of the most remarkable instances of parody and resistance in performance
traditions in the Americas. [Taylor 2003:28–30]
To uncover the ways in which scenario influences text and how the text co-constructs a
negotiated scenario, the analysis requires a method that accounts for how activists
communicate through performance. The texts of a demonstration, when run through
AntCon and examined for linguistic patterns, provide only one isolated element of the
speech act. The multi-coded elements of communication, particularly the inflection and
use of sarcasm, are unaccounted form. Further, the analysis of social media is inherently
interactive, conducted within social contexts, and constrained by both interpersonal and
intrapersonal performativity. Thus, the project relied on CDA for a methodological
framework, and integrated a mixed-methodological toolbox of CL and Performance
Studies.
Rather than collate hundreds of demonstration texts, I chose to focus on a tangible
number of texts that can be analyzed by hand. I also relied on the visual archive within
my field notes, including pictures and video footage. Similar to Diana Taylor’s
ethnographic accounts of the H.I.J.O.S. in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2000, I was
interested in how anarchist antispeciesists utilize performance protest to transmit
traumatic memory and challenge neoliberal capitalism and speciesism (Taylor 2003:165).
Although trauma studies tends to narrowly focus on the individual, performance studies
50
emphasizes the collective, public functions of performativity. Similar to the Escrache al
Plan Condor that Taylor recounts in May 2000, the direct actions I engaged in with
anarchist antispeciesists were powerfully charged and reaffirming23. The act of “marking
the space was thrilling” and provided a fractured space and place where activists felt in
charge of [re]creating their own reality. Whether I was attending a home demonstration
or a public protest, “the trauma was palpable, the emotional power contagious, and the
sense of political empowerment energizing. Even I…felt renewed hope and resolve”
(Taylor 2003:164). The integration of music, dance, puppetry, comedy, and physical
interactions infuse playfulness to the overwhelmingly depressing issues addressed:
vivisection, hunting, fur trade and animal trapping, slaughter and captivity24. The
demonstrations I attended, as well as private gatherings and public convergences,
featured a dynamic range of engagement. Several large demonstrations featured the
international puppet theater collective, Bread and Puppet Theater. Bread and Puppet
Theater was founded in 1963 in the Lower East Side of New York City, and challenged
the cost of rent, poor housing conditions, and the police through satirical puppetry. The
founder, Peter Schumann, clearly articulates the powerful use of satirical puppetry as a
mode of resistance:
We give you a piece of bread with the puppet show because our bread and theater
belong together…We want you to understand that theater is not yet an established
form, not the place of commerce you think it is, where you pay to get something.
Theater is different. It is more like bread, more like a necessity. Theater is a form
23.
Escraches are acts of public shaming, a form of guerilla performance, that was used in
Argentina by young adults to expose the ways in which individuals who challenged government corruption
were targeted, kidnapped, and murdered (Taylor 2003:164)
24.
The concept of playfulness and play is discussed in great detail in Chapter Five: Direct Action
as Spectacle.
51
of religion. It preaches sermons and builds a self-sufficient ritual. Puppet theater
is the theater of all means. Puppets and masks should be played in the street. They
are louder than the traffic. They don’t teach problems, but they scream and dance
and display life in its clearest terms. Puppet theater is of action rather than
dialogue. The action is reduced to the simplest dance-like and specialized
gestures. A puppet may be a hand only, or it may be a complicated body of many
heads, hands, rods and fabric. We have two types of puppet shows: good ones and
bad ones, but all of them are for good and against evil.” [Bread and Puppet
Theatre n.d.]
The puppet shows rely on a particular context in which the use of satire is both
recognizable and empowering. Performance Studies provides a lens to analyze the ways
in which activists engage with structures of power, both as identity performance and
protest performance, through physical and virtual interactions. Because performances,
“function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of
identity through reiterated, or what Richard Schechner has called “twice-behaved
behavior,” the acts themselves communicate ideology (Taylor 2003:3). Therefore, the
analysis of these performances must accommodate the nuanced, multi-coded
communication that is embodied in acts of resistance.
Bringing together the work of linguistic anthropologists such as Michele Rosaldo
and Richard Bauman, the work of dramaturgical anthropologists such as Erving Goffman
and Clifford Geertz, and the rhetorical scholarships of Kenneth Burke and Judith Butler,
the following project places great emphasis on the creativity at play in the use of
language, both verbal and nonverbal, through a negotiation between “speakers” and the
audience (Addo 2009; Beeman 1993; Chen 2011; Muñoz 1999; Shepard, Bogad, and
Duncombe 2008).25 The study of performance protest was paramount in David Graeber’s
52
1999 ethnography of anarchists that gathered for the World Trade Organization protests
in Seattle, Washington. The injection of humor and jest in confrontational direct action
has been refered to as tactical frivolity by anthropologists such as Graeber and Naomi
Klein (Graeber 2009b; Klein 2000; MacDonald 2005; Prague n.d.)26. The performance
does not simply challenge an institution of power, but rather it challenges the political
imaginary to re-envision a society without institutions at all:
The power sought is not political power but the power of imagination…Immanent
in activist practice, I would say, is a theory that the ultimate form of power is
precisely the power of imagination. It is this power that creates sociality and
social form; the experience of concocting a chant and witnessing it become a
collective project becomes an immediate experience of such power. But this
power is a sacred force that can only, possibly, be represented by ridiculous selfmockery. This self-mockery is represented in direct actions through such things as
the use of huge puppets, dance and street theatre which constitute a kind of
symbolic warfare that aims to re-frame reality in terms other than those defined
by the representatives of the state, most notably the police. [Bretherton 2011]
The task of political re-imagination is both empowering and daunting. Thus, the
interjection of humor and satire allow for the impossibilities to seem tangible,
entertaining, and even comical.
The performance creates a less daunting form of
disidentification with neoliberal capitalism and speciesism.
The history of performance studies is interdisciplinary in both function and form.
The contributions include scholarship in anthropology, communication, theater studies
and philosophy, and have provided a useful lens to examine colonialism around the world
25.
The use of the term “speaker” does not imply verbal utterances constitute the active
participation in the performance. In addition to including nonverbal communication such as gestures and
bodily movement, I challenge the ableist assumption that verbal communication must be spoken in the
traditional sense.
26.
The term tactical frivolity refers to the use of frivolous, or humorous, tactics that challenges
authority through nonviolence. The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army has been noted as one of the
prominent groups that integrated both theatrical and carnival performances during the confrontational 2005
G8 Summit protests in Scotland.
53
(Taylor 2003:33). Linguistic scholars and archeologists faced the challenge of
interrogating how non-Western, non-empirical linguistic practices and codes were
transmitted through performances, and how those practices had been erased from
contemporary accounts of native communities. Performance studies, in this sense,
provide a recapitulation of erased peoples, erased modes of communication, and erased
methodologies of resistance. Within the academic disciplines of anthropology and
communication, both anarchist antispeciesists and direct action remain on the fringe. The
ideological critiques of neoliberal capitalism and authoritarianism, in conjunction with
the antispeciesist challenge to dominion, have not been adequately included in social
movement discourses, environmental anthropology, environmental communication, or
broadly, overarching critical discourses within the social sciences (Best et al. 2007;
Graeber 2009b; Grubbs 2012e). The process of data collection and analysis is a political
act of creating space for confrontational rhetoric, nontraditional ways of protest, and
social critiques that challenge foundational systems of power.
Direct action relies on tension, confrontation, and interactions internally and
externally with audiences. The exchange of performances intentionally creates a friction
by exposing hegemonic compulsory behavior and demonstrating how these behaviors
contradict moral truisms. For example, performance protests often rely on lengthy
proclamations delivered by organizers to describe violence against other species, name
individuals that perpetrate said violence, and assert interventions that would cease the
acts of violence. The proclamations rely on the assumption that the audience was
unaware of this violence, and thus would be outraged to learn how their actions
contributed to it. As discussed in Chapter One: Introduction, the modality of performance
54
(as a queer rearticulation of resistance) is referred to as the “worldmaking power of
disidentifactory performances” (Muñoz 2009:ix). Similar to how Muñoz focused on the
tensions created by feeling disconnected and disjointed with representations of gender
and sexuality, I looked at, “disidentifactory performances of politics, acts that I will
describe as reformulating the world through the performance of politics,” and how the
State retaliates through interpellating activists as ecoterrorists (Muñoz 2009:ix; Pêcheux
1982:158–159). While I stood on the street corner holding the bullhorn, with a scarf
wrapped over my mouth, I felt the blonde hairs raise on my arms. I felt my hands shake
with the excitement, my heart pounding through my chest. The social and political
ramifications for my actions were suspended in time, and I was filled with surges of
power and thoughts of revolution rather than repression. I looked around and other
activists shared an electric synergy that is absent in everyday interactions. I carried on
conversations with onlookers that made these fringe, radical concerns seem rationale and
legitimate. I watched as the strangers tried to avert their eyes from the giant foam-core
posters displaying maimed rabbits and the carcasses of vivisected beagles. Politicians,
diplomats and corporate executives frequented this particular sidewalk in downtown
Washington, D.C., but that afternoon it was reclaimed. The tensions were palpable. The
audience found themselves disidentifiying with corporations they thought represented
moral truisms (AstraZeneca = science, medical progress) and struggling to identify with
activists deemed ecoterrorists. Herein lies part of the power of performance studies as a
methodology to analyze the ethnographic data collected in this study: the tensions, multicoded messages, layered performances, and playful performativity become texts in and of
themselves.
55
Limitations
Corpus linguistics, albeit all research, carries with it subjectivities that
intentionally and unintentionally inform the data analysis. These subjectivities can inform
the selection of texts that constitute the corpora, the theoretical framework of the
researcher, and the ways in which context comes into play. Linguists have responded to
the claims that issues of confirmation bias in selecting the sample and applying
contextual understandings run counter to the scientific method with regard to falsifiability
(McEnery and Hardie 2012:3–13). This research, however, is not aimed at making large
generalizations about all social movements or activist communication. Rather, the
contextual understandings and theoretical background of the principal investigator
provide for rich understandings of the specific sample population; anarchist
antispeciesists.
Subjectivities of the researcher can be a powerful tool of investigative when
brought to the forefront rather than cloaked in rhetoric of sterile objectivity. Academic
research interrogating social movements, broadly, and social movement campaigns,
specifically, is always already interpellated within sociopolitical realities. The ways in
which sociopolitical realities inform our selections of research populations and how the
corpus confirms or refutes already-established theoretical leanings can also create
productive tension between the researcher and the research findings. Specifically, I began
this research as an anarchist antispeciesist that endorsed direct action. The data has been
aggregated through a series of linguistic tools, and did not always produce positive
representations of both the AELM and direct action. However, these sites provided useful
56
junctures of critical engagement that would not be possible if the author did not disclose
or integrate these confirmation biases.
My ability to enter particular spaces was hindered by not just financial barriers to
travel for demonstrations, activist trials, and convergences, but also by physical barriers
to leave my breastfeeding children for several days. For the 6 weeks spent in the Western
region of the United States (Washington, Oregon, California, and Colorado), my young
children were in tow. Feminist anthropologists have written on the physical and
sociological pressures of academic mothers, and this was exacerbated by the constraints
that mothering places on activists. I found myself more cautious of police presence and
the threat of arrest knowing that my child would be taken out of my custody during the
immediate proceedings. When there were threats of physical violence such as pepper
spray or assault, I found myself retreating out of fear that the fetus (while pregnant) or
toddler (during later demonstrations) would be injured. For other activists reading my
behavior, I felt as if I appeared less confrontational, less active, thus less passionate about
the movement. My reserved and passive behavior may have been read as fair-weather
activism rather than confrontational direct action. In this way, I left many convergences
and demonstrations feeling more like a nuisance than an asset. Although I realize my
physical body and the rhetorical value of having a child present holds value, it is
undoubtedly problematic as it reinforces notions of heteronormative cisgender privilege.
The study was hindered by my ability to travel for larger demonstrations and
activist trials. I was not able to make the kind of connections that flourish in face-to-face
interactions due to physical and financial constraints. I addressed this by integrating raw
footage and edited videos of demonstrations across the country that has been posted
57
online. These include video archives from activists each of the campaigns included in this
study. The archived videos provide a visible chronology of the campaigns prior to my
original points of contact in 2012. Through the internet and social media I was also able
to access images, commentary, and news articles that documented demonstrations. This
provided a large corpus of chants, songs, public debates, and comments without the
environmental tax of my transportation.27 This ethnography balances the limitations with
the strengths through intentional reflexivity. I remained cognizant of my presence in the
research and in the physical spaces I occupy as an activist and academic. Further, I
remained flexible and was humbled through the process of adaptation, as I had to adjust
methods of data collection and analysis.
Conclusion
Weaving it all together
The mixed methodological approach facilitated the ethnographic data collection
and data analysis through a queer linguistic approach to CDA and performance studies.
The data was collected from May 2013-December 2014, and included digital media
acquired through social media. Although much of the thick description and ethnographic
data was collected through personal observations and interactions, significant data was
gathered through digital communities such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.
The performativity of resistance manifests itself within a complicated nexus of physical
27.
As an anarchist antispeciesists, and as a scholar affiliated publicly with the AELM, it was
important that the methods of data collection reflected a larger politic about ecological devastation. When
opportunities presented themselves to carpool, engage in international conference panels online rather than
in-person, and to minimize the amount of individual travel I used, I took advantage of these. Not only does
excessive international and domestic travel run counter to my own politic and means, it would also serve as
detrimental to my public reputation in the movement.
58
interactions and digital communication, thus requiring a nexus of research methods to
adequately address the contemporary realities of activism. The study focused on how
language is used to co-construct individual and collective identity within the context of
recapitulating systems of power, how language is used through direct action, and
ultimately, how power is negotiated through the performance of protest. Each chapter
connected theoretical discourses across disciplines with the data collected to localize
abstract discussions of neoliberal capitalism, dramaturgical and spectacular performance
and political repression with anarchist antispeciesist direct action. As Muñoz states in the
opening quote, there is a lure to the spectacle of a few activists standing on a
metaphorical stage (physical or virtual) and opening up a world of anarchist antispeciesist
language, lyricism, perceptions, dreams, visions, aesthetics, and politics. The spectacle
exists within a suspended moment in time that fractures compulsory speciesism and
hegemonic authoritarianism. For these moments, the political terrain that commodifies
other-than-human animal bodies through capture, rape, and slaughter are halted. Activists
can temporarily abandon the overwhelming sense of loss and grief, and instead perform
and theatricalize the political imaginary they seek to create. The methodologies used in
this study allow for a close reading of the performances and how activists engage with
structures of power, while maintaining a commitment to producing approachable research
that contributes to radical social change.
59
CHAPTER THREE
ETHNOGRAPHY
“I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety
and time.” [Vonnegut 1991:2]
“So it goes.” [Vonnegut 1991:2]
The journey into "the field" is not a monolithic journey amongst all anthropologists. I
found myself addressing a series of assumptions when I explained to others that my
fieldwork is based on a fluid, fragmented, oftentimes digital space without geographical
borders. There was an assumption that I had take physical luggage with me on a journey
in which I abandoned my own community in order to submerge myself into another.
There was an assumption that I would physically enter a space that was not my own, or
that you at the very least maintain the dual-position of both researcher and member of the
respective community. Unfortunately for those that made such assumptions, my
explanations challenged these generalizations about the anthropological exercise of
ethnography.
According to Michel de Certeau, ‘What the map cuts up, the story cuts across’
[1984:129]. This pithy phrase evokes a postcolonial world crisscrossed by
transnational narratives, Diaspora affiliations, and, especially, the movement and
multiple migrations of people, sometimes voluntary, but oftentimes economically
propelled and politically coerced. In order to keep up with such a world, we now
think of “place” as a heavily trafficked intersection, a port of call and exchange,
instead of a circumscribed territory. A boundary is more like a membrane than a
wall….”location” is imagined as an itinerary instead of a fixed point…”local
context” expands to encompass the historical, dynamic, often traumatic,
movements of people, ideas, images, commodities, and capital. [Conquergood
2002:145]
60
In some cases, I did pack a bag and physically travel to another city, another state, or
another country. But, in many cases, I remained in the comfortable [arm]chair in my
office and actively archived social media sties. I may have grabbed a jacket to take with
me, but the demonstrations were often just a few miles from my home. The spaces in
which I occupied to participate with and collect data from throughout this ethnographic
study are linked together through intersectional political affiliations, social networks of
activism, nepotistic interpersonal connections. This provided a series of rich sites that
embody the fluid and flexible functionality of direct action activism the ideological
leanings of anarchist antispeciesists. As a participant in these communities, my voice is
woven consistently throughout the texts. Rather than constantly maneuver the dual role of
researcher and activist, I came to define myself as an activist that also does research.
Thus, the role of research became suspended to prioritize my identity and commitments
as an activist. The only role I found that posed a consist challenge to the quantity of data
collected was my role as a mother. This became an interesting and unexpected constraint
on my ability to gather a wide-range of data throughout the research.
Bullhorns, balaclavas and babies: Placing myself
I fall within a rich history of anthropologists that struggled with the personal and
political boundaries between themselves and their research subjects. The struggle,
however, yields an academic mestiza-of-sorts that is capable of providing emotionally
rich narratives that exist within the invisible borderlands between our academic and
political selves (Bambara 1984; Anzaldúa, Cantú, and Hurtado 2012). The convergences,
demonstrations, and courtrooms, and classrooms are but merely stages in which we
perform versions of ourselves. They are the physicality of an embodied location that does
61
not require luggage, travel, or penetrating foreign spaces. The role of an activist is to
transcend the geographical limits that often isolate us from one another. Activists rely on
social media, the internet, and phone calls from afar to engage in community despite
financial and legal barriers, as well as other restrictions that make it difficult to travel. As
a mother of two that works a full-time job, teaches two courses per semester as an adjunct
instructor, and as an activist that is involved in intersectional (but oftentimes mutuallyexclusive) social movements, I am tasked to maneuver a variety of barriers. Throughout
the entire planning, data collection, and writing stages of this research, I have been both
pregnant and on-demand breastfeeding. Each time a demonstration is called, a court
hearing is held, and a national convergence in organized, I weigh my ability to attend
with my ability to travel with children. I am aware of the privileged spaces I occupy:
heteronormative co-parenting, cisgender performance, white skin and (presumed) class
mobility, graduate education, physical ability, and citizenship. These are listed in no
particular order or priority. With full acknowledgement of the privileged spaces I occupy,
it is also worth exploring the structural privileges I am denied as a female and as a
mother.
The following project interrogates my role as both researcher and activist. I
engage in an honest and reflective dialogue about actualizing radical social change in
spite of State repression. Through a 15-month participant observation ethnography based
on anarchist anti-species activism in the U.S. and Canada, this research contributes to an
international discourse on social movement theory. Further, this research provides an
important praxis in the ever-expanding gap between direct action and academia. The
stories told are anonymous, unless the activist has done so publicly. Many of the actions
62
discussed are illegal. The morality is not debated, though I believe these movements are
powerfully necessary. However, the data derived and theories professed are an important
part of crucial debates in the fields on anthropology and communication. I engage this
research with the perspective that I am always, already in the field. As an anarchist
antispeciesist that both ideologically and politically identifies with intersectional direct
action used by many of the anarchist antispeciesists in this study, the site of research lies
in my lived reality. Whether it is showing up to work and closeting politics or carefully
crafting a public presence in the realm of social media, I am always already negotiating
the ways in which I penetrate “the field.”
Reproducing divisions through reproductive choices
When I attended my first home demonstration in Washington, D.C., I was 5
months pregnant with my first child. In jest, one of the activists referred to me as the
“vegan breeder.” The activist also told me that he had been electively sterilized and
published his critique of human reproduction in a zine. I learned early in my own
activism that although I have access to a multitude of privilege in dominant culture as a
cisgender woman that is married to the man that “fathered” my two children, in anarchist
anti-speciesist circles I would experience tension because of it. Alternatively, these
decisions would oftentimes be at the center of public debate between activists. In 2013 I
was invited to weigh in on a keynote debate for the Institute for Critical Animal Studies
North America Conference. One of the speakers (that I did not know) contacted me for an
interview because they heard I was one of the few in the movement that had birthed a
child. This indicated that people had utilized word-of-mouth and social media to clearly
mark me because of my reproductive choices. Because pregnancy is a physical
63
embodiment, particularly on a 5’2” petite frame, it was difficult to closet my pregnancies.
Since the birth of my first child in March 2012, I have been publicly breastfeeding.
Throughout this entire study, I did not attend a demonstration without a child, either
physically with me or in utero. It is not uncommon to find me at a demonstration with a
baby in one hand and a sign in the other. In one large march in Washington, D.C., I kept
to the end of the cluster of demonstrators and used the stroller as a physical barrier to
keep the police back. Outside of the Freddy Mac office building with several hundred
protesters, I stood at the front, face-to-face with Department of Homeland Security
officers aggressively holding canisters of pepper spray and kept repeating, “I am 8
months pregnant.” The use of my body as strategic capital for the movement is not a new
topic for debate amongst feminists (Collins 2006; Nicholson 1997; Williams and
Chrisman 1994). However, it is worth noting the dialectical tension between the ways
these sexual and reproductive choices are seen as privilege for dominant culture and
grounds for exclusion and being discredited by anarchist antispeciesist in the AELM.
The reproductive choices of anarchist antispeciesists have also been subject to
debate and splinters in the movement. Following the 2013 conference debate that I was
asked to contribute to, I found myself in an international debate through social media that
pitted my views against another female activist that I highly respected and had worked
with in the past. In a movement without leaders or hierarchical structures, there remains a
tendency to symbolically appoint representatives that come to embody the tropes of
heroism or tropes of villainism. Following the debate, the keynote speaker who was
critical of activists that biologically reproduce posted her thoughts on her own personal
blog. After reading the entry, I wrote a response and articulated my arguments against the
64
condemning of reproductive choices. The entries were posted to Facebook and an online
discussion ensued. The comments from others focused less on content and quickly
polarized the discussion into me versus her. Although her and I never directed our
criticism at one another, those who contributed either applauded or condemned our
arguments. I was either the shameful birther or she was the ethnocentric sterilized white
woman. I was either the brave defender of mothers globally or she was the selfless
activist truly committed to reducing the Western footprint.
The following vignettes are windows into the much larger collection of stories,
but they illustrate the ways in which anarchist antispeciesists engage in and articulate
direct action and how activists resist State repression. The first trip to St. Catharines,
Canada for the Marineland Animal Defense Opening Day demonstration marked the
beginnings of the physical interactions with the organizers. The trip also shaped the
subsequent interactions, as well as the structure of the project itself. It was on this trip
that I began to see how gender and reproductive choices operationalized the patriarchal
divisions that oftentimes place men at the forefront of social movement organizing.
Because of practical spatial issues (such as attending evening punk shows, standing next
to or holding a bullhorn to chant, or traveling ad hoc to demonstrations with others) I
struggled with the desire to gain access to spaces without the flexibility to do so. As I
traveled back and forth to Canada, attended demonstrations throughout Ohio and
Washington, D.C., and spent 2 months frequenting anarchist spaces and convergences in
the Pacific Northwest United States, I took notes. The notes were scribbled on napkins,
scrap paper, and the back of receipts. I took voice memos in the car while my daughters
slept, and I rapidly text away on my cell phone if I was able to sit in the passenger seat. I
65
awoke before my children to type the random thoughts that kept me awake at night, and
in some cases I snuck out of bed only to fall asleep at the computer. Alas, the stories
included here are merely parts to a larger whole. There are stories told in other chapters,
stories I have told in other publications, and stories I have saved to tell another day.
Direct Action Campaigns
Defending Animal Rights Today & Tomorrow (DARTT)
The DARTT collective is a small, Washington, D.C.-based direct action collective
that has unofficial ties to the international SHAC campaign. DARTT maintains a website
with little information about the history of the organization or its constituents. Instead,
the web site primarily serves as a community resource with a “DARTT board” open to
user posts, a detailed repository of DC protest laws and National Lawyers Guild contacts,
upcoming events, and resources including local groups, prisoner support networks, and
leftist news outlets. The campy phrasing throughout the site retains a sense of play,
tagging slogans on each of the resource tabs. Some of these include, “There is no
JUSTICE! Just US!” “We will never back down, never compromise and WE WILL
ALWAYS WIN!” and the phrase “Taking Aim at animal exploitation” written across a
picture of a billiards board in the “DARTT board” section (Defending Animal Rights
Today & Tomorrow 2011). The collective is decentralized, non-hierarchical, and thus
does not have central leadership figures. The website reflects this lateral structure, and to
the downfall of its clarity, does not have key individuals identified to contact. It is only
through attending several demonstrations and participating in several other protests in the
D.C. area (not affiliated with the animal liberation movement) that I became familiar with
those individuals. Because of increased government repression against SHAC, DARTT
66
maintains they have no affiliation with the international campaign (Defending Animal
Rights Today & Tomorrow 2011). This denounced affiliation, however, is widely
disputed amongst activists and was discussed several times during the demonstrations I
attended. DARTT utilizes the SHAC Model to target secondary and tertiary targets of
HLS. DARTT further aligns itself with SHAC by following the campaign’s target
agenda. The SHAC campaign identifies a targeted corporation that DARTT then targets
on a local level. During the home demonstrations I attended with DARTT, the SHAC
campaign was in the midst of targeting Astra Zeneca.
The Bunny Alliance
The Bunny Alliance is an international anti-vivisection campaign that relies on
direct action. The campaign utilizes the SHAC Model in both tactic and strategy, using
direct action to pressure secondary and tertiary targets connected to vivisection
companies. I attended demonstrations with the collective outside of the Greater
Cincinnati/Kentucky Airport as well as outside the corporate office of ABX Air. Three
activists that utilized crowd-sourcing fundraising to travel to cities that had Delta hubs
and ABX offices founded the campaign. These activists mapped its first tour called the,
“The U.S. Gateway to Hell Tour,” and focused on mobilizing a local collective to then
continue the pressure tactics after the activists left. The activists provided signs, chant
sheets, and megaphones. The tour was defined as:
Gateway to Hell is a global anti-vivisection campaign comprised of a network of
animal rights groups from across the world. We carry out demonstrations,
publicity stunts, conference disruptions and other types of protests against the
vital transporters of animals from the breeders to the animal testing laboratories.
Our groups are made up of a wide variety of people from all walks of life; anyone
is welcome to come take part in our actions – so either get in contact with your
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local group or start your own and get active for the animals! [Who We Are, What
We Do & Why | Gateway to Hell n.d.]
The activists organized a second tour, “Fight or Flight,” that The Bunny Alliance differs
from the DARTT campaign in its explicit focus on intersectional coalitions. The DARTT
campaign is intersectional in practice in so far as the activists that attend DARTT
demonstrations are also visible in other anarchist movements in the Washington, D.C.
area.28 The Bunny Alliance, however, explicitly states its stance on other issues. This is
found as a declaration on the campaign’s website, “Animal liberation means liberation
from any form of oppression. The Gateway to Hell campaign does not tolerate any kind
of fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic attitude or behavior and stands in
solidarity with all those individuals and collectives who fight for a more just and equal
world” (Who We Are, What We Do & Why | Gateway to Hell n.d.) The intersectional
focus was put into practice further with the collaboration of several anarchist
antispeciesist collectives on the “Fight or Flight Tour.” The collaboration was articulated
through a declaration issued on their website:
This summer, The Bunny Alliance, Resistance Ecology, and the Earth First!
Journal present the Fight or Flight Tour, a collaborative nationwide tour with
three distinct objectives: 1) to intensify The Bunny Alliance’s campaign against
Delta Air Lines and the broader Gateway to Hell campaign to end the transport of
animals to labs, 2) to share skills and build connections within the grassroots
animal and ecological activist movements, and 3) to promote coalition building
and solidarity with a diversity of movements and communities.
To increase the mounting pressure on Delta concerning the airline’s
intimate relationship with Air France and the transport of animals to labs, the
Fight or Flight Tour will hold protests at Delta airports, cargo offices,
laboratories, and the houses of board members and executives. We will bring the
campaign home to Delta with a large protest at their corporate headquarters, as
28.
It is not uncommon for activists to have crossover between movements, particularly with
DARTT. The fluidity of the DARTT collective specifically lends itself to a clandestine presence in
Washington, D.C. and contributes to the heavy police presence at DARTT demonstrations.
68
well as work with local, national and independent media to place Delta’s
involvement in animal testing in the public eye.
Tour stops will also include activism workshops, tailored to the needs and
interests of each community. General workshop topics will include information
about the international effort to end the transport of animal to labs, strategic and
effective campaigning, protest tactics, and strengthening inner and crossmovement relationships. Through support from the Civil Liberties Defense
Center, the workshops will also feature a collection of legal topics including
“know your rights” trainings, security culture basics, tips for doing legal research,
and legal observer trainings.
In addition to this tour being about the demonstrations and workshops
hosted by the touring organizations, this tour was hatched from the desire to
empower grassroots activism through meaningful cross-movement solidarity. We
want to work with other groups involved in social justice work and provide
support in the forms they desire; to build bridges between animal liberation and
environmental activists; to start friendships that can grow into powerful alliances;
to talk face-to-face with others and embrace what it means to build connections in
real life rather than online; and exchange skills and stories of experience among
activists.
We invite you to join us. Not to just support the work we are doing, but to
work with us in turning grassroots activism into a force powerful enough to
protect the earth and its inhabitants. (Fight or Flight Tour | Fight or Flight Tour
n.d.)
The campaign relies on social media to increase awareness and visibility of the campaign,
as well as to recruit activists. The third tour titled, “Grounded in Resistance: Grassroots
Mobilizing for Animal Liberation,” was a collaboration between an activist in The Bunny
Alliance and an activist from Resistance Ecology. While in Portland, Oregon in 2014, I
attended the second Resistance Ecology conference after attending the Earth First!
Rendezvous. The conference was a served as a meet up for activists to engage in dialogue
that builds and reinforces coalitions. In addition, many of the presentations focused on
sharing skill sets to be used in campaigns. The partnership between the Bunny Alliance
and Resistance Ecology maintain the paramount focus on intersectionality.
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Resistance Ecology
Resistance Ecology focuses on strengthening grassroots movements, creating
and strengthening networks, engaging in direct action campaigns, and publishing
critical analyses in the Resistance Ecology journal available online. Although the
collective engages in direct action and partners with campaigns, Resistance Ecology is
more focused on facilitating critical thought and dialogue to maximize movement
effectiveness. The focus, similar to the Bunny Alliance, is explicitly intersectional.
The organizers state this goal on their website:
We aspire to create a forum to unite animal liberationists, land defenders,
and organizers to share skill sets and resources, to report and recruit, to
coordinate campaigns, and to promote solidarity, coalition organizing and mass
movement building against the structures that underpin animal use and
ecological destruction on the continent— Euro-settler colonialism,
white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, neoliberalism, and border imperialism.
We challenge the professionalization, corporate assimilation, consumerorientation, and one-dimensional analysis of the so-called animal “rights”
movement in the west that is founded in positions of social power and is made
possible through colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. The goal of the
conference is to identify these analytical and structural barriers within the
animal liberation movement as barriers that prevent us from creating the radical
analysis, solidarity, and mass movement necessary to affect meaningful change
for animals.
Resistance Ecology intends to help shape the new wave of animal and
ecological activism in the United States…We want to progress beyond the
conventional one-dimensional analysis and structure of mobilization and
advocacy that has long been our calling card. Animal liberation and radical
ecology do not need to be isolated, disparate, ahistorical, and fragmented
movements. They can and must become part of the language and dialogue of
social justice. The alternative is to foster a movement that is multi-layered,
unified, diverse and intersectional. We must understand that social, economic,
cultural, environmental, historical, and political factors operate together in
complex and intersecting ways. Accordingly, animal and ecological activists
need to adopt an approach of solidarity organizing and coalition building. We
70
must build supportive relationships with a broad spectrum of social and
political struggle. [Resistance Ecology n.d.]
Through the movement magazine, annual national conference, and facilitation of
networks and tours, Resistance Ecology serves as an analytic tool and organizing vehicle
to unite the oftentimes-severed connections between animal liberationists and land
defenders that share a fundamental anarchist and antispeciesist politic.
Marineland Animal Defense (MAD)
Different than the other campaigns included in this study, the MAD campaign is a
grassroots campaign solely focused on the closing of one specific marine amusement
park, Marineland Canada, located in St. Catharines, Canada. Marineland Canada,
founded by John Holer, opened in 1961 as an entertainment and educational center that
houses marine mammals year round. The park has been the site of much controversy and
target of demonstrations from the anti-captivity movement long before the Marineland
Animal Defense campaign was around. In 2009, a local animal advocacy organization,
Niagara Action for Animals, concluded a legal battle that had put restraints on their
ability to hold demonstrations outside the facility. Momentum was building in the area as
the Niagara Action for Animals held 2-3 demonstrations during the summer and activists
held educational workshops about the history of the animal liberation movement,
“…specifically the Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs, Save the Hillgrove Cats and the
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty Campaigns. These campaigns…were all grassroots
animal liberation campaigns that focused on building community and increasing pressure
against animal use industries” (Marineland Animal Defense n.d.) The first MAD
demonstration took place on the season’s opening day for Marineland Canada on May 14,
71
2011 with 40 activists. Throughout the 2011 season, MAD held over a dozen
demonstrations and established itself as a dedicated campaign with a full demonstration
schedule, website, social media presence, logos and slogans and a stronger support base.
In 2012, the campaign held an Opening Day demonstration outside of a closed
Marineland Canada. One week before opening day, the park announced they would push
back opening day. Over 100 activists gathered outside the park and traveled throughout
the heavy-tourist Niagara Falls area. Seven former employees of Marineland Canada
joined the MAD campaign and disclosed information regarding the deplorable conditions
inside the park that led to the pushed-back Opening Day. The story was given to the
press, and the following the publication a MAD demonstration had over 500 activists
joined in the struggle. On Closing Day 2012, over 800 activists gathered and were rallied
by the keynote from former dolphin trainer (most notably to several of the dolphins used
in Flipper) Ric O’Barry. The activists spontaneously jumped the turnstiles and marched
through the park and ultimately shun down the final dolphin show of the year. The 20122013 season at Marineland Canada faced an increased level of both legal pressure and
police presence. Targets of these aims have exercised transparency with publishing the
lawsuits, “Between December 2012 and July 2013 6 lawsuits were filed- against activists
(including the MAD campaign), against ex employees and against the Toronto Star who
ran the investigative series against the facility, claiming a total amount of damages in
excess of $12 dollars” (Marineland Animal Defense n.d.) Despite the legal pressure, over
1,000 activists attended the Opening Day demonstration in 2013, the second largest
animal advocacy demonstration in Canadian history. In response, the Co-Founder of the
MAD campaign, Anonymous A, in conjunction with MAD, were brought to court for an
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injunction hearing and to secure a limited court order against the campaign and
Anonymous A.
The campaign continues to utilize social media to garner international support, as
well as maintain momentum during the off seasons. Anonymous A has been very public
regarding the Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) lawsuits.
Anonymous A has also taken on both symbolic and physical leadership roles on the
website and during demonstrations. He was my main contact with the MAD campaign
and housed me when I traveled to St. Catharines, Canada for the demonstrations.
Animal Liberation Front (ALF)
The ALF is a nonviolent direct action, clandestine moniker adopted by individuals
that engage in direct action in defense of other-than-human animal and follow the
agreed-upon principles. The principles can be found on the North American Press Office
website:
To liberate animals from places of abuse, i.e., laboratories, factory farms, fur
farms, etc., and place them in good homes where they may live out their natural
lives, free from suffering.
To inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation
of animals.
To reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked
doors, by performing direct actions and liberations.
To take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and nonhuman [F A Q ‘s  » North American Animal Liberation Press Office n.d.]
One cannot become a member of the ALF because there is no centralized membership or
leader. The only thing that unites individuals under the auspices of the ALF is the use or
advocacy of direct action to liberate animals. This includes (but is not limited to) direct
rescue, property destruction, undercover investigation, and blockades that target
individuals and corporations that participate in animal abuse. Through the use of direct
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action, activists who commit an action in the name of the ALF do so to save as many
animals as possible and directly disrupt the practice of animal abuse while inflicting
significant economic loss. The long-term aim is to end animal exploitation by forcing
animal abuse companies out of business.
The ALF guidelines claim that the use of property destruction as nonviolence relies on
the anarchist principles that all property is theft, capitalism is violence, and interrupting
these mechanisms is thus a method to interrupt violence.(Proudhon 1840; Bakunin 1882;
Graeber 2004; Amster et al. 2009; Bonanno 1999) The ALF guidelines strictly state that
activists must take all precautions not to harm any animal (human or otherwise) during
their act of liberation. Because ALF actions may be against the law, activists work
anonymously, either in small groups or individually, and do not have any centralized
organization or coordination.
The information available about activists who have committed direct actions
under the ALF are put forth through the North American Animal Liberation Press Office
(NAALPO) and websites oftentimes in the form of the communiqué. Communiqués serve
as an important tool to both contextualize the action and articulate the aims of the action
(Michael Loadenthal 2015). In defending their choice to adopt nonviolent direct action,
the ALF press office cites reference to other liberation movements that violated laws that
were already unjust, such as the law the racist segregation laws, the anti-Semitic
Nuremberg Laws, and the South African apartheid. Similar to the argument regarding
moral madness by Elie Weisel, the NAALPO emphasizes the urgency of the movement
because it is life and death for the animals. The ALF stands unique among animal
liberation collectives because of their challenge to capitalism through illegal direct action,
74
their interest in destroying the material property used as mechanisms in exploitation
while upholding a strict nonviolent policy and alignment with civil disobedience, that
appear most threatening to the state. In the sections that follow, the ALF is unique in the
discussion because of its clandestine and presumed illegality within the discourses of
social movements.
269Life
The 269Life collective is an Israeli-based animal liberation group that relies on
the tactic of political theatre in public spaces as direct action. The collective gained
international attention when 3 activists, two Israelis and one from Russia, had the number
269 branded with hot iron onto their skin in the heavily populated Rabin Square in Tel
Aviv, Israel. The video of the activists, along with the story about the “269 Calf,” gained
international attention. The group draws its name from a rescued calf that embodies both
inspiration and pain for animal liberationists. Anonymous activists rescued a male calf
from a facility outside Tel Aviv whom had the numbers “269” branded into his skin. The
calf was rescued shortly before his scheduled slaughter date in June of 2013. Although
the calf was rescued, the calf’s branded identity of “269” reifies the violent
objectification and dismemberment process of becoming an absent referent.(Adams 2010;
Adams 2004; Adams and Donovan 1995; Donovan and Adams 2007) Feminist author,
Carol Adams, put forth the concept of absent referent in her exploration of violence
against animals and women. In her groundbreaking Master’s Thesis and subsequent
book, “The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory,” Adams
demonstrates the linguistic and psychological fracturing that industries rely on to separate
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the individual living beings from the dead commodities they produce.29 The cognitive
dissonance between the dead animal and the absent referent erase the violence inherent in
the loss of life:
Behind every meal of meat is an absence: the death of the animal whose place the
meat takes. The "absent referent" is that which separates the meat eater from the
animal and the animal from the end product. The function of the absent referent is
to keep our "meat" separated from any idea that she or he was once an animal, to
keep the "moo" or "cluck" or "baa" away from the meat, to keep something from
being seen as having been someone. [Adams 2010:27]
The symbolic use of the “269 Calf” in the group’s name and advocacy, however, is the
only connection to Adams’ concept of the absent referent. The tactics used by 269Life
are violent against humans and rely on the same oppressive theatre used by People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).30 The 269Life demonstrations have included hot
iron branding; using a blood-painted breast pump to forcibly “milk” a human animal in
public after appearing to steal her infant and put the baby in a cage, and kidnapping a
woman and assault her alongside train tracks before forcibly branding her upper thigh.
Activists around the world have joined the 269Life group and filmed such videos since
being inspired by the initial brandings in 2012.
29.
I have previously published and presented on the ways in which the absent referent creates a
cognitive dissonance for consumption. The concept has also provided a valuable lens to integrate theories
of intersectionality into critiques of speciesism. One of the most noteworthy publications is in Adam’s 20th
anniversary book celebrating the ways in which “The Sexual Politics of Meat” has influenced activists and
scholars. My chapter in “Defiant Daughters: 21 Women on Art, Activism, Animals, and the Sexual Politics
of Meat,” explores the connections between gendered and sexual violence and reproduction. Specifically, I
utilize the narrative of my own experience breastfeeding and the processes used to [re]produce breast milkbased products from other species (Grubbs and Adams 2013).
30.
PETA has been the subject of many critiques from activists for their reliance and reproduction
of sexist, racist, classist, ableist, and heteronormative ideologies. Their public protests often feature naked
women, fat-shaming, a glorification of heteronormative violence, and the reappropriation of religious,
ethnic, and racial genocide. I have published and presented these critiques in various venues, including the
National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, the National Popular Culture Association
Annual Conference, and as the keynote speaker at the Sex, Gender, Species Conference sponsored by
Wesleyan University in 2011.
76
The group defines itself through its tactic of political theatre while also
establishing itself as a direct action, liberationist, and movement because:
…injustice is much too insidious, and the pernicious ideology of human
supremacy is much too ingrained in our psyche. We must dedicate as much of our
time and effort as possible towards the liberation struggle. We must act and
express our views as loud and in the most penetrating manner possible…Change
will come once a cultural shift occurs…to overthrow speciesism. Instead of a
futile pursuit for marginal popularity, and being irrationally opposed to using
antagonistic tactics, we should aspire instead to subvert the status quo…we must
therefore demand change, rather than beg for it. Our goal is to destroy the
fundamental thinking that allows this exploitative system to exist. [269Life n.d.]
269Life goes on to establish itself as a reactionary group that not only welcomes critique
from the status quo, but also from “fence-sitting vegans/vegetarians.” The strategies of
animal advocacy are challenged by 269Life as they argue little progress has come from
the tactics used by the movement thus far:
In light of the marginal progress we have achieved these past decades, the docile
and accommodating strategy which aims to win over some potential fence-sitting
vegans/vegetarians seems highly inappropriate…It is of little importance if we are
liked at this stage of our struggle; instead, we need to focus on forcing our agenda
into the center stage of public awareness.
Time is our main foe: each passing minute means the death of countless
individuals. Agitation is preferable to the deafening silence, which permeates and
accommodates the highly profitable venture of the animal exploitation industry.
Our attitude and tactics should align with our rhetoric. Pleading with
people to adopt a vegan diet based chiefly on environmental, human rights,
human health or other selfish anthropocentric concerns is, in reality, a
subconscious admission of defeat. We must always take great care when bringing
up those kinds of peripheral matters, and never forget where the focal point
should lay or who the real victims are (hint: it's not the diseased overweight guy
with a mouthful of dead flesh). [269Life n.d.]
Importantly, the group clearly states why they choose to use violent tactics in public
spaces:
We aim to bring the pain and horror other animals face each and every day out of
the suppressed darkness and into the realm of everyday life. The animal holocaust
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is ever expanding and is expected to double in size(!) by 2050, as it did these past
30 years. Nowadays, most people are well aware of what is being done to other
animals, and yet remain apathetic in the face of the atrocities committed in their
name, even after witnessing the utmost graphic evidence.
Awareness campaigning is simply not enough. Our message needs to
become considerably more confrontational and, due to the monumental task at
hand, our focus and resolve must be, first and foremost, channeled towards
demolishing speciesism.
We must engrave the 269 symbol in the collective consciousness. It is a symbol
easy to distribute and duplicate, which allows us to communicate a radical
message without relying solely on biased media outlets. With such control over
our message, we can create viral conduits of communications by popularizing the
269 symbol through ever more daring and creative means. It is time to bring the
fight to the streets, it is time for the line to be clearly drawn.
Victory is achieved through persistence and consistency. We must
remember to stay open-minded and look for ways to be as efficient and as
effective as possible for the animals. Circumstances are constantly changing, and
so we must always be alert and flexible, using any means available to our
advantage, as well as building a substantial and united oppositional force.
The group makes the final plea for action, insisting that the process of “engraving the 269
symbol in the collective consciousness,” does not necessarily have to mean burning it
into the flesh of activists:
269life is what we make of it. It can be sprayed on a wall, hanged over a bridge,
rendered in 3D animation, inked under our skin, printed on mass-produced
stickers or posters... It's up to you to incorporate it into your life and art, and to
disseminate it using your individual talents and capabilities. The options are
limitless and creativity and imagination are key assets in this war of liberation.
We are all 269. [269Life n.d.]
I archived the dialogues within social media between activists about the tactic and the
group itself. The anarchist antispeciesist movement, in its aim at intersectional and
coalitional politics, remains divided on the inclusion of Israeli activists in the movement.
Through social media, there have been very polarizing debates regarding the liberatory
politics toward other-than-human animals in Israel and the proliferation of repressive
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violence against human animals, namely Palestinians. The data from 269Life included in
this study is sourced from raw video footage provided by activists, first-hand accounts on
activist blogs, and the interactive discourse archived through social media.
Border crossings and Marineland Animal Defense
The first entry to Canada to participate in the Marineland Animal Defense
Opening Day Demonstration in May 2013 was marked by the challenges of intentionality
and queering privileged spaces. The US/Canada border crossing became a site of tension
between the practical desire to enter the country without any issues and the political
commitments to disrupting systems of privilege31. My daughter, Emory, was asleep in the
backseat of the car when I pulled up to the Border Patrol Booth. Perhaps as an obvious
site of privilege, I had assumed we would breeze through the security check. It was after
10 p.m. and the Border Officer seemed irritated to be at work. She shined the flashlight in
the backseat and scanned every inch of the car while monotonously reciting a series of
questions. I answered quickly and with a rehearsed tone. “Yes, I am authorized to drive
the car.” “I packed the car myself.” “I am visiting The Falls and staying at a hotel.” As
the questions became more personalized, I realized she was clearly concerned that I was
taking an infant out of the country. She looked at me with concern, “Where is her other
parent? Is he your husband?” When my answers did not satisfy her suspicions, she asked
me to pull forward, park in Spot 12, and step inside the building for further interrogation.
I woke Emory and quickly ran inside. It had dropped about ten degrees since the sunset,
to add insult to injury. We got inside and took our place in line with the other precarious
31.
The data collected during this time period is May 17-21, 2013.
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border-crossers. The officer called me to the counter and began asking a series of
questions, “‘Does her other parent know that you are entering Canada?’ ‘Where is he?’
‘What do you do for a living now?’ ‘Where are you staying?’ ‘When will you be
returning with her?’” (Border Officer 2013). The heteronormative assumptions embedded
in these questions were glaring. As I stood across the counter with my daughter and my
23-year old sister, I wondered why they assumed there was a father. Or, perhaps they
assumed we were the lesbians Thelma and Louise attempting to kidnap this young child?
Without a wedding band, I was not physically marked as married. I rarely wear my
wedding band, and intentionally do not wear it when I attend political convergences. I
rely on strategic essentialism by placing my pregnant white body in front of riot cops,
however wearing my wedding band while crossing a border to minimize any threats
merely reproduces heteronormative privilege. Gender and class manifest in complicated
ways for an activist. As I stood there and thought through my answers, I could not help
but weigh the ideological implications of my answers. Do I challenge heteronormative
privilege and lie about my marital status? And what about the larger implications of not
wearing a wedding band despite the reality that I am, in fact, legally married to a
cisgender man? Is it inauthentic to closet this identity and simply code-switch when
necessary?
Ultimately, I made the practical decision that it was almost 11p.m. and I did not
want to subject myself to the coercive powers of these officers. I began referring to “her
father” as “my husband” and insisted we can call him to verify his approval to take her
out of the country. In a blatant exercise of privilege, the officers never verified my
marital status, that the man I suggested we call was her father, nor did they actually speak
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to said father on the phone. Instead, the officers gave me a patriarchal lecture about
traveling without my husband, made a few jokes about two women driving late at night,
and suggested I remember to bring a letter from my child’s father granting permission to
leave the country prior to the next trip prior to the next trip (Border Officer 2013).
Perhaps my lecture would have been different if I appeared less educated, or was not a
5’3 slim blonde white woman accompanied by my 5’3” slim blonde sister and child.
We had arranged to stay at one of the main organizers and co-founders of
Marineland Animal Defense, Anonymous A. Through Facebook messenger, he provided
directions to his house and instructions on how to get in if he was not there. We arrived
around 11:30p.m, and found him on the couch watching television with his housemate.
His fiancé was upstairs changing the sheets and preparing our room. The house was
shared between 3 humans, 7 cats, and 2 dogs and smelled like fresh basil. There was not a
poster to be had, nor a book or political ephemera to mark the leanings of those who live
there. A quick tour of the kitchen reveals the usual suspects: almond milk, potatoes, tofu,
plenty of Asian sauces, and various vegan accruements. On the stove was simmering
homemade dog food. With our cat allergies and my slight fear of felines, we went
upstairs to shoo the cats out of the bedroom. Two cats under the bed, a dog scratching his
ears outside the door, and a little black cat under the nightstand; clearly we were in the
home of an anarchist antispeciesist. We came downstairs and our host had his phone on
the table. His Facebook application was open and he seemed anxious. In our Facebook
exchanges prior to arrive, he mentioned his excitement and that he had just received a call
from his lawyer. “My lawyer called and was nervous to tell me there was a fire at the
veterinarian’s office. He wanted to make sure I was home and with people! You know,
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this afternoon we put something up on the page about how the vet was giving out drugs
to the vets and employees. So when we heard about the fire, it seemed like a convenient
way to destroy records” (Powell 2013a). We talked a bit about the campaign and our
excitement to be here and help.
I struggled with the desire to take advantage of this time to talk in person and the
need to put my child to sleep. The 10-hour journey from Ohio to St. Catharines had left
my daughter exhausted and in need of my attention. I knew this was a rare moment where
I could conduct an interview in-person with a lead organizer that was facing a SLAPP
lawsuit for his activism. We sat downstairs together and talked about the plan for
tomorrow and how we could help with the pre-demonstration planning. As we were
talking, my daughter began to cry. I interrupted the conversation and excused myself to
go upstairs and put her to sleep. I said that I intended to come back downstairs to talk,
assuming she went to sleep quickly. By the time she was asleep, it was 2 a.m. and
everyone else had gone to bed. This was one of the first and more critical moments in my
research where I was faced with the tension of being a mother-in-the-field. It was one of
the first moments that I had to choose between gathering research and meeting the needs
of my child. My sister offered to take Emory upstairs, but acknowledged that she would
be unable to put Emory to sleep because she relies on breastfeeding. I have never looked
back at the decision to go upstairs with my child rather than interview Anonymous A that
night with regret. I look back at that moment with reflexivity as a transformative
experience that informs the ways in which I understand intersectional barriers knowledge
production (Crenshaw 1989; Crenshaw 1991; Collins 1991; Collins 2006). I maneuver
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both privileged access and barriers to knowledge production as a college-educated
cisgender white female with children from a heterosexual married standpoint.
I spent most of the night awake with Emory, nursing and pacing with her, trying
to keep her cries from waking up the entire house. Rather than feeling refreshed and
ready to gather more data, I stumbled out of the room with a zombie-like gate at 7a.m. to
discover an empty house. We packed up our things and left the house to find a nearby
coffee shop in order to access a WiFi signal. For financial reasons, I only used the free
WiFi capacities of my cellular phone rather than network data. I relied on WiFi-based
instant communication applications to connect with others while in St. Catharines,
Canada. I sent a message to our host through Facebook messenger. After a few hours of
exploring the area, I had not received a message back from our host. We decided to head
back to the house and inadvertently ran into our host walking home. He was heading to
the Animal Defense League (ADL) office and reluctantly allowed us to tag along. We
walked about 15 minutes and he went into great detail about the movement and legal
issues. Anonymous A was served with a series of lawsuits totaling $1.5 million and told
to immediately cease the MAD campaign32. I asked if there was a National Lawyers
Guild-type organization in St. Catharines to provide free legal defense. He claimed that
32.
In an interview with Because We Must, Powell described the lawsuit, “In December 2012 the
captive animal facility Marineland Canada filed two separate, but related, suits against me and Marineland
Animal Defense – one a $1.5 million damages suit and the other an injunction case. Overall their civil
litigation is considered by many to be a SLAPP suit or a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation
(SLAPP) – basically an attempt to use the legal system to either criminalize your advocacy or shut you up.
Since 2004 they’ve engaged in 7 similar suits – claiming damages in excess of $13 million dollars suing
activists, ex employees and a national news media who ran an investigative series on the facility – while
also threatening a host of others with similar suits (including the Ontario Society of the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals who was investigating them at the time)” (Taylor 2003:164).
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animal advocacy lawyers are already struggling to find professional work, and that this
case would be detrimental to those efforts. Anonymous A had difficulty finding an
attorney, and claimed that every time he speaks to his, he receives a patronizing (wellintentioned) lecture.
Though the interaction was not recorded, I made note of a
particularly interesting remark, “You can either get a lawyer that charges very little and
agrees with what you are doing, or at least doesn’t have anything big against it, or you
can use a really good lawyer that you know will win- but will try to give you a lecture
about why you should lobby” (Powell 2013b). Interestingly, Anonymous A had received
a lot of interpersonal challenges from activists he thought of as friends following the
lawsuit. He felt like the further he pushed the MAD campaign with confrontational
rhetoric following the lawsuit, the less support he had from activists. According to
Anonymous A, there is a divide within the small anarchist community in Toronto and the
even smaller antispeciesist community in St. Catharines. We continued the casual
conversation until we reached the ADL office, located within an unassuming office suite.
I took stock of my surroundings: a dark-haired woman at a desk repurposing
painters buckets into donation pails, a young woman sitting in a chair to the right was
playing on her cell phone, a woman ironing recently ink-pressed sweatshirts, a woman
sitting at the desk across from a man covered in tattoos and with a septum ring. After a
quick survey and presumptive guesswork, the average age of individuals was 23. The
man had just arrived from New York, though is a Chicago native, runs a punk rock
solidarity organization Punk Rock Karaoke Northeast. Perhaps it was the baby sleeping
in the carrier strapped to my chest, or the fact that my sister and I entered a closed space
the night before their largest demonstration of the year, but not a single person looked up.
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After a few moments, we made eye contact with the man from Chicago and he seemed to
share an awkward sense of displacement. His point of contact was also Anonymous A,
who provided a brief introduction for us when we arrived. I went to each individual and
offered to help with whatever task they were doing, and was met with either silence or
lack of eye contact each time. I unstrapped Emory from my chest and placed her on the
floor to crawl. After a few minutes went by, I offered to help the woman constructing the
donation bins and she accepted. As I pulled off strips of tape, I overheard two other
women in the room going through Facebook ‘Friend Requests’ to confirm the identities
of those requesting. Without noting whom they were referencing specifically, they would
sporadically proclaim troll or sketchy. Another woman said they should delete anyone
that doesn’t have at least 5 mutual friends with the organizers. One of the activists
mentioned they were hungry, and suggested they collect an order from a bar around the
corner. Once the order was collected and called in, they began debating who would pick
up the food. Though my sister and I did not contribute to the food order, we watched as
they each averted eye contact and did not volunteer to pick it up.
We spoke up and offered to go pick it up, knowing it would give us an
opportunity to find food somewhere else. We returned with their order, but it was starting
to get dark. Emory started to fuss and the cries of a baby were not necessarily the
preferred sounds during the pre-demonstration preparations. Without any idea where we
were and no cell phone service, we requested that Anonymous A draw us a map to use on
our walk back. The map was more of a pictorial than an atlas, as he could not remember
specific names or turns. I attempted to show my discomfort with navigating our way back
without a clear direction and waited to receive an offer for him to escort us.
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Overwhelmed with the tasks of preparation for the demonstration, he did not respond.
With a bit of hesitation, we set off to find our house. We spent over an hour trying to
navigate the should-be-ten-minute-walk without any familiar landmarks. Eventually, we
stopped into the police station to ask for directions. Once we bypassed the inquiries about
why we were in town and whom we were staying with, we discovered the house was not
too far. When we arrived back at our host’s home, we found his housemate cleaning up
after dinner. She was friendly and welcoming, and seemed surprised that we had walked
home alone. I mentioned that the other activists were unfriendly and disinterested in
engaging in conversation. She responded with a smile, “We talk about that all the time.
We are like, “They are so socially awkward to anyone they don’t know. What are we
going to do with them?” (Wallace 2013). She asked about the age of my daughter, and
said she was interested in having children at some point. After a brief conversation,
Emory began to cry and required my attention. I took her in the other room to breastfeed,
while we also looked for a place to stay. Although our hosts reiterated how much they
would like for us to stay, I worried that she might keep them up all night. Given that the
next day was such a pivotal event, I did not want to be in the way that night. The first two
days in St. Catharines confirmed my insecurities that the ethnographic study would prove
challenging within the personal constraints of motherhood, in particular.
The following day we gathered with hundreds of others outside of the Marineland
Amusement Park. I left my Driver’s License and U.S. Passport in the hotel, stuffed $40 in
my pocket, and took my cell phone. I chose to not wear any jewelry, pulled my blonde
hair back into a ponytail, and paired my black skinny jeans with a Support the A.L.F. tshirt and Saucony sneakers. Emory was dressed in a Marineland Animal Defense
86
sweatshirt that was made the night before, black leggings, and a much smaller pair of
Saucony sneakers. The energy was palpable, with hundreds of activists of all ages
gathered along the narrow stretch of grass that faced Marineland’s entrance and parking
lot. I ran into the activists I had met at the headquarters, and also a handful of activists I
had met at previous political actions. Interestingly, several strangers approached me and
introduced themselves as “Facebook stalkers” that had seen my comments on the MAD
Facebook page. There was a row of tables set up, each featuring different ephemera and
baked goods. The Niagara Baking Militia had prepared a series of delicious vegan treats,
MAD activists had heat pressed clothing for sale, and there was a table covered in flyers
and leaflets from local campaigns. There was a large pop-up tent stationed in the middle
of the grass with an amp, microphone, and large inflatable orca whale. The banner for
MAD was prominently hung above the tent. Several activists had set up a sign-making
station for activists to create large posters that was adjacent to the “Kids Area” that
featured games and art supplies. In addition, a local child was planning on breaking the
world record for the most folded origami whales in one sitting33. The organizers
encouraged people to arrive in the morning, and set up to stay for the Park’s operating
hours. The speakers were scheduled for the afternoon, ensuring the momentum would
remain the entire day.
The speakers included Anonymous A, three children, and a hip-hop artist.
Anonymous A’s opening remarks fostered the sense of community amongst activists and
33.
A local child, Vijay, had taken an active role in the MAD campaign. Vijay was one of the
featured speakers at the demonstration, and also declared his intent to break the world record described
above. Vijay invited activists to contribute to this aim, and also had coordinated to have his effort
documented by the Guinness Record staff.
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provided legal parameters for the day’s events. Through social media and public
demonstrations, Anonymous A is recognized as the leader of the MAD campaign and a
prominent anarchist antispeciesist in the area. The proclamation he delivered at the
beginning of the demonstration reified this perceived leadership.
I am going to try and make this as quick as I possibly can,
and as painless as possibly as I can.
But I need everyone’s attention for the next little bit.
And I need people to pass along this information on to others as they come in.
So, as most people are aware, I think, at this point,
Marineland is very litigious.
So that means they want to go to court a lot.
They sued five people at this point
They are claiming damages of a total of $13 million.
One of those people being sued is myself.34
In many ways the proclamations he delivers at demonstrations are a fracture from
Anonymous A’s anti-authoritarian politics. During the proclamations, Anonymous A
assumes an authoritative role and provides guidelines to other activists. He identifies
legal parameters and suggests how activists should interact with law enforcement.
Although I saw several women working at the headquarters in preparation of the
demonstration, none of these women delivered instructional proclamations to the large
crowd. There were, however, many women with bullhorns delivering chants and
proclamations to Marineland customers on the other side of the fence.
The demonstration took an interesting turn when the children speakers came to
the microphone35. Each child provided a different rhetorical argument against
34.
The full text of this proclamation can be found in the Appendix:A (MarineLand Opening Day
Demonstration -May 18, 2013 “Know Your Rights” n.d.).
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Marineland, though some were more articulate than others. One female 9-year-old child,
in particular, described her desire for justice as a “thirst.36”
My thirst, I thirst for the freedom of certain animals.
There are the animals you think are happy.
You pay a lot of money to go and see.
I thirst for them to be treated well.
You may think of Marineland as a fun place to gather and enjoy a fun day.
But have you seen what they look like up close?
The terror and horror in their eyes
What happens behind the scenes is not what you think.
How they are treated won’t be a secret, after you listen to me.
Good morning, protestors.37
At this point, the activists cheer out and begin to applaud. I heard whispers around me
from activists that they were surprised to hear a child recognize these issues at her age.
The speaker went on to describe how the animals are kept at Marineland, how her teacher
is also an activist with MAD, and her resolve for the liberation of these specific marine
animals. She named John Holer as the perpetrator of violence that is responsible and
insists that through a financial boycott, the park can be shut down. This proclamation
provided a detailed account of marine animal poaching and the artificial (poor) conditions
of captivity. The proclamation both begins and ends with an impetus for change, a call to
action that can satisfy a thirst for liberation.
In contrast to Anonymous A, the child does not insert pauses or use phrases that
elicit a response from the audience. She articulates the unethical treatment of marine
35.
I took audio recordings from the demonstration, and also archived video footage posted from a
demonstrator on YouTube (MarineLand Opening Day Demonstration - May 18, 2013 “I Thirst”
n.d.).
36.
An image of the speaker can be found in the Appendix:B
37.
The full text of this proclamation can be found in the Appendix:C.
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animals while neglecting to specify specific behavioral commands. The only command
implied is to economically and physically boycott the park, as her family chose to do five
years prior. The proclamation leaves the audience in awe of her rhetorical devices and
emotional maturity. I listen as two women speak behind me, “Now there is an activist in
the making.” “I wish I would have been as aware when I was her age.” The women
continue to trade surprised remarks about the young girl, focusing on the emotional
appeals in her proclamation. Two other children get up to speak and also point to their
decision to boycott the park after visiting. Each child that speaks once visited the park
with their family, and become the voice in their family to insist they did not return. The
children also spoke to their concern for the animals because of their isolation and small,
artificial tanks. Interestingly, however, all three children speakers focused explicitly on
Marineland. The children did not make any larger arguments about speciesism, let alone
authoritarianism.
Between each speaker, there were 5-10 minutes of chants and interactions with
patrons of the park. The bullhorns raged as people screamed, ““Your Money, Your fault.
Your ticket, Your fault,” “What do we want? Animal liberation. When do we want it?
Now!’” and “Hey Marineland, What do you say? How many animals have to die today?”
The chants continued as the next speaker prepared. The well-known hip-hop artist, Darius
Mirshahi from Test Their Logik, addresses a range of issues including the displacement
of indigenous peoples, animal and ecological exploitation, and capitalism in his lyrics.
On the heels of the young girl’s speech, Mirshahi’s freestyle delivery was assertive and
interjected with confrontational language:
I think its so fucking beautiful
That we got so many people here.
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Sorry for my language
I forgot.
I’m going to try and keep it family friendly and clean.
I’m a rapper, though38. (Mirshahi 2013)
His first piece, “Freestylin’ for Freedom,” abandoned the youthful tone set by the
previous speakers. As an advocate of confrontational direct action, Mirshahi shifted the
focus on marine animals within the park to larger, systemic issues of injustice. In this
way, his proclamations reminded the audience, part of whom would not identify as
anarchist antispeciesists, that Marineland Animal Defense critiques animal captivity, but
also capitalism, speciesism, and authoritarianism. In the opening lines of the freestyle,
Mirshahi uses the anarchist principle and slogan coined by the French anarchist PierreJoseph Proudhon, “Property is theft!” (Proudhon 1840).
Property is theft
That’s a concept you should get
When you’re dropping most your check
On a spot to rest your head.
Little to see the bread
To pay your mortgage and your debt.
So the bankers and the feds don’t get your home repossessed.
It’s on stolen land.
It used to be the commons.
Before the colonizers came
And started all the problems. (Mirshahi 2013)
The crowd was audibly divided, as some cheered and others began to speak over his
proclamation. Seemingly, the activists came together solely to protest Marineland and did
38.
The full text of this proclamation can be found in the Appendix:D (MarineLand Opening Day
Demonstration - May 18, 2013 “Freestylin For Freedom” 2013).
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not share the intersectional politics held by MAD organizers or Mirshahi himself. The
proclamation continued to name issues of structural violence and displacement:
Murdering and bombing
Keep the urban sprawling.
More people starving…
…Just bondin’ by buildin’ prisons
Border wars don't stop them
So I’m swinging sledgehammers
Till every wall is droppin’…
…Land is freedom
Property is theft.
Burn all the flags
Until none of them are left.
The proclamation concludes with a reiteration of the anarchist principle and a call to
property destruction. The proclamation was recorded on video and thus I revisited the
gestures and behaviors of others while Mirshahi was speaking. Anonymous A sways to
the beat as Mirshahi delivers the proclamation and loudly applauds in between versus.
Several activists repeatedly turn toward Anonymous A to monitor his reaction as a sign
of approval. At the conclusion of the proclamation, there is a brief pause before the
audience responds. The crowd begins to applaud but the unspoken tension in the audience
is palpable. Without much delay, Mirshahi transitions into another proclamation that
borrows from a track on his last album. The track, “Liberate the Animals,” makes
reference not only to direct action, but specifically to the ALF and ELF. Whereas the last
proclamation stressed intersectionality and the importance of coalitions between
movements, the second proclamation was explicitly about speciesism:
Liberate the animals
And the earth too
Free the trees
Free the roots
Free the leaves
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Free the fruits.
Liberate the earth
And the animals too.
Free the farm
Free the land
Free them from Marineland, too39. (Mirshahi 2013)
The chorus hones in on larger, systemic issues that the audience does not cohesively
share. While I sat on the grass and listened to the proclamations, I surveyed the clothing
others had on and what they had brought to eat. The demonstration lasted several hours,
and people were encouraged to pack enough with them to stay the entire day. I saw
picnics that contained dairy and animal flesh and caught a few adults pouring cow’s milk
into children’s cups. There were at least a dozen ALF and ELF shirts and banners, as well
as various slogans indicating an antispeciesist and/or anarchist politic. Almost every
person holding a bullhorn had political tattoos and facial piercing. The crowd still seemed
supportive of Mirshahi, even when he began talking about terrorism rhetoric and property
destruction:
ELF, ALF
They never caused a death.
To save lives
They take a lot of risks
Liberation of all creation
Is their politics.
But somehow
They are the terror that tops the list?
Come on.
Who’s really the terrorists?
The slaughterhouse arsonists
Or the slaughterhouse architects?
Would it be terror to burn down Auschwitz?...
… You gotta give props to the ALF
39.
The full text of this proclamation can be found in the Appendix:5.
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To SHAC
Smash HLS
And those that invest
No torture, no test.
No one is free
While others are oppressed.
Fight for freedom
Until there’s no cages left. (Mirshahi 2013)
The understanding of the proclamation relies on insider knowledge of anarchist
antispeciesist campaigns, such as Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC) that targets
Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF). The proclamation makes the moral connection between
slaughterhouses and concentration camps, and implies that arsonists destroying these
mechanisms of death are (similarly to those who destroyed train tracks during the Shoah)
are freedom fighters rather than terrorists. The proclamation not only refuses to accept
that anarchist antispeciesists are terrorists; it creates a form of disidentification in which
they are freedom fighters. The proclamation again returns to confrontational language
that radically departs from the “family-friend” atmosphere during the children
presentations:
Milk and meat
That’s rape and death.
That we eat at our own expense.
We are killing the animals, planet, and ourselves.
Toxic products
We are the toxic problem.
We are the source of the products
And it’s our water. (Mirshahi 2013)
The audience, though not necessarily visible to an outsider, was divided into two
categories of activists; those there to protest Marineland and those there to protest
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Marineland in part of a larger activist agenda against speciesism and/or authoritarianism.
Anonymous A, the co-founder of MAD and a well-known local activist, was intention
with the selection of Mirshahi as a speaker during the demonstration. As an activist, I am
aware of the social capital inherent in any captive audience. It is imperative to utilize that
space in ways that are both strategic and pragmatic. The children’s presentations were
pragmatic. They presented emotional appeals that resonated with activists regardless of
their own personal identification with antispeciesism or anarchism. Mirshahi, however,
was the strategic element that ultimately established the ideological agenda of MAD in
this public setting. His proclamations were direct, explicit, and clearly directed at
activists already in support of the ideological agenda. The final proclamation delivered
was an excerpt from his newest album that uses the metaphor of a blade of grass growing
through the pavement to inspire activists facing political repression. The proclamation
served as the emotional coda of the demonstration, ensuring that the audience is reminded
that this demonstration was not simply about Marineland. The audience is riled at the
concept of a growing, unstoppable revolutionary force that will ultimately persevere in
spite of attempts to destroy it:
We’re everywhere
Hidden like the air
That we breathe together.
And we’re never scared.
The conspiracy is real
They are keeping it concealed
The truth is a virus
These lies will reveal.
They paved over paradise
But it’s gonna heal
Leaking information is like
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Watering a field40. (Mirshahi 2013)
The empowering proclamation encourages the audience to “Take a pickaxe to the roads,”
and insists that anyone can engage with the revolution because, “It’s not where you’re
from. It’s where you’re gonna go with the shit goes down” (Mirshahi 2013). Grass,
ultimately, represent the potentiality for revolution in spite of systemic barriers.
Can we overgrow?
Overthrow this toxic overdose?
Open those file doors that keep those undisclosed?
…Life revolts, regrows till it shifts.
And this paradigm and system is out of time.
This whole time, the system was out of line.
Mass murder everyday for the dollar sign.
Then through the cracks
Like the grass to the stone
We climb.” (Mirshahi 2013)
The audience loudly applauds as the proclamation ends and the crowd is clearly riled up.
Mirshahi then leads the crowd in a chant, “Shut it down, shut it, shut it, shut it down.”
Those who had gotten up and moved to another area during the proclamation had
returned to the makeshift stage. The agenda for the demonstration included closing
remarks from international activist and former trainer of the dolphins used in the
television show Skipper, Ric O’Barry, who was presented a check on behalf of the BiLLe
Celebrity Challenge for 25,000 Euro to his charity “The Dolphin Project”.
The demonstration then broke from the structured speakers to individual chants
and interactions with people on the other side of the fence patronizing Marineland. The
organizers dispersed and led the crowd in various chants. The chants were familiar from
other demonstrations, modifying the words slightly to target Marineland:
Hey Marineland, what do you say? How many animals have to die today?
40.
The full text of this proclamation can be found in the Appendix:6.
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Their blood, their blood. Their blood is on your hands!
Shut it down. Shut it, shut it DOWN.
Give them liberty, End captivity!
Your money, Your fault. Your ticket, Your fault.
What do we want? Animal Liberation!
When do we want it? Now! (Grubbs 2013c)
Several of the organizers brought noise amplification devices such as bullhorns, whereas
others simply shouted. The chants were directed at anyone on the other side of the fence,
but the individual pleas with Marineland customers took a different direction41. Some
children shouted to other children, “You should just go home. The animals are so sad in
there,” and some adults took a more direct stance, “Don’t be an asshole and teach your
kids that captivity is acceptable” (Grubbs 2013c). The signs both perform and archive
nonverbal communication within the MAD campaign. The images communicated to
those physically present, and continue to communicate through digital communities. The
signs included humorous references to popular culture, in addition to aggressive attacks
against Marineland and John Holer to produce disidentifactory thoughts42. Toward the
end of the demonstration, Anonymous A was asked by a reporter to identify activists that
had traveled far distances to attend, and he pointed my direction. I found the article the
next day, and was pleased to see that I was among a cohort of travelers that had crossed
the border for the demonstration. In terms of maintaining my public commitment, the
article indicated my justification for the 500 mile drive, “…Jennifer Grubbs, 28, brought
her 13-month-old daughter Emory and sister Samantha, 22, all the way from Cincinnati
“to show solidarity,” she said” (Gordon 2013). The day concluded around 4 p.m. and
Emory had reached her limit in regards to patience. Without a large research budget or
41.
Images of protestors and signs can be found in the Appendix:7-8.
42.
An image of a sign with a humorous message can be found in the Appendix:I.
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couches to crash on, we decided to drive through the night back to Cincinnati, Ohio.
Curiously, we did not encounter any resistance crossing the border back into the U.S.
despite the lack of documentation from Emory’s father. The inconsistency of regulation,
or lack there of, at the border crossing demonstrates the more obvious manifestations of
privilege. Upon reflection, it would seem as though the resistance I encountered entering
Canada were more of an exception to these forms of racial, ethnic, cisgender and
heteronormative privilege.
A year of social media and another season of Opening Day
The MAD campaign relied heavily on social media to share images, videos, and
stories through digital communities. The hashtags provided a linkage to connect these
contributions regardless of geographic location, and have even dominated the discourse
on Twitter regarding Marineland itself. Utilizing CDA to examine how power is
conveyed and challenged through digital media, I examined how activists contribute to
the discourse of direct action through popular social media sites. The integration of direct
action in digital media provides another medium for activists to not only refuse to submit
to the good versus bad protestor framework, but to also engage in digital performances of
disidentification outside of that framework. The activists can recapitulate the power of
agri-vivisection industries through the rhetorical use of digital media components such as
hashtags. For example, the most popular suggestions on Twitter and Instagram for
“Marineland” are those of the Marineland Animal Defense campaign. The commonly
used
hashtags
#marinelandad.
include,
The
#marchonmarineland,
Facebook
and
#marineland,
Instragram
#endcaptivity,
account
are
and
both
/marinelandanimaldefense, also driving up the page suggestion when users search for
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Marineland. The images include photographs from demonstrations and memes, which
oftentimes rely on satire and humor43. The memes range from edited photographs run
through meme generators to professional leaflets posted by MAD activists.
The digital communication, as Muñoz describes with regard to the power of drag
performance, attempt to extend the sentiments of possibilities within the political
imaginary. Each meme creatively engages with the campaign and larger social
movements through affect. In some cases, the Instagram page featured a photo of a stack
of fliers for an upcoming demonstration, such as the 2013 Opening Day demonstration44.
The campaign also engaged in online trends such as “Social Media Tuesday,” and
“Throw Back Thursday” to post comical memes on Instagram that combine a direct
action claim with a photo of a beady-eyed seal45. Activists were able to engage in online
conversations, debates, and networking through posting images and responding to them.
The integration of Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter provide a cross-platform
terrain to use multiple forms of digital communication in the creation of a larger,
international dialogue. I identified specific account names, and their frequent use of
symbols such as # and @ to identify key phrases and campaigns, I used Tag Sleuth,
Wordle, and Tweet Archivist to generate word clouds and examine the linguistic
analytics46.
43.
Several images can be found in the Appendix:J.
44.
The image and Instagram feedback, including the Twitter integration through hashtags, are
included in the Appendix:K.
45.
The image and Instagram feed, including the Twitter integration through hashtags, are included
in the Appendix:L.
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The digital spaces facilitated a different theatrical stage, one that could mask
identities while simultaneously increasing visibility, where activists engaged in and
discussed confrontational direct action. Digital spaces blur the perceived boundary
between public and private, which was commonly noted by activists in their practice of
security culture. A well-known activist posted a public message on Facebook that
playfully demonstrates the underlying tension amongst activists to utilize technology as
mechanism of dissent without getting caught:
US Customs: You are so stupid. You missed my laptop.
Always ready to flag me and copy my hard drive (the border is a Constitution-free
zone), you missed the one thing you wanted despite it comprising at least 15% of
my luggage, by volume.
Note to data smugglers: Make your laptop the same size & color as the bottom of
your suitcase and you’re in the clear. (Anonymous 2014b)
The tongue-and-cheek post received over 75 “likes” and the posts engaged in a public
critique of State surveillance. It is again not accidental that activists critique State
surveillance in explicit ways (the activist also tagged the airport this occurred in) on a
digital media site (Facebook) that archives user data and cooperates with the State to
provide data on its users. Many activists that I met have pseudonyms as their account
name on social media sites, allowing them to engage with these spaces without exposing
their identity. Although this can provide a creative outlet to engage with digital media, it
also increases the prevalence of trolls and suspicion amongst activists. One particular
exchange in 2013 sparked a larger debate about how activists should handle personal
46.
The words were identified through preliminary research with the MAD campaign, the Bunny
Alliance, 269Life, NAALPO, EF!, and Resistance Ecology. Additional phrases that are not explicitly
linked to a campaign include (but are not limited to) #animalliberation, #earthliberation, #govegan,
#anarchist, and #greenanarchy.
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attacks that are from unidentifiable sources. The activist posted the following comment
and included the private message someone sent to them:
I wake up to comments, emails, messages, like this pretty much every day now.
This is a fake Facebook account that was created in February of this year with the
sole purpose of harassing me (I know who it is). The joys of organizing.
‘Hey asshole I see you crumbled like the fucking little wimp you are. You can spin
it but you can’t deny you made a deal with [redacted]. Man you are so fucking
stupid you are a joke. What story are you going to give about the money those
suckers donated to your legal fund which you already spent on yourself. Oh ya
and what about your educational fund. Judgment day will come for you and it will
be sooner than you think. Have fun asshole.’ (Anonymous 2013a)
The user comments focused on exposing the individual who sent the message, but did not
elicit a larger discussion about the accusations. Seemingly, the activist that posted the
comment increased credibility by disclosing the attack because it implied the claims were
outlandish.
Digital media was also utilized as a way to send instant communication to other
activists warning them of potential threats. Specifically, The Bunny Alliance maintains a
Facebook page and has posted several “snitch alerts” with information about government
informants. In July 2014, they posted a photograph of an individual with red text
overlapping, “HEADS UP. SNITCH DAVID ARGRANOFF HAS MOVED TO
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA,” with the following text in the box above:
Snitch alert! David Agranoff has moved to Southern California, so activsts there
should watch out for him. You can learn more about his history of being a
government informant and turning his back on activists here:
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/dave-agranoff-informant-elfbloomington-5723.
The activist-run site, Indymedia.org, is also the host of direct action announcements,
follow-up, and archived video. One of the most visible anarchist antispeciesist activists
the Washington, D.C. area is known for riding his bicycle to demonstrations, capturing
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video footage that is excessively narrated, and riding off if confrontation with police
escalates. He has archived hundreds of home demonstrations with DARTT, the Occupy
Movement, and direct actions that challenge authoritarianism and speciesism.
Throughout the ethnographic study, I ran into this individual and still question if he is an
activist in solidarity or if his videos serve a more malignant purpose. Digital media,
however, provides another layer of activist accountability. Because I followed these
campaigns closely, I received constant communication from other activists that exposed
suspicious activity. In a way, this created a stronger sense of self-awareness of how I
would engage with the data in this study. Specifically, I was intentional with my
documentation and reluctance to you audio or visual recording devices. It would have
been immobilizing if I was suspected of cooperating with the State and then blasted
through digital media as an informant. In one post that was shared on Facebook and
Twitter, an activist called into question the decision for an animal liberation conference to
host a problematic member of the AELM:
What are peoples thoughts on this? On the one hand going and speaking out
against [redacted] and their ilk at the conference (which I can only assume will
happen) might be a good idea and/or might help sway some of the people going to
this conference who aren’t knowledgeable about the issues involved or don’t
know about them (although that could happen without formally lending your
name to the conference). On the other hand, it seems like there has been a lot of
gauntlets thrown down with people saying they will not go to this conference
because [redacted]/[name of conference] to drop [redacted] and [redacted] from
the conference. To take part anyway and say it is because you don’t want
[redacted] to divide the movement (which is already very clearly divided) feels a
bit like an undercutting of those efforts to me. Am I alone or do others feel like
this is kind of a cop out? I find all this especially hard to swallow as [redacted]
has been very quick to call out and vilify others for working/associating with
people who have oppressive politics (which I agree is needed in the AR [animal
rights] and Environmental movements), and this is now essentially saying they are
going to be involved in a conference that is giving a platform to rampant
transphobia. The more I write, the less conflicted I am feeling. I think this is bad
on their part. What do others thing about this?
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Interestingly, the activist shared the official announcement from both the campaign’s
website and Facebook that was being called into question. Several users engage in a
debate on whether or not the campaign should be called out in a more public physical
venue and what mutually-agreed upon principles should animal liberation campaigns
share with regard to sexuality and gender identity.
The engagement with digital media, however, is not simply predicated on fear or
subordination to the State. Many of the accounts I followed consistently posted
confrontational rhetoric, damning condemnations of vivisectors, and explicit calls to
mobilize and engage in direct action. I first learned about The Bunny Alliance campaign
through a Facebook invitation from someone I did not know that I had shared mutual
friends with. The Facebook event specifically named the campaign, the target, and the
event time and place. Hundreds of people claimed they intended to attend the event,
though only 3 individuals showed up in addition to the organizers. Similarly, The Bunny
Alliance used Facebook to mobilize activists for digital direct action. In a Facebook post
that was also sent out via Twitter, The Bunny Alliance shared a Gateway to Hell event,
“ABX Air has plans to transport primates from China into the U.S. for labs on June 2nd.
Help stop this shipment! Check out the below page, send emails (see the info on the
page), and spread the word!” (The Bunny Alliance 2014). In addition to using digital
media as a mechanism to solicit activists, anarchist antispeciesists can also reimagine and
reconfigure the corporate sovereignty awarded through neoliberal capitalism discussed in
Chapter Four: Neoliberal Capitalism and Constructing the Ecoterrorist. The State relies
on a neoliberal logic that insists bad protestors are violating deeply held democratic
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values by engaging in confrontational direct action. In one specific example, Marineland
distributed programs to each customer that described the activists with MAD:
Dear Friends, If you have seen protestors outside- we would like to explain. They
are members of a fringe, radical animal liberation front that demands the closure
of all zoos and aquarium- denying children the opportunity to interact with
amazing animals they would likely never see in the wild. Children who see and
learn about our animals are more likely to become their defenders as humans
continue to encroach on wild habitats. The protestors don’t seem to care about
that nor the fact that every independent investigation into Marineland’s animal
care has disproven any allegation protestors have brought against us. We love and
care deeply for the animals in our trust. You will see that today. (Anonymous
2013b)
The program, without the interaction of digital media, exists as a one-way
communication between Marineland and the public (patrons and protestors). However,
activists were able to take a picture of the program and share it through digital media to
expose the storybook rhetoric that erases the documented violence against animals within
Marineland. The image was shared by several activists and appeared multiple times in my
Twitter feed, Instagram, and on Facebook. One activist posted the image with the
caption, “This failure of logic will greet every person who grabs a program at Marineland
this afternoon” (Anonymous 2013b). The post received 50 likes within the first ten
minutes, and have over 50 comments. The integration of digital media as a method of
confrontational direct action provides a stage that is not as asymmetric as the street
corner.
Although Marineland is protected through Canadian law and it falls within the
accepted views of species privilege, and MAD is instead seen as a threat to the law and a
disruption to the normative ideology of speciesism, digital media is less uneven. Twitter
functions through the integration of @ and # symbols that link users and words to
establish trends. These symbols have been integrated into Facebook and Intagram to also
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contribute to trends and engage in the process of trending. In looking at the digital media
accounts held by the campaigns included in this analysis, there was an interesting
rearticulation of power through trends. I used the aggregating site TweetArchivist that
integrates Instagram, Twitter, Vine, and Tumblr to gather the most commonly used
hashtags associated with Marineland. The most commonly used words, thus the trend for
#Marineland, include, “ENDCAPTIVITY,” “BLACKFISH,” “DIED,” “VEGAN,”
“CLOSING,” “ABUSE,” “EVIL,” AND “PROTEST.” This is of particular interest
because it demonstrates how activists can control the digital discourse through social
media. If an individual is curious about Marineland and follows it on any of the listed
digital media sites, they are inadvertently bombarded with these words. Similarly, the
most commonly used words for @Marineland include, “ENDCAPTIVITY,” “HOPE,”
“OUT!,” “ENDANGERED,” “CAPTIVITY,” “BLACKFISH,” “AVOID,” AND
“EXPLOITATION-BASED,.” The digital space, in this sense, also creates an alternative
screen similar to the ones discussed in Chapter Five: Direct Action as Spectacle for
activists to disidentify with speciesism itself.
Bunnies, airplanes, and primates: The Bunny Alliance
The organizers from the Bunny Alliance had traveled through Ohio for a
demonstration outside the Greater Kentucky/Cincinnati International Airport (CVG) in
December 2013. The activists had also traveled to Resistance Ecology in 2014 to present
on a panel about strategic organizing for effective campaigning, the Gateway to Hell tour,
and the international collaboration to end the transport of animals to laboratories. The
organizers also led a lecture about building strategic alliances for successful campaigns.
In the panel, the organizers discussed why The Bunny Alliance engages in a national tour
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to build relationships with other groups (anarchist antispeciesists and solidarity
movements). The organizers also discussed the ways in which their campaign and actions
build a national grassroots network. The organizers then traveled to the Earth First!
Rendezvous to deliver a similar talk, and a legal training for activists’ interested in direct
action. The organizers emphasized that State repression should not and does not deter
anyone from being an effective activist.
On January 3rd, 2014, I participated in a demonstration with The Bunny Alliance
as part of the Gateway to Hell Tour at the CVG airport that targeted Delta and KLM
AirFrance. The demonstration was originally scheduled for Thursday, January 2nd at
noon. I was unable to find any information on the Facebook page or website about the
demonstration. I waited until 11 a.m. and then emailed the Facebook page to get
information about where to meet. Thirty minutes later I received a message from the page
saying that the demonstration was pushed back until the 3rd at 6pm. I also received a
friend request from one of the organizers on Facebook. I scanned our “mutual friends”
and found we had several west coast activists in common. I had been nervous about going
to the demonstration because I was not sure if the organizers would know who I was and
my credibility would be challenged. It was an easier icebreaker to become Facebook
friends because they could see my networks, publications, and previous political actions.
On another level, I was apprehensive to attend a demonstration at such a visible location
during the holiday (travel) season. I hold a full-time position at a private school, and
fellow administrators are unaware of my political engagement. The position is relatively
public within the Jewish community, and many colleagues would be traveling through
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the airport for the holidays. Although I was confident the protest fell within legal
parameters, I am apprehensive to disclose my political involvement to my employer47.
Ultimately, my solidarity with the campaign superseded the pragmatic concern for
workplace discrimination. Perhaps foolishly, I prioritize my reputation amongst activists
over my professional reputation at work outside of academia. In this sense, attending the
demonstration became a political act in and of itself, challenging the assumptions about
who attends and participates in public direct actions.
The temperature outside was 18 degrees Fahrenheit, so I decided to leave Emory
at home with my partner. Given that I was six months pregnant, I bundled up to avoid
any health issues. I left the house at 5:15 p.m. and headed to the demonstration. I parked
in the closest garage and found the group inside the airport by the Delta ticketing counter.
They were standing inside the airport holding signs but not set up for the demonstration
yet. There were several security guards watching them nearby. I introduced myself and
met a female and male that travel with the collective. There was another female and male
that met for the demonstration. They were waiting for another activist that travels with
the group and is also a co-founder of the collective. He was getting the camera from the
47.
One of the main individuals I interviewed with at my current job is an executive at Novartis, a
longstanding target of anarchist antispeciesist direct action. Though I did keep all of my academic and
activist presentations on my curriculum vitae (that clearly demonstrate political support of these activists) I
choose to “hide” many of my Facebook posts and tags from those affiliated with the school. I also do not
accept friend requests on Facebook from many of my co-workers. On the other hand, I also am
apprehensive to disclose where I work to other activists. The coalitional function of anarchist antispeciesist
organizing has facilitated salient connections between movements. Powell, for example, is a very
outspoken supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. I am employed by a Jewish Day
School that does have public ties to Israel and identifies as having a “Zionistic” focus. Although I am not in
their classrooms, I accept that my employment is contentious. I have chosen to fracture these two
components of my social life from one another to minimize confrontation. I also do not want to debate the
immorality of vivisection with one of the Board of Trustees at the school, nor do I want to debate whether
or not Israel should exist as a Jewish state. It does not mean that I am inherently adversarial with either
parties, it just means I have made the practical decision to keep these contradictory, contentious elements of
my daily life separate.
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car to videotape the demonstration. I met him and quickly recognized him from a
previous arrest in another state. The case has received national attention from activists,
and the other suspect remains in county jail. I had met the other suspect at a convergence
in California, which also helped establish my credibility as an activist. These activists
were later charged with conspiracy to violate the AETA and part of a constitutional
challenge to the charge. He had just been released from county jail in IL not too long ago.
He was arrested based on suspicion to commit an illegal act, along with another activist
that I had met in California.
The activists in attendance were very friendly, but did not disclose much
information or ask many questions of me. While we were chatting, a Delta manager (he
was dressed in a suit and time and carrying a walkie-talkie) came over with a grin on his
face. He seemed eager to escort us outside. We had already discussed the likelihood they
would demand we move the demonstration outside, but this was not preferred because the
much larger crowd was indoors. The organizers stressed the cold temperatures and
requested that we be able to stand inside. The manager grinned and said that we would
need to go outside, and then indicated that there was a special spot for us already marked.
As part of Kentucky protest laws, activists must obtain a permit in advance. The
organizers had done so, and Delta responded by providing a “Free speech” area outside.
We walked outside and saw a 10’ x 6’ perimeter marked by orange cones. Behind it was
a larger sign that the airport had put up. It read:
THE FIRST AMMENDMENT requires the Kenton County Airport Board to
make certain areas of the Airport available for the expression of protected speech.
We understand that the content of the protected speech in these areas may be
objectionable, however; the Board cannot restrict or regulate the content of
protected speech. The Kenton County Airport Board does not condone or endorse
the views expressed in such solicitation areas. -CVG. (Grubbs 2014c)
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The sign reinforced the sentiment of the airport, security, and local police. There were
four police offers present, countless security guards, and airport employees nearby during
the one-hour protest.
We entered our small free speech zone and noticed it was in the very corner of the
airport entrance. We had little access to patrons and obviously unable to distribute
literature easily. After about ten minutes of standing there, one of the activists asked if
she should start chanting. The other person said, “Since we have little access to people, I
would at least like to be loud” (Grubbs 2014c). Her interest was in making our presence
known and also providing a better video for Delta to show our demonstration was
successful. One of the organizers pointed out, “We deliver every video to delta, so
basically this is a way to talk directly to them” (Grubbs 2014c). He had a handheld
camera device that allowed him to hold it without it being obviously a camera. We started
chanting, though you could not hear it from indoors, and immediately a police officer
asked to speak with one of the organizers. The organizer joked that he was not sure if he
had permission to leave the coned-off area. The officer asked if we could tone it down a
little, to which the organizer smiled and said he would take it into consideration. The
organizers appeared quiet, were well dressed and unassuming, and could quickly shift
from polite to aggressive. As soon as the organizer re-entered the designated area, he
shouted even louder into the megaphone.
The chanting continued, and we handed out several leaflets. People walked past
and held up their cell phones to record the chanting. A younger man, waiting for
someone in his BMW SUV, watched as we shouted chants toward an empty parking
garage. A few minutes later, he came over to us and asked if we would like bottled water.
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After we declined, he began to ask questions about the purpose of the demonstration and
campaign. He went back to his vehicle and watched the demonstration until his friend
arrived, and then he left. As I stood there, I received a text message from a relative
saying, “What is the animal rights protest about at the Delta terminal?” (Grubbs 2014c). I
thought it was strange that she had already heard about the demonstration, and began to
wonder if someone that saw me was already gossiping. A few minutes later I looked over
and saw my cousin standing at the entrance door to the airport.
I ran over to say hello and explain what we were doing. My aunt had assumed it
was connected to my research and my own politics, and also had genuine interest in the
campaign. We gave them some flyers and explained the basic logic of a pressure
campaign. She implied that she supported the efforts, and also the ability for people to
gather in public spaces and demonstrate. We talked for a few more minutes and then I
went back out to participate. After another 20 minutes of chanting, one of the organizers
announced that it was now 7:00 p.m. and the demonstration was over. We were all
painfully cold, so we all sighed relief that we had successfully made it outside the entire
hour. We chatted briefly before going our separate ways. The cold was not conducive to
small talk or standing outside. I tried to mention social circles that we had in common,
but the conversations were brief and the organizers seemed less interested in getting to
know me. The campaign is traveling- and in that sense it is self-contained. They didn't
ask for my number or even ways to keep in touch. The campaign relies on social media
and the internet to publicize events, and also encourages local activists to connect
independently. The campaign, as an anarchist antispeciesist campaign, does not utilize a
hierarchical structure. The organizers plan a national tour, but each city has its own
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organizers that engage in actions throughout the year. The local organizers are also
encouraged to help plan the events that coincide with the national tours themselves. In
this sense, I did not expect them to spend time networking with me. Their goal is to
provide a space where activists can connect on a local level and network to strengthen
smaller collectives across the country.
This demonstration was quite different from the home demonstrations I
participated in while in Washington, D.C. The home demonstrations were scheduled
throughout the day, and followed with solidarity actions in the evening. The Bunny
Alliance did seem to have similar functions in other cities with a larger activist
population, which may have been why the organizers did not express interest in a social
gathering following the demonstration.
The model of organizing a national tour
inherently means the organizers are transient, exhausted, and do not have the time to get
to know local activists before leaving town. Thus, I remained connected to the campaign
and organizers through social media. I also connected with a local activist that has
organized subsequent demonstrations at the ABX Airlines headquarters. Following the
demonstration, the organizers posted images and video of the demonstration. One of the
organizers laughed that the camera was pretty full from them taking videos of “ghosts”
while staying at a creepy place in Illinois.
I wondered if they took photographs of the CVG sign or the perimeter marked
with large cones. I wondered if they made mental notes of who showed up and ways to
reach out again. I wondered what their interest was in the locals that came, and if they
had any. It is clear that the campaign is not as focused on the pressure on local
employees, but rather collating a large number of protests and presenting them to Delta’s
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corporate office. Although it felt like a small demonstration that night, I realized it is
irrelevant how many people attend one specific event. Through creative camera shots and
loud bullhorns, the protest is part-and-parcel to a larger video compilation about the
consistent pressure the campaign places. It mattered that security had to come twice to
request we quiet down, and it mattered that the local Delta staff may contact the airport
and complain that they feel unsafe because of protestors. In a sense, the campaign only
needs a few activists that are willing to travel and shout. The growing number of local
activists that are willing to host demonstrations and utilize pressure tactics is icing on the
rhetorical cake.
The subsequent demonstration I attended with The Bunny Alliance on April 23,
2014 was outside the ABX Air office. Similarly, the turnout was small and we spent most
of the time chanting to an empty parking lot. Because the demonstration was over an hour
away, I had to bring my two-month-old daughter with me to breastfeed. Unlike the other
demonstration, however, there were no designated areas for the protest to take place. We
simply set up on the pavement outside the offices and began to chant48. Employees stood
inside the building and peered through the glass walls, and then a black SUV pulled up to
the front. We were told one of the targeted employees was expected to leave shortly,
which sparked conspiratorial conversations about how the office had created a decoy.
The demonstration was scheduled during the end of business hour: 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. As
the employees trickled out of the office, none engaged with us or looked our direction.
48.
See Appendix:P for the chant sheet sent to me by the organizer.
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We each took photographs, shouted toward the pavement, and headed our separate ways
at 5:00 p.m.
From Washington, D.C. to Washington state: Pacific Northwest
There is a rich history of anarchist antispeciesist direct action throughout
Washington, Oregon, and California. The Pacific Northwest, because of the concentration
of Redwood trees and other exploited “natural” resources, has been the site of some of
the most notable direct actions49. I arrived in Seattle, Washington in June 2014. I traveled
with my partner and our two children: our 4-month old daughter, Simon, and 2-year old
daughter, Emory. As we struggled to carry the car seats and luggage through the airport, I
felt the physical realities of my anthropological baggage. Similar to the trips to Canada
and local demonstrations, I chose to travel with my children for the six weeks of data
collection across the country. Although I frame this decision as a choice, the physical,
financial, and emotional demands of attachment parenting constrained my limited agency
to “choose.” Simon was exclusively breastfed both because of nutritional and ethical
commitments50. Emory relied on me for emotional and physical support, and had never
spent more than 12 hours away from me. In order to gather ethnographic data that is
authentic to my own lived experience and reflects my identity within this movement, it
would also be inauthentic to fracture my role as a mother from this project. Similarly, the
49.
The important, but lengthy, history of direct action in the Pacific Northwest has been
extensively documented by activists, and through the digitally archived rhetoric of communiqués. The
extensive history of activism in this particular area falls outside the scope of this analysis, however the
history has been covered extensively (Pickering 2007; Nocella and Best 2004; Loadenthal 2013a).
50.
There are no vegan infant formulas on the market, limiting the options of a vegan mother to
either breastfeed or rely on breast milk donations. In addition, I was uncomfortable feeding Simon breast
milk from a donor that consumed other-than-human animal products.
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decision to publicly mother my children while engaging in activism and academic
research contributes to the larger socio-political project of queering traditionally maledominated androcentric spaces (Adams and Donovan 1995). During the six-week period,
we drove an average of 100 miles per day, stopping frequently at anarchist-run
businesses, infoshops, convergences, and academic conferences. During the first two
weeks, we drove over 1400 miles to Stanwood, WA to Klamath, CA to Seattle,
Washington. We then flew to Denver, Colorado and drove from Ft. Collins, CO to
Albuquerque, NM to Denver, Colorado.
The first planned stop was Portland, Oregon for the Resistance Ecology
convergence held at Portland State University. The convergence organizers stressed that
this was not an academic conference, nor was this solely a skills-based series of
workshops. The convergence was a hybrid of tabling, presentations, workshops, and
roundtable discussions. The list of presenters included direct action activists, lawyers,
university professors, defendants in ecoterrorism cases, as well as students that wandered
for the free food provided by the local Food Not Bombs. Many of the activists in
attendance were traveling to the Earth First! Rendezvous in the coming week, making the
convergence the first intentional point-of-contact with my research participants. As the
first point-of-contact, I debated whether I would first enter with my children or not. I
asked my partner to go inside and report back the atmosphere and if it would be
conducive for children. After a few minutes inside the building, he emerged and helped
take the kids from their car seats. I encompassed Simon in a cloth wrap, clinging her
close to my body, so that she could sleep or breastfeed at her discretion. Emory, on the
other hand, was wide-awake and eager to run around. She was dressed in a pair of jeans
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and a black t-shirt that said, “I am vegan and I love you,” made by the local vegan
company, Herbivore. I surveyed the room and noted the prevalence of septum rings,
asymmetrical haircuts, patches, and tattoos. The visual displays of both anarchist and
antispeciesist politics were omnipresent.
I wandered into the tabling room and made my way around the small room by
stopping at each table. In one of the most uncomfortable moments of my research, I
reached the table of a prominent anarchist antispeciesist that founded a social justice
collective focused on the ethics of food production and sourcing. I have met her before
and heard her discuss the practice of elective sterilization as a way to combat ecological
destruction. I was aware of this divisive politic when I approached her wearing my infant
child in a wrap. As I discussed earlier, I do not often wear jewelry and intentionally do
not do so during political actions. However, I had worn my wedding band that day and
forgot to remove it prior to entering the space51. I caught her looking at the child wrapped
around my abdomen, and then her eyes immediately traveled to my hand. The
disapproval exuded from her disgusted expression. As I walked away, I slowly removed
the ring from my finger and put it in my pocket. This was yet another reminder that each
of my decisions fit within sociopolitical movements, and these decisions reproduce
systems of privilege that conflict with other deeply held political views. A few tables
down, I recognized two activists that I had met at a demonstration with The Bunny
Alliance at the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport. The activists were
51.
The wedding band I had traveled with was an heirloom ring from my partner’s divorced
parents. The ring contains several diamonds that belonged to his mother, and were repurposed into a new
ring. Although I do not support the diamond industry or trade, the ring holds sentimental value that is
negotiated through a complicated and hypocritical tension between political and personal commitments.
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presenting later that afternoon, and had also been listed as presenting a skills workshop at
the Earth First! Rendezvous. They passed along flyers, stickers, and posters to bring back
to Ohio for the demonstration scheduled in August. I dropped the materials off on a table
and headed into the next panel.
The panel featured two anarchist antispeciesists that have been arrested for direct
action activism and/or conspiracy to do so. I still had Simon asleep on my chest, and my
partner carried our toddler as we attempted to blend into the back of the room. The
presentation was held in a multipurpose room on the Portland State University campus,
and had a series of board games tucked into a corner. I grabbed the game “Apples to
Apples” and removed the top. Within minutes, hundreds of red and green cards littered
the floor. Rather than receive friendly smiles or reassuring nods from the attendees, the
glares exuded an indignant sense of “I wonder if she will clean that up.” Once Emory
was engrossed enough in the cards, I began to take notes from the presentation. In line
with this projects focus on performative power, disciplinary punishment, and political
repression, the presenters focused on the role of surveillance in the AELM. The first
speaker, a well-published author and highly regarded activist, challenged the presumed
power of the State within these discussions about surveillance:
Don't be afraid. The government doesn't know shit. Know your rights. You don't
have to talk. Remember to keep teaching that over and over again. Apple, Google,
and other companies know far more than the U.S. government, and for now that
information is silo'd even if they will sell the information in the end. It is all about
the perception of fear. Political prisoners that get released often struggle with
PTSD. Make friends with people who have resources in your community. Lawyer
up! (Anonymous 2014a)
The sentiment challenges the State’s efforts to interpellate anarchist antispeciesists that
are working outside of the paradigm of good versus bad protestor. The presenter also
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critiqued the presumption that the State’s retaliatory interpellation of anarchist
antispeciesists that use direct action as ecoterrorists. The power of the State, according to
this presenter, is merely a perception that he insists we challenge. The second presenter
challenged the ability for the State to gain incriminating information through
surveillance, but stressed the physical and psychological impacts of the perceived
surveillance. In this sense, the presenter relied on a traditional reading of Foucault’s
disciplinary punishment and the conditioning of the body (Foucault 1977:104–105, 215,
280). But rather reinforce the social conditioning of the State, the presenter emphasized
the ways in which activists can manipulate the media and hold the State accountable
through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Ultimately, however, the presentation
toggles between the tension of denying the State’s effective use of surveillance and
reifying it through sharing stories. The presenter shares his own experience with
surveillance when the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail with stamping that revealed it
had been intercepted, scanned, and archived by the FBI. The story was used to open up
the potential for disrupting paranoia through strategic media:
Use the media. You can manipulate the media to help release documents. You
should utilize the FOIA. People are now using it in the movement to expose bad
stuff. I used FOIA to receive the photocopies of all of my mail that was scanned
and photocopied by the federal government during the 30-day period. If you get
something; you sue and appeal and follow it all the way through. People tend to
be afraid of the media- but we should use it to tell these stories of surveillance. I
reached out to journalists to tell my story because it's a closed case. In other cases
the government is ready to indict and convict, but this was not the case for me. I
worked with a journalist to get 3 things out there: represent anarchy in decent
way, make me look reasonable, and make the FBI look like fools. I wanted to
demonstrate a clear “us” that is against a surveillance state. We can’t deny that
the media is an important tool and two years after my story, Snowden releases all
these documents. We can make the FBI seem like the out of control entity they
are, but we can also show that we don't buy the story. I didn't want to be distracted
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by surveillance and make a stink when I noticed mail surveillance. But then
looking back I admit I underestimated the power of repression. [Resistance
Ecology n.d.]
The convergence featured several panels that focused on security culture and provided
perspectives on how activists can work in solidarity with one another to challenge State
authority and speciesism52. Although the convergence was held on a university campus,
the panelists used accessible language to address practical issues with organizing, ways to
engage in solidarity work, and how to access community resources53. Several days later,
we traveled from Portland to Northern California to attend the Earth First! Rendezvous.
The Rendezvous organizers did not release the location of the convergence to the
public until a month before, and the location was given as coordinates. The Earth First!
Journal released the following, “The Rondy is an annual gathering of biocentric
revolutionaries, hosted by Earth First!. This year the Rondy will be July 1-7th, in Southern
Oregon, near the coast (location to be disclosed closer to the event)” (2014 Earth First!
Rendezvous Call For Workshops and Donations 2014). After locating the specified area
through Google Maps, we planned the route. Unlike Resistance Ecology or other
convergences held on college campuses, the Rendezvous is specifically geared toward
activists. The gatherings provide trainings in direct action tactics, networking for
aboveground and underground activists, and a space to engage in dialogue to advance
52.
The use of speciesism is consistent throughout the project, referring to the belief ecological and
biological species privilege is a form of structural violence. Speciesism does not solely refer to the
privileging of the human species over other-than-human animal species.
53.
The convergence organizers stressed solidarity with aboveground and underground activists,
political prisoners, and international movements. The notion of ‘community’ was used throughout to stress
interconnectedness through solidarity. Community does not refer to geographic communities, but it loosely
defines kinship networks of activists that share intersectional critiques of authoritarianism and speciesism.
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social justice aims. As we drove through the winding roads of the National Forest, our
cell phones lost service. The directions from Earth First! were based on landmarks, which
oftentimes underestimated the timing to reach each site. The guidelines suggested
attendees’ leave indentifying information (such as photo identification, credit cards, and
passports) at home. Drivers were encouraged to use precaution to avoid unnecessary
stops from law enforcement. Before we realized the campsite was approaching, we noted
two unmarked Federal cars parked aside the road54. A few minutes later, we passed
another unmarked vehicle with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). We
slowed down as we drove by with the windows down, and heard the nervous barks of a
dog in the back. The directions mentioned that there would most likely be various forms
of law enforcement present along the journey, and that a concentration of them should
indicate the site is imminent. As expected, we turned the corner to find at least six
vehicles stationed at the base of the camp. We drove past one time, making note of each
vehicle, and then turned back to enter the Earth First! campsite.
The long and narrow path led to a pop-up umbrella tent with three activists sitting
in lawn chairs. The handwritten sign read Earth First! Rendezvous and a series of
Xeroxed handwritten maps sat in a pile. One of the activists came over to the car to greet
us and peer into the car. I watched as his eye traveled throughout the car, while another
activist seated in a lawn chair noted our license plate. My partner got out of the car and
walked over to the table to get a map and say hello to the other activists. He came back to
the car a few minutes later and we drove into the forest. The campsite was located about
54.
My partner, as a scholar of conflict analysis and resolution, has an extensive knowledge of
license plate markers and vehicle designation used by the State in various degrees of law enforcement.
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ten minutes into the forest from the State Route and along the dirt road were hammocks
and single-person tents. Despite the explicit requests to not bring companion animals,
there were several dogs with political bandanas and black clothing oftentimes
accessorized by a subset of transient anarchists called crust punks (Parmar, Nocella, and
Robertson 2014). I watched as a dog lunged toward an activist passing by, and the
activist turned to scream and hit the dog. The cars were directed to park in a centralized
area. We pulled into an empty spot and noticed each car had their license plate covered
with towels and rags. The cars ranged in make, condition and age, reflecting a relatively
diverse range of classes present. The Rendezvous had started a day earlier, making our
late arrival relatively obvious in the sea of dust-covered cars. I got out of the car, wrapped
Simon in a cloth wrap around my chest, and ventured out. The spaces were mapped out to
and concentrated different populations through general camping, family camping,
medical tent, Cascadia Kids Tent, kitchen, session spaces, and the Trans and/or Women’s
Action Camp (TWAC). The Earth First! Journal has published solidarity calls for
donations and action specifically for Bay Area TWAC (Support Bay Area TWAC (Trans
And/or Womens Action Camp) 2014). The dirt paths each led to specified areas and had
makeshift signs indicating the intersecting areas.
Shortly after arriving, I befriended a few women that had noticed me at
Resistance Ecology. They were on their way to the TWAC for a swim in the lake, and
suggested I come along with my daughters. With Simon wrapped on my chest and Emory
in a back carrier, I set off with them to find the “watering hole.55” As I trekked along the
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path, I noticed the Rose McCarthy Memorial Way sign tacked on a tree, the signs
explicitly addressing inclusivity and safe spaces, and the large board with a series of
terms and definitions. The terms included “white privilege,” “cultural appropriation,”
“racism,” and “indigenous.” It is of note that none of the terms addressed speciesism or
issues of consumption. There was a presence, however, of antispeciesist literature spread
out on the blankets of distributors and several organizers identified themselves as
representatives from recognizable antispeciesist direct action campaigns. The secondary
board offered sign up slots for attendees to volunteer to assist with kitchen duties,
cleaning, childcare, and site management. Along the walk to the lake we discussed our
activist backgrounds and what brought us to the Rendezvous. Another woman had her
daughter present and described how they had hitchhiked across the country to attend, and
that she was not sure how they would get home. I was introduced to others as “Jenny,”
but everyone else was introduced as their chosen pseudonyms such as Tink and Rising
Eagle. When I disclosed my name was Jenny I often received skeptical looks and a
sensed their doubt in my authenticity because I did not provide an obvious pseudonym.
After a long walk through TWAC, we were unable to locate the swimming area. We
heard shouts through the trees, but one of the activists said she heard men’s voices and
was uncomfortable moving forward. We turned back and headed to the next series of
sessions that were slated to begin shortly. The mother and daughter that we had
befriended expressed an interest in sticking together when we returned to the base camp.
55.
I often had to wear or carry both children, as they would not separate from me in strange
surroundings. Although my partner was present and more than willing to help, it became easier to keep
them with me. Because the space was for women only, my partner was not able to accompany us to assist.
See Appendix:O for an example of wearing both children at the Resistance Ecology convergence.
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We found a clearing and sat down for our daughters to play while we listened to the
panel.
The panel focused on security culture, a recurring theme that was also prevalent
was Resistance Ecology. The speaker, a lawyer representing the National Lawyers Guild
(NLG), facilitated a series of role-playing activities to provide legal trainings. The
speaker took turns acting as the activist and law enforcement officer, emphasizing the
legal rights of protestors, “Three things: Don't talk to cops. Don't trust cops. Cops are like
wild animals” (Anonymous 2014c). The participants wanted to know more about the
ways in which they can protect themselves at convergences such as the one they were
currently at. One activist described the ways cell phones can be used for surveillance and
suggested it be a requirement that all batteries are removed. Another activist spoke out
and challenged this tactic claiming that people can simply bring a back-up power source.
The conversation became contentious when another activist shouted that the only
effective way to avoid cell phones being used for surveillance is to lock them in a metal
box at the beginning of each gathering. Given the rich ethnographic data and elaborate
infrastructure that was available during the Rendezvous, it was challenging to not use my
cell phone or camera. Unlike the other activist gatherings and direct actions I attended, I
intentionally did not have my cell phone on me while I was there. This posed a challenge
when I was finally able to write down my observations at the end of the day, particularly
with recalling the specific physical surroundings. The final role-playing enacted a “stop
and search” between an activist and a law enforcement officer. The NLG representative
probed the participant with invasive questions; each met with an insinuated threat. When
the activist began to answer one of the questions and address the speculation, the NLG
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representative loudly said, “STOP!” He began to explain that you do not have to answer
any questions and the only vocalization you should make is to request legal
representation. The panel wrapped up and we made our way back to the kitchen area for
lunch.
The prepared food provided by Seeds for Peace did not indicate if animal
products were used, though there were animal products visible in the kitchen. I found a
piece of bread and slathered on peanut butter and brought it back for Emory. While we
were sitting there, two activists quickly walked past while shouting to one another. I
overheard as they questioned the choice to host the Rendezvous in the Siskiyou National
Forest, which they claimed was native land. They slowed down and continued their
conversation within earshot. I listened as they went on to discuss the prevalence of “dread
locks” worn by white people in the movement. They had attended a talk earlier that day
that focused on white privilege and cultural appropriation, and a self-identified white
woman had defended the decision to wear her hair in locks. They glanced over and
awkwardly paused when they noticed I had been listening. In effort to ease the
discomfort, I joined the conversation. We chatted about identity and legitimate claims to
authenticity, and the tendency for activists in radical spaces to police one another. I
disclosed that I oftentimes feel ostracized for my appearance and gender performance.
One of the activists laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m sure when you walk in a room people
think ‘Hey, there is Activist Barbie!’” The other activist laughed and admitted they
thought that when they noticed me earlier. The conversation trailed off shortly after that
and they left to attend a tree-sit workshop. I began to notice a rotting smell close by and
got up to locate the source. There were two women seated nearby that were working with
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the dead carcass of squirrels. Although the smell was putrid, I moved closer to overhear
the conversation. Both women appeared in their mid-20’s, white, and well-dressed. The
activists looked like an Urban Outfitters catalog meets The Flintstones.
Two men came to sit down next to them just as I made my way closer. The two
women began to explain that they were working these hides and had hunted the animals
in the forest. The women both wore jewelry made from bones and feathers and one of the
men was wearing a fur skirt. One of the women offered the men a cup of tea, made with
the brains of the squirrel. After a brief conversation about how to make squirrel brain tea,
they began to discuss the possibility of trading animals. Although one of the women had
just slaughtered two elks to make her bedding at home, she was interested in trading her
remaining two elk. This same woman went on to describe her hunting and skinning
practices as an art form, and she mockingly stated that she could survive in the woods
unlike most of the people there. This interaction was a departure from the intersectional
conversations at Resistance Ecology, but fits within the primitivist politic. This was the
only encounter I had with someone boasting about hunting, but it demonstrates the range
of activists drawn to the Rendezvous. Another conversation of note was with a couple
someone directed us to that also had an infant. There were not many children in
attendance, so it became an identifying feature for both parties. The couple had also
traveled from Ohio, and coincidentally one of them was pursuing a PhD from an Ohio
university. We shared a few words on struggling to survive on adjunct wages and the
instability of the academic job market, and also shared stories of participating in political
actions with a child. This was one of the few conversations that I had with another
activist in which I discussed my research at length and received a positive response. The
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other couple also disclosed their names, which I later verified are actually their legal
names. In a farewell exchange, Emory watched as the mother ate a raw carrot with a fresh
green stem. Emory asked if she could also have a carrot, which was then given to her as a
parting gift.
Our stay at the Rendezvous provided an encouraging exposure to tactical training
within the anarchist antispeciesist movement. The gathering itself, as a temporary
autonomous zone (TAZ), fractures the physical and digital divide and attempts to create
forms of disidentification invoking the existential questions and framework put forth by
the insurrectionary anarchist, Hakim Bey (2003):
Are we who live in the present doomed never to experience autonomy, never to
stand for one moment on a bit of land ruled only by freedom? Are we reduced
either to nostalgia for the past or nostalgia for the future? Must we wait until the
entire world is freed of political control before even one of us can claim to know
freedom? Logic and emotion can unite to condemn such a supposition. Reason
demands that one cannot struggle for what one does not know; and the heart
revolts at a universe so cruel as to visit such injustices on our generation alone of
mankind…The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly engage
directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of
time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen,
before the State can crush it. Because the State is concerned primarily with
Simulation rather than substance, the TAZ can “occupy” these areas clandestinely
and carry on its festal purposes for quite a while in relative peace. [96–99].
The camp is set up as a suspension of geopolitical borders, State regulations, and
authoritarianism. It was clear that many activists are drawn to the convergence for a
variety of reasons, and that a range of politics are represented. The gathering was not a
cohesive group with one agenda, but rather a series of agendas that overlapped and
diverged on specific issues. Many of the distributors featured literature on the ELF and
ALF, as well as CrimethInc. and Green Anarchy. The sessions provided skills trainings,
anonymous spaces to network and build activist communities, and workshops providing
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legal counseling. Many of the activists looked familiar from various political actions,
including demonstrations in Ohio with The Bunny Alliance. The Cascadia Kids Tent,
unfortunately, was a total bust for Emory and did not provide any childcare relief. The
tent relied on volunteers to provide childcare, and only one person had signed up for one
shift the entire week. In theory, the tent and designated camping area represented an
inclusive politic for those with children. In practice, however, the tent was understaffed
and the family camping functioned more as a segregator than grand gesture. As we
gathered our belongings to leave, we sifted through the Ride Board. The board facilitates
activists traveling through larger areas to participate in demonstrations without a financial
burden. Following the Rendezvous, there were a series of scheduled book fairs
throughout California that activists had requested rides to. The direct action scene
facilitates this transient, relatively anonymous mode of travel. Several activists had told
me that they prefer to live on their own without the financial commitment of maintaining
a residence. They indicated that they believe collectives of passionate individuals can
claim spaces to be there own, just as Earth First! had done through the establishment of
the camp. Again, the Earth First! Rendezevous camp functions as a TAZ, a widely-cited
anarchist concept that creatively challenges property and the role of the commons,
provides a physical space to disidentify with not just the good versus bad protestor
paradigm, but also the authoritative functions of the State (Bey 2003).
The exit from the Rendezvous was not without its own excitement and dose of
security culture. As we pulled down the dirt road to exit, we noticed a long row of state
and federal vehicles. The vehicles represented the USDA, local sheriff’s office, United
States Forestry Service, and two unmarked car with plain-clothes officers in them. We
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stopped on the dirt path so that I could take a picture of the cars when an officer shouted,
“No blocking the road!” (Grubbs 2014b). We began to drive forward toward the state
route, but noticed there were several officers walking into the forest. Moments after
getting on the main road, my partner indicated he wanted to go back into the campsite.
Initially, I resisted the decision and questioned how we would provide assistance. In an
exercise of empowerment, my partner began to list off a series of services that we would
be able to provide, including: an extensive knowledge of our legal rights, two cell phones
capable of recording video, a vehicle to transport an additional person, and the ability to
provide forewarning before the site is searched. After my initial hesitation, we turned
back around and drove into the site. We rolled down our window, revealing to two small
children strapped into car seats in the backseat, and listened closely to the officer’s
conversations. One of the officers walked by the car and asked me if this was a Rainbow
Gathering. We kept on driving until we reached the pop-up welcome tent and activists in
lawn chairs. My partner got out of the car and explained that there were about 15 officers
at the foot of the entrance road and that an additional 5 officers were walking on-foot into
the forest. The activist explained that today alone, 20 people had been stopped and
searched in their vehicles and one person had been arrested and subsequently released.
We were given the ‘okay’ to enter the campsite again and let the organizers know what
was going on.
We parked in our parking spot and I waited with the girls while my partner went
to find the organizers. After he located them, I watched as their interaction progressed.
They reached for their walkie-talkie and a few minutes later another organizer came
running down from TWAC. After ten minutes of conversation and strategizing, the
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officers made their way to the parking area. Two officers stood with my partner and the
organizers while three officers dispersed into the camp. One of the officers walked the
aisles of the parking area and appeared to be looking at each individual vehicle. The
conversation lasted less than 10 minutes and then Michael said it was okay for us to
leave. The officers claimed that they heard there were fireworks in the forest, and that
they were simply there to remind them not to use them. The visit was one of many
during the Rendezvous and a rather unsuccessful attempt to intimidate the organizers.
While I was waiting in the car, I watched as several individuals stood in a circle and
passed a joint with potent marijuana around. Activists scoffed as they walked by, but did
not appear concerned in the least. On our drive home down the mountain we noted an
additional law enforcement vehicle with the USDA parked behind slightly off the road.
Emory waved goodbye and held tight to her Smokey the Bear binoculars someone had
given her at the Rendezvous.
269Life and gender exploitation
Throughout this study, I engaged in direct action that relied on political theatre to
challenge systems of exploitation. I followed a series of campaigns and collectives that
relied on various forms of direct action to challenge power, and followed the various
conversations between activists regarding the efficacy of various forms of direct action.
In the month leading up to the MAD Opening Day demonstration I learned about the
269Life campaign that traveled from Israel to the U.S. Several of my friends were going
to participate in a public branding (with hot iron rods) of the numbers 269 to memorialize
a calf tagged for slaughter with the number 269. The campaign epitomized public theater
and the use of symbolism and rhetoric to reach a large audience. The campaign records
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their demonstrations and successfully re-circulates these events internationally.
The
campaign gained international attention rapidly, drawing activists that I highly respected
and had worked with. Though, the campaign quickly fell from grace as vocal anarchist
antispeciesists criticized material found on the 269Life website. In addition, there is a
strong sentiment amongst prominent anarchist antispeciesists against the animal
liberation movement in Israel. The sentiment is part of an intersectional politic that
challenges governmentality, State violence, and the denial of human rights protections to
Palestinians. There is also a growing critique of the effort to greenwash military practices
to minimize the public perception of violence (Parr 2009:79–85). Despite these critiques,
there remains a strong following of the campaign.
One of the performances became a disturbing topic for discussion during my data
collection. In 2014, 269Life staged a public branding that would challenge the
oftentimes-fractured consciousness between human compassion for their infants and the
consumption of cow’s milk. Thus, the performance attempted to restore Adam’s absent
referent, but instead committed an atrocious act of sexualized violence. The performance,
featuring a young woman and infant, takes place in downtown Tel Aviv, in a densely
populated area. The woman creates a spectacle through the screen of violence, gendered
and sexualized violence. This was the second popular video from 269Life that featured a
woman being abused on film. The campaign uses street theater to draw attention to the
commodification of animal bodies by branding activist bodies with the numbers “269”
with a torched cast iron rod. The activists are left charred and bleeding, some even
unconscious, and then dragged off to conjure up images of abused animals. Although
spectacle is a powerful rhetorical device that queers, or rearticulates and reimagines, the
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veiled discussions about violence and exploitation in animal industries, it needs to be
problematized. Public street theatre facilitates an imaginary, a temporal space where
passerby folk (and online viewers of subsequent videos posted to social media) can
participate in a symbolic performance through disidentification. The performance can be
playful, interjecting humor as activists mock industry owners, vivisectors, and even
capitalism itself. The performance can be emotionally disturbing, lining up hundreds of
human bodies to represent the number of animals killed every thirty seconds. And in the
case of 269Life, the performance can trigger repressed memories and emotions to those
who have been sexually, physically, or emotionally abused.
The video from 269Life entitled “Woman Forcibly Milked in the Street- 269Life”
uses a human female body to perform the reproductive violence and infanticide in the
dairy industry. The video opens with People look confused as the woman’s baby is taken
from her by men in masks and placed in a cage. The woman is pleading, crying to be left
alone. The men proceed to tear open her blouse and use a blood-soaked pump to forcibly
extract milk. Not only does she volunteer to have her baby taken and placed within a
cage, attempting to make visible the connections between dairy and veal, but she agrees
to be physically abused, have her clothes ripped open, and be forcibly milked in the
streets with breast pumps appeared to be covered in blood. She is then kicked and has her
neck clamped while being thrown into a van.
As an advocate of home demonstrations, political street theater, and direct action,
the line between progress and hegemony requires consistent reflexive introspection. This
connects to the earlier discussion in Chapter One: Introduction that emphasizes the
challenges to drag performance by queer theorists such as Muñoz, Butler, and Halberstam
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(Butler 2011:90–95; Muñoz 1999:99–101; Halberstam 2005:127-129). When do we
begin to reflect on the structure of our own movement and have a conversation about the
dimensions of privilege in our struggle for a holistic liberation? The line should and must
be drawn to demarcate campaigns, performances, and individuals that rely on further
exploiting other beings. Many have called the People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA) on their use of cissexism and heteronormativity. Their insistence that
women should go naked instead of wear the furs of an animal, and that men can still be
aggressively masculine while vegan do not challenge the intersecting dimensions of
privilege that naturalize speciesism. Women’s bodies do not need to be the battleground.
Human bodies not need be abused. The paradigms of power that privilege race, class,
gender, sexuality, and so on do not need to be conflated with speciesism. The genocides,
atrocities, and apartheids of human groups do not need to be made literal metaphors for
animal exploitation. All such actions distract, derail, and undermine a holistic liberation
from oppression.
It is not a necessary element to further exploit women’s bodies in order to have a
conversation about the exploitation of animal bodies. The video reinforces all of the
sexual and reproductive voice I discuss in an edited collection (Grubbs and Adams 2013).
269life is taking a similar approach to PETA, reifying gendered and sexual structures of
violence without any critical engagement to disrupt these paradigms of power. This video
represents a symbolic martyrdom that women have historically been marginalized to fill,
and is particularly violent in the performance. The performance could have been
organized to provide a salient reference for the audience about the connections between
lactating mammals and commodification, but that opportunity was lost. Rather than
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solely draw attention to the fact that dairy is predicated on reproductive violence,
infanticide, and exploitation, the performance could have drawn symbolic connections.
Through the dialogue on social media, I watched the debate unfold regarding the
performance. Some argued that humans must use their species privilege to keep the
conversation about the animals, and that it is powerful to allow our bodies to be the site
of pain and torture to raise awareness.
The activist circles in which I am involved, thankfully, did not agree with this
argument. Instead, activists argued that committing acts of violence against one another
to merely start a conversation about violence does not absolve species privilege. Instead
it reifies it by focusing the conversation back onto humans. The public articulations of
animal exploitation need not be done through reenacting violence against women’s
bodies. Violence against human female bodies takes many forms and need not be
conflated with the dimensions of violence against animals. The 269Life campaign is a
departure from the other campaigns selected. It poses a moral and ethical dilemma about
violence and effective tactics, and it also highlights the importance of intersectionality
within the AELM. The campaign also provides a space to engage with the controversial
tactic of elective mutilation and strategic essentialism. Ultimately, the campaign and the
tactic are outside the realm of effective political theatre because it naturalizes violence.
Although forms of martyrdom have effective rhetorical function, they also cannot be
separated from the violent acts themselves.
Conclusion
Each ethnographic site provided rich detail to interrogate the theoretical areas of
the project. The data is woven throughout each chapter, although this chapter
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concentrates several significant encounters. The challenge to maneuver data collection
within these personal spaces as an activist and research remained a constant balancing
act. Through local, national, and international travel, I gathered data from a range of
activist spaces. I was able to engage with anarchist antispeciesist campaigns on a
consistent, daily basis through the use of the internet and digital media,. As an activist, I
began this project with access to the research population and access to intimate activist
spaces. But because of my identity as an activist and commitment to radical change, I
intentionally did not exploit those trusted spaces. In the instances that I did not use a
recording device or gather identifying information, the data is contextually specific in the
ways that relevant. My personal connections and commitments facilitated more nuanced
and broadly stroked painting of these direct action campaigns and gatherings. This
chapter provides segue and connection to the more specific ethnographic data woven
throughout the remaining chapters.
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CHAPTER FOUR
NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM AND
CONSTRUCTING THE ECOTERRORIST
First, let us not blame people and their attitudes: the problem is not corruption or
greed, the problem is the system that pushes you to be corrupt… Public figures
from the pope downward bombard us with injunctions to fight the culture of
excessive greed and consummation – this disgusting spectacle of cheap
moralization is an ideological operation, if there ever was one… It is illusory to
expect that one can effectively change things by "extending" democracy into this
sphere, say, by organizing "democratic" banks under people's control. In such
"democratic" procedures (which, of course, can have a positive role to play), no
matter how radical our anti-capitalism is, the solution is sought in applying the
democratic mechanisms – which, one should never forget, are part of the state
apparatuses of the "bourgeois" state that guarantees undisturbed functioning of
the capitalist reproduction. [Žižek 2012:3]
What about animals slaughtered for our consumption? Who among us would be
able to continue eating pork chops after visiting a factory farm in which pigs are
half-blind and cannot even properly walk, but are just fattened to be killed? And
what about, say, torture and suffering of millions we know about, but choose to
ignore? Imagine the effect of having to watch a snuff movie portraying what goes
on thousands of times a day around the world: brutal acts of torture, the picking
out of eyes, the crushing of testicles -the list cannot bear recounting. Would the
watcher be able to continue going on as usual? Yes, but only if he or she were
able somehow to forget -in an act which suspended symbolic efficiency -what had
been witnessed. This forgetting entails a gesture of what is called fetishist
disavowal: "I know it, but I don't want to know that I know, so I don't know." I
know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I
can continue acting as if I don't know it. [Žižek 2008:53]
The political economy of agri-vivisection industries has been the subject of anarchist
antispeciesist critiques over the last four decades. The following chapter provides a
political economy context in which anarchist antispeciesists engage is direct action to
resist through disidentification. The chapter addresses the question of what constitutes the
political economy itself and how does it interpellate the ways in which leftist resistance is
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actualized within the ideological, social and economic [super-]structures of the State. In
particular, the fusing of international corporations and geopolitical entities through
globalization has created a moving, intangible target of which activist can demand
change. Yet, in the wake of massive globalization that veils individual accountability, the
neoliberal rhetoric of individual [citizen] social reasonability is omnipresent within the
rhetoric of the good protestor that identifies with participatory democracy as the primary
means of dissent56. The contradictory logic fits into the larger theoretical aim of this
project to examine the performativity of power that enables the State to appear rational
and fair, and it grossly manipulates the anti-authoritarian antispeciesist to appear as
terrorists. The contemporary moment is defined by key characteristics that have been
exacerbated by globalized capitalism. These characteristics facilitate a corporate
environment that separates neoliberalism with from the political ideology of liberalism
articulated by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Further, globalization has distanced the
current economic and political reality from the liberalism promulgated in the years
following World War I by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Neoliberal capitalism
facilitates the reconceptualization of sovereignty to include corporations as a global
power with State protection.
As discussed in Chapter One: Introduction, the U.S. government maintains a
[neoliberal] performance of democracy, while still allowing corporations to operate as the
exception through “corporate sovereignty” (Ong 2006:7). Corporate sovereignty
56.
This argument is an extension of the earlier discussion in Chapter One: Introduction of subject
formation and interpellation through Pêcheux’s three modalities in which individuals respond to the
“hailing” of ideology as either the good subject, bad subject, or disidentification (Muñoz 1999:11; Pêcheux
1982:158).
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facilitates the exceptional status of capitalist entities, specifically agri-vivisection
industries, that are notoriously deregulated in their operation yet protected through the
hyper-regulation of public scrutiny (Lovitz 2010:38). This hyper-regulation is exercised
through the surveillance, harassment, arrest, and subsequent prosecution of activists
engaging in direct action against agri-vivisection industries. Speciesist capitalism not
only permits violence against other-than-human animals, but it also permits violence
against human animals that are resolved to recapitulate agri-vivisection industries. The
investigations, prosecution, and sentencing of anarchist antispeciesists Eric McDavid,
Daniel McGowan, and Walter Bond relied on rhetoric that conflated activism and
terrorism, and affirmed the sovereignty of agri-vivisection.
Neoliberalism
There is a growing literature on the neoliberal reshaping of global capitalism and
the nepotistic overlap between government and corporate entities. The neoliberal
reshaping of global capitalism and the nepotistic overlap between government and
corporate entities facilitates the decentralization of corporations, ambiguous loci of
accountability, and the façade of individual agency (Leitner, Peck, and Sheppard 2008:3).
The decentralization of corporations negates accountability by creating an illusive web of
interconnected international entities. With the increasing prevalence of lobby front
groups and multinational conglomerates, the task of corporate-mapping and identifying a
singular target has become increasingly difficult (Graeber 2009b:xii) It is difficult to
identify a central site of government that can be held accountable for monitoring “the
market,” let alone a singular regulatory body responsible for a single function within the
market (Graeber 2009b:81). The abundance of regulatory groups and committees has
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meant the obfuscation of actual regulation and accountability. Globalization has
increased that terrain through the global borders that place further restrictions of who and
what laws can apply to the market, depending on its location. Neoliberalism facilitates a
façade of accountability through the rhetoric of market democracy. The challenge for
those hoping to dismantle this oppressive reality relies on deconstructing the illusive web
of corporate-State alliances that decentralize the deregulated industries.
The identified elements highlight the exploitative nature of neoliberalism and how it is
hegemonically reinscribed in social relations.
Neoliberalism is loosely defined within a tangible framework of ten
characteristics: the decentralization of State accountability, State/Private sector alliances,
ambiguity and uncertainty of policing bodies, citizenship defined through a
consumerism/client model, David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession,
Jürgen Habermas’ concept of civil society, transnational forms of governance, overlap of
sovereignty, deregulation of industries, and the operating model of “best practices” that
insists reality is quantifiable (Adamson 1983; Harvey 2007b; Habermas 1984). The
decentralized and deregulated State is driven by the global market, which is controlled by
elite powerholders (Leap 2011b). Habermas theorized that a necessary distinction must
be made between the private sector and government and corporate spheres to facilitate
public engagement and protections of speech. The demarcation of civil society, however,
does not account for the elusive web of powerholders that is veiled within neoliberalism
because of the ambiguity of authority. It is difficult to identify a central site of
government that can be held accountable for monitoring “the market,” let alone a singular
regulatory body responsible for a single function within the market (Graeber 2009b:81).
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The abundance of regulatory groups and committees has meant the obfuscation of actual
regulation and accountability.
Through the processes of privatization, financialization, the creation and
manipulation of crisis, and redistribution through statecraft, the owning, bourgeois, class
is able to accumulate capital that further strategies an economic wealth gap with the
labor, proletariat, class through the dispossession of resources, including geographical,
industrial, and ecological (Harvey 2004; Harvey 2005; Harvey 2007b). Harvey provides a
contemporary application and expansion of Marx’s theory of capital accumulation,
specifically the notion of “original” or “primitive accumulation” that fractures the
contradictions and disillusions of capitalism and predatory credit structures. Globalization
is one of the processes in the manipulation of crisis to address the spatio-temporal ‘fix,’
as Harvey explains,
…capital necessarily creates a physical landscape in its own image at one point in
time only to have to destroy it at some later point in time as it pursues
geographical expansions and temporal displacements as solutions to the crises of
overaccumulation to which it is regularly prone. Thus is the history of creative
destruction (with all manner of deleterious social and environmental
consequences) written into the evolution of the physical and social landscape of
capitalism…Another series of contradictions arises within the dynamics of spatiotemporal transformations more generally. If the surpluses of capital and labour
power exist within a given territory (such as a nation state) and cannot be
absorbed internally (either by geographical adjustments or social expenditures)
then they must be sent elsewhere to find a fresh terrain for their profitable
realization if they are not to be devalued. [Harvey 2004:66]
The agricultural industry negates environmental regulations and labor protections through
the outsourcing of the means of production. Animal-based farms, seed patenting and
GMO crops, animal breeding, and the animal-skin trade have all shifted operations within
a globalized marketplace that have had irreparable impacts on populations (Shiva 2005).
In order to naturalize ecological destruction, hunger despite excess in the global West,
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and the economic demise of the small-farm operations, agricultural industries have relied
on the manipulation of crisis. Within the context of neoliberal scholars interrogating the
contemporary manifestations of capitalism, Harvey relies on Luxemburg’s apt
foreshadowing of the credit crisis,
Credit, though shareholding, combines in one magnitude of capital a large number
of individual capitals. It makes available to each capitalist the use of other
capitalists’ money- in the form of industrial credit…Credit not only aggravates
the crisis in its capacity as a dissembled means of exchange, it also helps to bring
and extend the crisis by transforming all exchange into an extremely complex and
artificial mechanism…We see that credit, instead of being an instrument for the
suppression or the attenuation of crises, is on the contrary a particularly mighty
instrument for the formation of crises…In short, credit reproduces all the
fundamental antagonisms of the capitalist world. It accentuates that. It precipitates
their development and thus pushes the capitalist world forward to its own
destruction. [Luxemburg 1900:12]
The credit crisis exacerbates the notion of corporate economic hardship, when in fact,
justifying the federal bailouts exclusively provided for corporations. Individual
consumers were presented with the manipulation of the crisis that relied on predatory
debt through credit (credit cards, loans, payday advance, and so on). In a similar vein,
agricultural industries have co-constructed a crisis that challenges their ability to operate
without the threat of dissenters engaging in direct action. The crisis relies on vilification
of an “other”, specifically interpellating the activists’ disidentification as ecoterrorism.
Globalization has increased that terrain through the global borders that place
further restrictions of who and what laws can apply to the market, depending on its
location. As part of the omnipotent power given to the market within neoliberalism,
citizenship is restructured as a client and consumer model (Graeber 2009b:83). The
contractual relationship between citizens and the State are defined by capital exchange
within the market, and thus to attempt a cease in the capital-contract could potentially
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nullify citizenship. A citizen choosing not to pay taxes could face criminal charges and
result in prison, which would deny them access democratic processes such as voting.
Neoliberalism facilitates a façade of accountability through the rhetoric of market
democracy. The challenge for those hoping to dismantle this oppressive reality relies on
deconstructing the illusive web of corporate-State alliances that decentralize the
deregulated industries. Neoliberalism itself, however, cannot sufficiently describe the
ways in which agricultural industries operate within such significant spaces of
exceptionality within regulatory rhetoric (Agamben 1998; Agamben 2005).
Neoliberal Capitalism
Anthropologists have engaged State sovereignty as it pertains to various layers of
governmentality (Dean 2009; Gupta 2012; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Nugent 1997).
The layers of governmentality can be understood through Althusser’s Ideological State
Apparatus, Gramsci’s concept hegemony, as well as anthropological articulations of
sovereignty. Neoliberal capitalism relies on hegemonic citizenship, specifically through
consumers perpetuating corporate power through consumption. Althusser expanded on
the work of Marx, but with an emphasis on Gramsci’s concept, hegemony through his
Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) model that provides a structural processing in which
ideology [read: power] is a negotiation that is reproduced within hegemonic social
apparatuses (Althusser 1970). For Althusser, ideology is not epiphenomenal. It is a
process; both reinforced and reified “upward” and “downward.” It is the reproduction of
the conditions and means of productions that Althusser focused on. The state enforces its
sovereign power through different forms of the Repressive State Apparatus (consent is
gained coercively upon threat of violence) whereas the Ideological State Apparatus is a
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more neutralized site of power. Schools, religion, family units, and arguably, the mediaare larger Ideological State Apparatus’ that use subtle and discrete ways to garner consent
by making government policies seem ‘in our best interest. Capitalist entities such as
corporations are constructed through rhetoric of personhood that not only facilitates
hegemonic consumption; it also facilitates vanguard legislation that protects corporations
from regulation.
Marx articulated the ways in which commodities are fetishized, and how the act
of consumption itself is viscerally tied to how individuals understand themselves in
relation to society. However, this commodity fetishism is taken further when the
corporations themselves, regardless of economic, environmental, and structural violence
they perpetuate, become the fetishized entity. When doctors, teachers, and religious
leaders praise companies like Johnson & Johnson, Delta Airlines, and Astra Zeneca as
representing the American Ideal, and criticism against these companies treated as thus
attacks on the American Ideal, a process of anthropomorphism occurs. In this way,
legislation protecting corporations from dissenting criticism mirrors the language and
logic of hate crime legislation (Lovitz 2010:93). In doing so, corporations, particularly
agricultural industries, manipulate the anthropological concepts of sovereignty and de
facto sovereignty as discussed by Agamben, Hansen and Stepttuat, and Mbembe.
Sovereignty, however, is reinforced through public participation in neoliberal and
capitalist structures.
Sovereign power is the central, often unrecognized, underside of modern/liberal
forms of codified/regulated government (Hansen and Stepputat 2006:297). Broadly
defined, sovereignty refers to the ruling power a group or government can posses over a
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geographical location or group. A type of legal dominion per se. The body is always the
site of the performance of sovereign power, and this performance is most visible during
states of war, marginality, extreme conditions, and fragmentations (Dean 2009:22). De
facto sovereignty is the ability to kill, punish, and discipline with impunity. Agamben’s
idea of the dual body of the citizen—the citizen is an included body with rights because
he/she is included in the greater political community but there is also a biological body, a
life that can be stripped of symbolization and humanity and reduced to “bare life” by a
sovereign power (Agamben 1998:6). Agamben makes clear that we need to theorize the
relationship between power and one’s bare life. This point contributes to the de facto
sovereignty to place certain social actors under surveillance, in interrogation cells, and in
solitary confinement within federal prisons.
Ong articulates how citizenship has changed within neoliberal capitalism from an
emphasis on a person’s geographical membership to a value of their skills in the market
(Ong 2006:16). Although the U.S. government still maintains a neoliberal performance of
democracy, corporations operate as the exception through “corporate sovereignty” (Ong
2006:7). The term corporate sovereignty refers to the exceptional status of capitalist
entities awarded through the deregulation of industry and hyper-regulation of public
scrutiny. Dara Lovitz examines the absence of effective federal animal protection laws
due to the agri-vivisection industries’ lobby presence (Lovitz 2010:38). The Animal
Welfare Act and Endangered Species Act create a continuum of exceptionality for agrivivisection industries (McCoy 2007:55). The laws utilize the neoliberal rhetoric of animal
welfare and environmental stewardship while creating exceptions for highly profitable
industries. Corporate sovereignty is naturalized and exercised through the construction of
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the ecoterrorist within a larger rhetoric of terrorism. The ecoterrorist is constructed as the
crisis facing agricultural industries, thus it is necessary to trace the trajectory of this
rhetorical construction.
Anthropology of terrorism
The narratives used to describe, define, and reapproriate the events of September
11 have shaped anthropological discourses. Critical anthropologists have interrogated the
construction of terrorism, Islamophobia, and the repression of dissent in the United
States. The “War on Terror” narrative crafted and promulgated by President George W.
Bush reshaped vulnerability into aggression as the U.S. went from “victim of terrorists”
to “hunter of terrorists” (Hodges 2011:88). The narrative naturalized a shift in
sovereignty that led to the rapid establishment of the federal counterterrorism agency, the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), made up of invasive agencies such as the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Sovereignty within the neoliberal moment
in the U.S. awards powers and protections to agencies created during the opportunistic
“War on Terror”. Anthropological and linguistic discourses on sovereignty have
examined the relationship between capitalism, statecraft, and state power (Chomsky
1992; Chomsky 1999; Chomsky 2004:222; Dean 2009; Hansen and Stepputat 2001; Ong
2006). Chilton examines the rhetorical significance of media portrayals of September 11
(Chilton 2004:154). Dunmire has critiqued the proliferation of Islamophobia through the
constructed binaries used to demarcate “victims/terrorists” and “good/bad citizen”
(Dunmire 2011:61). Chomsky examines the U.S. manufacturing of xenophobia through
hyperbolic language and patriotism rhetoric (Chomsky 2004:222–226). Lakoff expands
on the use of “terrorism” and “evil” as they have been articulated within the frames of
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metaphor (Lakoff 2001:3). Critical anthropologists have focused on how these discourses
of “terrorism” and “war” are used to silence dissent. Graeber historicizes contemporary
political repression within a context of violence against direct action protestors in the
anti-globalization movement (Graeber 2009b). Price foreshadows this history, focusing
on the use of surveillance that targeted and marginalized anthropologists sympathetic
with Marxism, Communism, and Socialism (Price 2004:25). Anthropologists have
examined discourses of terrorism and government repression of dissent, specifically the
deployment of post-September 11 terrorism rhetoric57
Pine elaborates on how restrictive laws redefine terrorist as, “somebody who
opposes the state… paving the way to criminalize dissent, to criminalize resistance, to
criminalize the right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in Honduras”
(Fernandez 2011). Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois examine the use of state-sanctioned
violence through institutionalized torture abroad to manufacture consent. The tactic is
used globally, but manifests in the U.S. use of, “solitary confinement as a routinized
punishment within new ‘super max’ facilities built to contain an ever-expanding number
of petty, drug-related offenders in the early twenty-first century” (Scheper-Hughes and
Bourgois 2003:23) . Theorists have expanded upon this continuum of terrorism, drawing
parallels between the current political moment and the violent anti-leftist sentiments from
decades earlier (Turk 2004). Price historicizes the tactic within the U.S. government of
relying on political or social events to restructure the public sphere. Price argues that the
government played off of post-war vulnerabilities, such as a struggling economy and
57.
Anthropological discourses on terrorism rhetoric examine the linkages between the proliferation
and naturalization of Islamophobia and hyperpatriotism (Ahmed 2003:124, Hodges 2011).
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health epidemics, to naturalize the invasive forms of surveillance during McCarthyism
that targeted academics (Price 2004:45). These discourses critique the limits placed on
civil liberties and manipulation of international relations.
Construction of “terrorism”
Prior to the events of September 11, “terrorism” was scarcely used in government
propaganda nor included in academic discourses (Jackson et al. 2011:1–5). The events
ushered in media and government narratives that crafted the binary of victim/terrorist
(Gershkoff and Kushner 2005:525). The binary further established an “us” [white] and
“them” [non-white] dichotomy (Ahmed 2003:37). The public was bombarded with
hyperbolic language defending the future U.S. engagement in an offensive war against
the omnipresent “terrorists” (Gershkoff and Kushner 2005:527) The term terrorism is
intentionally vague and was undefined within the parameters of its use after September
11 (Hodges 2011:39). Terrorism studies scholar, Bruce Hoffman, insists that government
agencies define and deploy the term “terrorism” in convenient but inconsistent ways
(Hoffman 2006:32). The television programming produced by the U.S. media
consistently used the word “terrorist” while displaying images of Arabs and Muslims in
the subsequent days (Ahmed 2003:24). Although international political bodies invoke the
term terrorism, there lacks a widely accepted definition that demarcates what it is and it
is not. The rhetoric of terrorism relies on this ambiguity, and has been manipulated by the
agendas of statecraft (Chomsky 2002:155). The rallying cries for war that echoed after
September 11 demanded increased militarism. This construction of terrorism, however, is
intentionally malleable enough to be applied to any persons challenging the State.
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The government passed the 2001 Patriot Act, which conflated civic duty with the
sacrifice of civil liberties (Potter 2011; Esposito and Kalin 2011:30). Despite widespread
support at that time, the Patriot Act legally stripped citizens of their right to privacy.
Similar to Decena’s discussion of the hegemonic confessions from the good sexual
citizen, the public was given instructions as to how to respond to September 11 in the
U.S. (Decena 2008b:407). The good U.S. citizen’s was to perform patriotism through
their complicity. The propaganda from the government and media insisted that the
sacrifice of civil liberties would restore safety from “terrorists.” The good U.S. citizen
would comply with increased travel restrictions, racial and ethnic profiling, and increased
surveillance. In addition, patriotism was conflated with consumerism, as demonstrated by
President George W. Bush’s speech that encouraged citizens to support capitalist
enterprises (Skocpol 2002:539). The U.S. public was encouraged to engage in air travel,
and there was an increase in the purchasing and flying of the U.S. flag (Ahmed 2003:32).
The federal government continued the offensive campaign in 2003 by creating the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an entity specifically designed to,
Prevent terrorist attacks; prevent the unauthorized acquisition, importation,
movement, or use of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials and
capabilities within the United States; and reduce the vulnerability of critical
infrastructure and key resources, essential leadership, and major events to terrorist
attacks and other hazards. [Department of Homeland Security 2012]
The language used to define the agenda of the DHS, however, relies on the vague-yetpowerful rhetoric of terrorism. The media bombarded viewers with images of Al-Qaeda
operatives and questioned whether Islam was a “terrorist religion” (Esposito and Kalin
2011:xxxi). The construction of the “terrorist” relied on racist and xenophobic views
toward Muslims (Ahmed 2003:34). It remained unclear who the “terrorists” were, and
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what appropriate responses should be taken to deal with “them”. The DHS was
established to monitor the privacies hegemonically chiseled away by the Patriot Act. The
events on September 11 and the subsequent days provided a stage for the Establishment
to articulate an omnipresent terrorist threat that naturalized increased national security,
State violence and a repressive agenda that promulgated the vague yet powerful labeling
of terrorism (Klein 2000:238). The construction of terrorism utilized xenophobic
language that established an us/them binary targeting Muslims and those of Arab-descent
(Hodges 2011:47). The blatant discrimination played off of sensationalist media and
government narratives about “safety” and “security”. The changing political climate
increased restrictions the right for citizens to exercise free speech and dissent (Lovitz
2010:122).
Anarchist antispeciesists do not identify with the blatant disregard agri-vivisection
industries display for “safety” and “security” as they pertain to sustainability through
deforestation, global patenting of seeds, and genetic manipulation of species used in
farming and vivisection (Shiva 2000:29). Through direct action, the activists disidentify
with the speciesism naturalized through neoliberal capitalism. In response, the federal
government interpellated the activists’ disidentification as ecoterrorism, claiming that
agitators posed a threat to safety and security in similar ways to the terrorists of
September 11 (Potter 2011). The State did so by manipulating the vulnerable public postSeptember 11 to support a broad security agenda that included heightened surveillance of
non-State actors and the introduction of repressive legislation targeting anarchist
antispeciesist activists. The blatant (and veiled) use of surveillance and targeted
legislation would not have been possible without the proliferation of terrorism rhetoric
147
that conflated activism with a national security threat. Despite the State’s retaliatory
interpellation, anarchist antispeciesists did not modify their philosophy or strategy to fit
the model [it queers the dichotomous nature] of good versus bad protest(or). When
interpellated within these mechanisms of repression, activists chose not to identify as the
good subject (Pêcheux 1982:158). Activism that challenged the State and further
challenged systems of privilege that statecraft depends upon (capitalism, globalization,
and sovereignty) was transformed to distinguish the good protestor (or the patriotic
consumer in this case) from the bad protestor, which is most evident in the construction
of the ecoterrorist.
Constructing the ecoterrorist
The establishment of the DHS institutionalized the rhetoric of terrorism and used
broad-brush strokes to define its purpose. The propaganda used to define the good U.S.
citizen was held to demarcate the beliefs and behaviors of the good protestor (Lovitz
2010:114). Graeber emphasized the binary construction of the good protestor/bad
protestor during the anti-globalization protests against the World Trade Organization in
1999 (Graeber 2009b). These articulations permeated during the reconfiguration of
dissent in the U.S. after September 11 (Dunmire 2011:40). The good protestor would
financially contribute to mainstream advocacy charities such as the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and Save the Rainforest (Graeber
2004:78). The good protestor would participate in green capitalism by purchasing items
such as hybrid vehicles (Parr 2009:20). The good protestor would willingly uphold
capitalism and unquestionably support the surveillance measures by the government. The
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good protestor would certainly not challenge economic entities or disrupt commerce of
any kind.
The bad protestor, however, called into question the reappropriation of terrorism
rhetoric to describe dissent (Jackson et al. 2011:2). The bad protestor continued to
challenge capitalism and the ideologies that uphold it. The bad protestor would engage in
direct actions that included property destruction rather than leafleting ballot issues. As the
months passed following September 11, it was clear that the line between the terrorist
and the bad protestor was blurred to provide a retaliatory interpellation of the
disidentification of direct action (Leader and Probst 2003; Hoffman 2006:32). The
Deputy Assistant Director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism with the FBI,
John Lewis, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004 regarding the threats
from domestic terrorists. In the address, Lewis described the animal and earth liberation
movement as the number one domestic terrorist threat facing the U.S. (Lewis 2004) . The
philosophy of liberation and the strategies of direct action pose an effective challenge to
the hegemony of speciesism and capitalism (Nocella and Best 2004:113). The challenges
are so threatening that anarchist antispeciesists, the bad protestors, are interpellated by
the State as ecoterrorists (Liddick 2006:141). The U.S. government reified the conflation
of anarchist antispeciesist with terrorist into law with the passage of the 2006 Animal
Enterprise Terrorism Act.
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act
The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) is a federal legislation that
amended the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992 (AEPA) to broaden its application
and increase penalties. A much wider array of nonviolent forms of dissent could now be
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considered as both federal crime and terrorism. The Act’s use of broad and general
language does not definitively explain the nature of “animal enterprise” or what
“interfering with” such an enterprise means, everything from a sit-in to bombing a
vivisection laboratory after removing the animals (and harming no humans) might be
considered “interference” and thus terrorism. Such loose language specifically enhances
the government’s power through interpellation and greatly denies the civil exercise of the
first amendment. The Act redefined already State-recognized crimes as federal offenses,
and redefined them within the realm of “domestic terrorism.” The AETA became the
vehicle for the U.S. Department of Justice to protect corporate sovereignty in response to
the high profile cases Operation Backfire and SHAC-7 (Potter 2008a:677–679). The
AEPA already protected many animal industries and instituted a restitution provision that
required activists to pay a targeted vivisector to cover costs associated with repeating an
animal study that was interrupted or invalidated or farmer the cost of loss of food
production (Lovitz 2010:50).
The AEPA established three tiers of prison sentencing penalties in addition to the
financial penalties, “(1) for damage exceeding $10,000, one-year imprisonment; (2) for
personal injuries caused, up to ten years imprisonment; and (3) for death caused, entire
life imprisonment (Lovitz 2010:50). Lovitz interrogates the overlap between politicians
that sponsored the Act and agricultural industries.
Consider the business ties of Representative Stenholm, who tirelessly pushed for
the Farm Animals and Research Facilities Protection Act and then its amended
version, the AEPA. Throughout his congressional career, the United States
agricultural industries gave Stenholm more than $2.5 million in
donations…Stenholm’s top two contributors were the American Farm Bureau and
the National Cattleman’s Beef Association. The Dairy Farmers of America and
the United Egg Association also were among Stenholm’s top ten contributors.
Stenholm’s third largest contributor was the American Medical Association
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(AMA). Other Sponsors of the AEPA had financial ties with animal exploitative
industries. [Lovitz 2010:51]
Lovitz provides a detailed account of the contributions as well as personal investments of
politicians that leveraged their positions to pass the Act. Unhappy with the number of
prosecutions and applicability of the Act, an amended version was introduced into
Congress on November 2005. From 1992 to 2005, agricultural industries had experienced
millions of dollars worth of damage. The AEPA had the promise of reducing the number
of attacks but did not deliver. Following on the rhetorical curtails of September 11, the
AEPA relied on the hysteria surrounding terrorism. One of the most notable distinctions
between the AEPA and the AETA is the replacement of the word “Protection” with
“Terrorism,” that explicitly rearticulated animal and ecological activism as terrorism.
Through the lens of terrorism, the AETA granted de facto sovereignty over a much wider
range of nonviolent forms of dissent. The Act broadened the definition of “animal
enterprise” to include not only commercial, but also academic enterprises that use or sell
animals or animal products. It also increased the existing penalties; including fines that
are based on the amount of financial damage caused in addition to monetary restitution
Similar to the AEPA, the AETA was introduced and cosponsored by politicians with a
blurred connection to agricultural industries. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) each had financial investments in the industries benefiting
from the Act, and in the House, Representatives Thomas Petri (R-WI) and Robert Scott
(D-VA) cosponsored the AETA.
Feinstein’s spouse, Richard Blum, is the Chairman of the Board of the CV
Richard Ellis Group (CBRE), a large firm that deals in commercial real estate and
caters to enterprises that conduct vivisection on nonhuman animals. CBRE
proclaims that is ‘dedicated to providing the life sciences industry with the highest
level of real estate services,’ as the company, ‘enhance[s] profitability’ of the
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biotechnology, medical-device, pharmaceutical, and related industries. CBRE
represents hundreds of such clients who engage in vivisection including American
Pharmaceutical Partners, Astra Zeneca, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Chiron, DuPont,
Eli Lilly and Company, Johnson and Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Schering
Ploud, and Wyeth. Inhofe, who has called global warming ‘the greatest hoax
perpetrated on the American people,’ owns approximately $250,000 in energyrelated businesses, including oil and gas companies. The oil and gas industry has
contributed over $1,223,723 to his campaign…The Nuclear Energy Institute has
contributed over $65,000 to Inhofe, seeking his support for a nuclear waste dump
at Yucca Mountain…Inhofe’s largest contributor, Koch Industries, owns
companies involved in chemical processing and forestry projects. In 2004, Inhofe
was named “Legislator of the Year” by the National Association of Chemical
Distributors…Tom Petri’s website proudly declares his close ties to Wisconsin
“animal agriculture.”… Petri heads the Badger Fund, a political action committee
whose top contributor is American Foods Group, which owns slaughter facilities.
[Lovitz 2010:85–87]
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) chaired the Committee on the Judiciary
that oversaw the 2006 Hearing. His financial connections in 2006 were through is
ownership of stocks in bonds with pharmaceutical companies including Abbot
Laboratories, Inc. (over $500,000), Pfizer (over $600,000), and Merci & Co. ($1.3
million)(Lovitz 2010:87). The AETA was voted through the Senate with unanimous
support, thus a procedure was used to expedite the passage of such “non-controversial
bills.” On November 13, 2006, the bill was passed by the House of Representatives and
was signed by President George W. Bush on November 27, 2006. The language used to
defend the bill argued that it offers the necessary power for the Department of Justice to
arrest, prosecute, and convict the activists without going through extensive juridical
process. In other words, the Act allows the federal government, as well as state
government, to apprehend and arrest social actors without due process, that ultimately
denies the accused ecoterrorist access to fair trial. Six Members of Congress were present
on the House Floor when the bill was passed. Dennis Kucinich, a Congressman from
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Ohio, spoke out about how the language of the bill would without a doubt have a chilling
effect on the exercise of the constitutional rights of protest (Potter 2008a).
The act redefined already state-recognized crimes as federal offenses termed
“domestic” terrorism. Combined with the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001, the State is
able to surveil, infiltrate, and disproportionately penalize activists targeting agricultural
industries. Direct action activists advocating economic boycott and public protest have
faced trumped up charges related to violating the AETA58. The loosely used terms
specifically enhance the government’s sovereignty and greatly deny civil exercise of the
first amendment. The AETA was written and sponsored by financially invested
politicians to target direct action activists. The D.C.-based journalist, Will Potter, argued
that the AETA is not specifically targeting anarchist antispeciesist activists that
knowingly engage in illegal direct action. Rather, Potter argues the AETA is meant to
instill a chilling silence in aboveground activists that utilize public protest in solidarity
with illegal direct actionists. Aboveground activists assume that through legal direct
action, the First Amendment protects their access to dissent. The implementation of the
AETA, however, demonstrates that legal direct action can also be targeted within the
vague and inclusive language (Potter 2008a).
The AETA stands unique as the only federal policy that targets a specific type of
nonviolent activism, a specific ideological position, and deems it terrorism. It is the only
Act that criminalizes an expression of freedom of speech based on the ideological
motivations of the social actor. Legal scholar, Kimberely McCoy illustrates how this Act
58.
In 2010, four activists with charged with conspiracy to commit “animal enterprise terrorism.”
The activists had engaged in chalking the sidewalk, public protest that included chanting and leafleting.
The case drew public criticism because of the First Amendment nature of the methods of protest. In 2013,
Kevin Johnson and Tyler Lang were arrested for “possession of burglary tools,” and indicted on July 10,
2014 for violating the AETA connected to a mink raid in Illinois.
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oversteps state sovereignty and targets the actor’s motivations in her legal indictment of
the AETA (McCoy 2007:65). McCoy argues, consider, for example, an angry woman
who crosses state lines to smash the computers at her husband’s laboratory, release the
subjects of his research, and spray-paint the word “adulterer” on the wall after learning
that her husband had cheated on her with his research assistant. She might be charged
under state laws for crimes such as trespass, property destruction, theft, or vandalism. But
if that same woman was driven by an ideological opposition to animal testing, rather than
an emotional reaction to her husband’s infidelity, and had spray painted the words “Free
the Animals” on the laboratory wall instead of the word “adulterer” she would most
likely be charged under the federal AETA as a domestic terrorist for committing the
exact same crimes. The actions: trespassing into the lab, breaking the computers,
releasing subjects, and vandalizing the wall with spray paint are the same. But, the
ideological motivation; to defend animals and challenge the exploitation and enslavement
predicated on speciesism define the latter scenario. Thus, the social actor spray-painting
“Free the Animals” is subject to higher fines, increased prison sentencing through
terrorism enhancements, as well as the transfer to Communications Management Unit
prisons.
The passage of the AETA and the nepotistic overlap between agri-vivisection
industries, politicians, and lobby firms demonstrate the contemporary manifestation of
neoliberal capitalism through the ability to interpellate [bad] protest as [eco]terrorism.
The targeted legislation simultaneously restricts public access to view and challenge
capitalist entities profiting in any capacity off of animal exploitation, while constructing
the activists as terrorists. The motivation between the Act relies on capital, both gained
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through the continued neoliberal structure of these industries and restricting public access
to intervene with the practices. Thus, the act offers asylum to all animal enterprisesplacing them outside of touch from the activist. The lobby group, the American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), author and advocate legislation that deregulates
animal industries while creating unconstitutional barriers to dissent (Lovitz 2010:109).
Although the Board of Directors of ALEC is made up of political representatives that are
public stakeholders in agricultural industries, and although the Private Enterprise
Advisory Council is comprised of significant leaders in the oil, vivisection,
pharmaceutical, energy, tech, and agribusiness industries, ALEC maintains that, “The
American Legislative Exchange Council works to advance limited government, free
markets and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership
of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public”
(American Legislative Exchange Council - Limited Government · Free Markets ·
Federalism n.d.). Powerful groups like ALEC represent the unique sovereignty held by
corporations: the ability to inconspicuously institute and enforce industry regulations and
the simultaneous hyper-regulation of dissent (Graeber 2009a:206). ALEC veils the ways
in which corporations sponsor repressive laws targeting activists, as well as the ways in
which political representatives have back-door relationships with many of the industries
they hold the power to deregulate (Potter 2011).
ALEC played a key role in garnering support from politicians and ensuring the
Act would pass without resistance. Sovereignty functions within the nepotism of
speciesist capitalism, and facilitates a deeper analysis of the de-regulation of animal
industries in relation to the hyper-regulation of those explicitly challenging them. The
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media sources and government officials applied the language of terrorism after
September 11 to the animal and earth liberation movement (Lovitz 2010:106). The
rhetorical function of ecoterrorism was to naturalize the creation of a federal law that
transforms constitutionally protected behaviors such as free speech into “domestic
terrorism”. The AETA symbolizes a shift in how direct action dissent functions in the
U.S and the available legal constructs through interpellation. Activists within the animal
and earth liberation movement have faced increased surveillance, infiltration, and federal
criminalization for advocating their philosophy and implementing confrontational tactics
(Potter 2011:56). In addition to the already-hostile sentiment toward the liberation
activists, the rhetoric of terrorism following the attacks of September 11 greatly reshaped
the political climate in the U.S. (Chomsky 2004:219). The animal and earth liberation
movement has been [re]defined and demarcated from other social movements through the
conflation of activism and terrorism (Phelps 2007:270). This is particularly visible in the
well-publicized capture and arrests of animal and earth liberationists, public trials,
implementation of terrorism enhancements, the use of Communications Management
Prisons, and excessive sentencing. Although clandestine underground cells conduct
animal and earth liberation acts, the shift in the political climate of dissent since
September 11 has visibly changed the aboveground solidarity movement (Liddick
2006:89). The heightened scrutiny permitted through the Patriot Act has created a culture
of surveillance (Best and Nocella 2006:8).
Combined with the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001, governments can
use surveillance and infiltrate organizations recognized under the AETA. The federal
government is able to overstep states to prosecute people not only for what they do but
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also what they thought when they did it. Lovitz (2010) has detailed the stalking, the
infiltration of social networks, and the phone recording that was used to build a case
against the individuals in this SHAC-7 case. As the SHAC-7 case illustrated, activists
can be repressed based also on what they thought about an act before they chose whether
or not to pursue it. The rhetoric of conspiracy, a word used throughout United States
history to fragment activists, became the basis for many of the charges in the SHAC-7
case. This element of the AETA is one of the central and most revealing aspects of the
law.
Within the logic of the AETA, corporations—and the laboratories that house
maimed and disfigured animals and inflict physical and psychological violence—are
rearticulated as “helpless victims.”
Meanwhile, animal liberationists attempting to
remove animals from laboratories and using their First Amendment freedom of speech to
pressure shareholders are “criminals” and even “terrorists.” Scholar Adrian Parr recounts
a similar act of rearticulation with the use of terrorist enhancement charges in the 2007
trial of political prisoner Daniel McGowan (Parr 2009:87). McGowan was arrested along
with five other activists as part of the US investigation called Operation Backfire. The
six activists collectively faced a 65-count indictment. McGowan was charged with arson
and the conspiracy to commit arson for the 2001 Earth Liberation Front actions against
Superior Lumber and Jefferson Poplar Farms in Oregon. McGowan received a “terrorist
enhancement” with his sentence and has been placed in highly restrictive
Communications Management Unit prisons in Illinois and Indiana. Parr argues that the
public trial and sentencing of McGowan was an act of discursive rearticulation: what
was once perceived as activism, or perhaps at the most, a basic criminal act, was
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rearticulated as “terrorism.” Likewise, with the AETA, the public is led to believe that
protest, rather than vivisection, is violence and terrorism.
The modes of resistance, thus, are challenged to locate and target the central site
of power. However, the increasingly globalized corporation does not have a central site
of power and imagination becomes the site to demand an end to both neoliberalism and
capitalism (Graeber 2010:93). The possibilities inherent in imagination allow for
creativity and collaboration amongst non-State actors advancing the critique of
neoliberalism. The animal and earth liberation movement is faced with the challenge
To be as militant and effective as possible without losing the moral high ground,
without alienating public support, and without diluting the values of freedom and
compassion. Animal exploiters have no such burden; they seek out only to
oppress and to profit from their violence and terrorism. The state has no such
burden; it is an apparatus that monopolizes power and violence and exists
primarily to crush dissent and promote corporate agendas. [Nocella and Best
2004:57]
Anarchist antispeciesists engage in modes of resistance that rearticulates a potential for
social relations and goods-exchange through queer performances of direct action that
disidentifies with neoliberal capitalism and speciesism. Specifically, the use of home
demonstrations relies on a neoliberal logic in order to expose the inherent exploitation
and alienation of neoliberalism itself. The next chapter will examine the ways in which
anarchist antispeciesists utilize the strategies and tactics of direct action to demand
radical change. Direct action, according to agricultural industries and the State, has
placed capitalism in a state of crisis that warrants the creation of targeted legislation and
an aggressive State campaign to silence dissent. The State has utilized public tragedy,
September 11, and manipulated the economic crises within the contemporary recession to
successfully convince civil society to suspend constitutional freedoms such as Free
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Speech to protect corporate interests. Anarchist antispeciesists advance their critique of
neoliberal capitalism through the use of direct action while simultaneously adopting the
hegemonic language of neoliberalism. Through the use of spectacle to create terministic
screens that utilize a political imaginary, direct action challenges more than just the
domination and exploitation of ecologies. Direct action challenges the fundamental ways
in which civil society is organized through ideological state apparatuses.
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CHAPTER FIVE
DIRECT ACTION AS SPECTACLE
“When taken separately . . . [they] all seem to represent a queer edge in a larger
cultural phenomenon. When considered together, they add up to a fierce and
lively queer subculture that needs to be reckoned with on its own terms”
(Halberstam 2005:154)
“Good news! — The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a
good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me
to investigate the prison-industrial complex. For the next 35 months, I’ll be
provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by
Bureau of Prisons officials and staff and otherwise report on news and culture in
the world’s greatest prison system. I want to thank the Department of Justice for
having put so much time and energy into advocating on my behalf; rather than
holding a grudge against me for the two years of work I put into in bringing
attention to a DOJ-linked campaign to harass and discredit journalists like Glenn
Greenwald, the agency instead labored tirelessly to ensure that I received this
very prestigious assignment. — Wish me luck!59”(The Sparrow Project 2015)
The rhetorical and revolutionary potential of anarchist antispeciesist direct action
challenge the interpellation of fundamental ideologies and practices of capitalism,
industrialization, globalization, and the exploitation of ecologies through language,
digital practice, and performance. The international crossover of activists between the
U.K. and the U.S. has provided a global training ground and activist base that is large in
scope. Because the corporate-state industrial complex monopolizes access to the social
bases of power, particularly violence, non-State actors are always already at a
disadvantage to demand radical change. Thus, in order to be seen as powerful, anarchist
59.
Barrett Brown, an American journalist and contributor to Vanity Fair and The Guardian, was
given a 63-month prison sentence within the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Brown had already been
imprisoned for 23 months for charges related to his presumed connections and knowledge of underground
hacker activists Anonymous (The Sparrow Project 2015)
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antispeciesists must queer, or re-envision and rearticulate power itself through performing
powerful direct actions. The performance of a public vigil, for example, queer the social
and political discourses that do not allow humans to publicly mourn the loss of animal
life in laboratories, by exposing, altering, and/or inverting taken for granted
understandings and practices of vivisection. The vigil calls into question the precarity of
animal lives, through a graphic depiction of how animal suffering, makes visible the
invisibility of how speciesism is an accepted part of interpellation of the good citizen
(Butler 2006:22, 46). The use of public performance as direct action calls into question
and challenges a slew of accepted truisms: that human animals are more valuable than
nonhuman animals; that “doing one’s job” safeguards one from political and/or ethical
responsibility; that government and corporate interests are distinct and separate; that
legislation is passed for the public good rather than private profit; and, on a different kind
of note, that average, everyday people are powerless to change various structures, laws,
and customs. Direct action is a queer performance that plays with and transgresses the
normative boundaries of society, and it poses an effective, convincing, and powerful
critique that queers social/political normativity.
This chapter focuses on anarchist anti-speciesists’ use of direct action as public
performance and, more specifically, the use of protest as spectacle to create to terministic
screens within Goffman’s metaphor of theater to queer the process of interpellation and
create disidentifactory thoughts. The performance enacts disidentification through the
humor, satire, intimidation, and what Leap refers to as, “…the social formation of affect”
(Leap 2015:663) The chapter begins with a brief explanation of direct action as a protest
strategy followed by an overview of animal liberation campaigns. I then discuss the
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queering of protest as spectacle through direct action and how this demonstrates
disidentification. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how playfulness, a form of
disidentification, during home demonstrations as a queer mode of protest.
Direct Action
Voltarine de Cleyre, a U.S. anarchist, first articulated the term direct action in a
widely circulated essay published in 1912 that historicized the efficacy of direct action
for resistance movements (Nocella and Best 2004:15) Direct action, as defined more
recently by Graeber, represents a particularly advanced vision for the remaking of socialcapital hierarchies.
Direct action represents a certain ideal…It is a form of action in which means and
ends become, effectively, indistinguishable; a way of actively engaging with the
world to bring about change, in which the form of the action- or at least, the
organization of the action- is itself a model for the change one wishes to bring
about. At its most basic, it reflects a very simple anarchist insight: that one cannot
create a free society through military discipline, a democratic society by giving
orders, or a happy one through joyless self-sacrifice. At its most elaborate, the
structure of one’s own act becomes a kind of micro-utopia, a concrete model for
one’s vision of a free society. [Graeber 2009b:210]
Direct action is not defined solely by the physical act, but also the ideological
underpinnings and symbolic meaning the act represents. Within this logic, direct action is
not a label of tactic demarcation, but rather it is an inclusive framework to conceptualize
activism (Thompson 2010:57). Direct action allows for politically repressed and
marginalized peoples to reclaim power in the streets through the spectacle of the protest
(Shepard, Bogad, and Duncombe 2008:273). Graeber expands on the significance of
direct action as a transgressive experience that empowers an individual to politically
engage in a specific action, while participating in a global struggle for liberation from
oppressive structures (Graeber 2004:84). Laura Knaiz defines animal and earth liberation
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within the framework of direct action as, “…the use of clandestine, illegal tactics to (1)
free animals, (2) educate the public about the oppression of nonhumans, and (3) inflict
economic harm on animal enterprises” (Knaiz 1995:765). Although all actions taken in
defense of animals are important, direct action implies there is no intermediary. Direct
action creates a queer space—i.e., an open space in which people are invited and even
encouraged to play with and transgress normative boundaries. Such a space enables
politically repressed and marginalized peoples to reclaim power (Butler 2011; Muñoz
1999; Pêcheux 1982). Rather than relying on someone else to make social change, the
participants push for that change themselves. These actions are further defined within the
parameters of nonviolence, ensuring that acts of property destruction are carefully
planned to ensure no physical harm (Best et al. 2007:4). The public access to global
media and social forums has provided the platform for a global solidarity movement.
Communiqués are posted to the internet moments after an action has taken place.
Photographs and videos can be accessed on the internet from across the world. The
support systems for political prisoners far expand physical boundaries of geography. The
political terrain has been remade through the technorevolution. Anarchist antispeciesists
that engage in direct action have noted the shift in tactics since the proliferation of the
Stop Huntingdon Life Sciences (SHAC) campaign originating in the U.K. The types of
tactics, as well as the articulation of the strategies, of anarchist antispeciesist direct action
can be understood through the SHAC model.
There are four hallmarks of the SHAC model broken down by the CrimethInc.
Ex-Workers’ Collective: secondary and tertiary targeting, complementary relationship
between public and underground organizing, diversity of tactics, and concrete targets
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with concrete motivations. The CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective is, “a decentralized
anarchist collective composed of many cells which act independently in pursuit of a freer
and more joyous world,” that provides an anonymous and virtually accessible portal for,
“publishing and distributing literature and free propaganda, as well as occasionally
circulating information about other cells’ activities” (CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective
n.d.). The SHAC model, a direct action campaign, utilizes a method of naming, shaming,
and blaming individuals who hold top positions with secondary and tertiary corporations
connected to the international vivisection and breeding lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences
(HLS)60. The strategy is used to target HLS through pressuring clients, shareholders,
connected financial institutions, and associated corporations to sever their ties with HLS.
The tactics used span a continuum of legality, and range from street protests,
leafleting, home demonstrations, to aggressive forms of sabotage including arson (Marut
2009). The SHAC model not only challenges the notion of accountability by targeting
secondary and tertiary companies, but the campaign also queers the realm of tactical
approaches. For example, the SHAC campaign has used tactics that include black faxing
(the looped sending of completely black fax pages to drain ink and occupy the line),
website defacement and data theft, denial-of-service attack, unsolicited subscription for
mailings, services, and goods, and publicizing personal information of targets with the
intent to elicit harassment. These tactics queer the spectrum of protest within the realm
of animal advocacy by crossing accepted boundaries—by playing with the lines of
60.
The SHAC campaign, described in the previous chapter, was founded in the U.K. in 1999 after
a series of successful pressure campaigns targeting breeding facilities and investigative footage taken inside
Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratories. Animal liberation activist, Kevin Jonas, traveled to Britain and
participated in the British SHAC campaign. In 2001, the SHAC USA campaign began to take shape
following the financial backing of Stephens, Inc. based out of Arkansas of HLS.
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acceptability and introducing ideas, practices, and forms of dissent and resistance. In
many ways, then, that SHAC campaign sits at the cutting edge of direct action and radical
social change.
This model is based on three tier approach which includes, “…campaigning
against customers who provide HLS with an income and profits; suppliers who provide
HLS with vital tools to carry out research and financial links such as shareholders, market
makers and banking facilities” (SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) 2012). The
SHAC campaign is cited globally as the impetus behind smaller grassroots animal
liberation campaigns that utilize secondary and tertiary targeting. One of the sites of
research in this project include the D.C. based campaign, DARTT, emerged in the mid
2000’s and utilized the dense-population of targets within the surrounding area. The
tactic of secondary and tertiary targeting is particularly useful because it casts a wide net
while placing one targeted corporation as the center nexus.
Starbucks could easily afford a thousand times the cost of the windows smashed
by the black bloc during the Seattle WTO protests, but if no one would replace
those windows—or the windows had been broken at the houses of investors, so no
one would invest in the corporation—it would be another story. SHAC organizers
made a point of learning the inner workings of the capitalist economy, so they
could strike most strategically…The targets do not have a vested interest in
continuing their involvement with the primary target. There are other places they
can take their business, and they have no reason not to do so. This is a vital aspect
of the SHAC model. If a business is cornered, they’ll fight to the death, and
nothing will matter in the conflict except the pure force each party is able to bring
to bear on the other; this is not generally to the advantage of activists, as
corporations can bring in the police and government… Somewhere between the
primary target and the associated corporations that provide its support structure,
there appears to be a fulcrum where action is most effective. It might seem
strange to go after tertiary targets that have no connection to the primary target
themselves, but countless HLS customers have dropped relations after a client of
theirs was embarrassed. [Marut 2009]
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The relationship between public and underground organizing is also a noted element to
the SHAC model. The campaign coalesces the tensions within social movements that
both resists technological dependence because it removes the necessary physical space
for social organizing and yet relies on technology to disseminate literature widely and
anonymously. The SHAC websites, “…disseminated information about targets and
provided a forum for action reports to raise morale and expectations, enabling anyone
sympathetic to the goals of the campaign to play a part without drawing attention to
themselves” (Marut 2009). The diversity of tactics within the campaign addressed the
tendency for social movements to experience splinters over divisive tactics. To that end,
the SHAC model integrated limitless array of tactics that inclusively welcomed a broad
range of activists. The fourth hallmark of the SHAC model is the selection and targeting
of a specific corporation that allow activists to collectivize in a concrete way. CrimethInc.
Ex-Workers’ Collective reiterates the power of this narrowing technique:
The fact that there were specific animals suffering, whose lives could be saved by
specific direct action, made the issues concrete and lent the campaign a sense of
urgency that translated into a willingness on the part of participants to push
themselves out of their comfort zones. Likewise, at every juncture in the SHAC
campaign, there were intermediate goals that could easily be accomplished, so the
monumental task of undermining an entire corporation never felt overwhelming.
This contrasts sharply with the way momentum in certain green anarchist circles
died off after the turn of the century, when the goals and targets became too
expansive and abstract. It had been easy for individuals to motivate themselves to
defend specific trees and natural areas, but once the point for some participants
was to “destroy civilization” and everything less was mere reformism, it was
impossible to work out what constituted meaningful action. [Marut 2009]
The SHAC model provides a direct action strategy and a series of tactics to intercept both
the ideology of speciesism and specific mechanisms of exploitation. Within neoliberal
capitalism, agricultural industries function within many ideological state apparatuses and
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the State apparatus itself that decentralize and veil powerholders. The power held by the
industries is thus framed as diffuse rather than concentrated, which makes it difficult to
determine whom to target with the demand for radical change. Direct action inspired by
the SHAC model acknowledges the ways in which industries are interconnected, but
allows for individual localized targeting with tangible goals. Rather than lobby for
indirect legislation that may regulate the use of animals within the industries, direct
action disengages with the legislative process altogether. However, to an individual
activist, it feels intangible or outside of the scope of reason that they can open all cages or
intercept all sites of ecological exploitation61. The SHAC model isolates a target and
directs all pressure tactics toward said target. This creates the façade of accountability
that there is an identifiable entity that has been identified and accused of perpetrating
speciesism.
Activists that endorse legal and illegal direct action claim that tactics that do not
directly intercept exploitation are inadvertently supporting it. Steven Best, Professor of
Philosophy and animal liberation advocate, has written extensively on the tensions within
the animal advocacy movement over the efficacy of direct action. He argues that because
the mechanisms of speciesism are, “…forces of hell-bent on exploiting animals and the
earth for profit whatever the toll…the corporate social war against nature,” there is a new
civil war between the industries and the activists (Best n.d.). The three-pronged approach
of direct action for ecological liberation includes, “…the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)
employs sabotage, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) uses strong intimidation
61.
The use of the term ecological refers to living entities. This includes human animals, otherthan-human animals, biological ecosystems, natural resources, and genetic engineering.
167
tactics, and militant animal liberation groups such as the Animal Rights Militia, the
Justice Department, and the Revolutionary Cells openly advocate violence against animal
abusers” (Best n.d.) Best critiques those who engage in nonviolent civil disobedience to
challenge industries of violence by arguing that if one does not stop bloodshed, they are
adopting a pro-violence stance by not taking adequate measures to stop it. Within the
moral paradigm of demarcating activists as terrorists or freedom fighters, activists have
relied upon historical comparisons that demonstrate the relativism of these labels.
Activists draw literal and symbolic ties between speciesism and other systems of
oppression linked to genocide such as racism and slavery, as well as anti-Semitism and
the Jewish Holocaust. (Nibert and Fox 2002; Patterson 2002; Spiegel and Walker 1997).
Jewish Holocaust survivor and political activist, Elie Wiesel, stated during his 1986
Nobel Acceptance Speech, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human
beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the
oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented” (Elie
Wiesel 1986). Direct action activists articulate a similar sentiment in their dismissal of
indirect action (lobbying, bureaucratic and legislative campaigning, public gatherings not
connected to an action) as being implicit in the existing ideologies of speciesism,
neoliberal capitalism, and globalization. These tactics require little time compared to the
bureaucratic processes involved with legal analyses, drafting regulatory policies and
reforms, and schmoozing people behind closed doors. Direct action, as the term implies,
directly challenges those in power through time-efficient, cost-effective tactics that rely
on activist energy and creativity. However, there are many public critiques by activists
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that distance themselves from direct action tactics, particularly inspired by the SHAC
model.
The use of direct action has been challenged not just by the targeted institutions
and State apparatus, but also by activists that claim to be sympathetic to the movement.
These challenges claim direct action is violent, ineffective, and detrimental to the
movement at large. Within both activist and academic circles, there remains a polarizing
debate on the continuum of violence (Nocella and Best 2004). The direct actions of
anarchist antispeciesists include many illegal tactics of vandalism, property destruction,
sabotage, burglary, and theft (of animals) (Grubbs and Loadenthal 2011b; Grubbs and
Loadenthal 2011c) Steven Best claims that the critiques of direct action fail to understand
political struggle within the limited rhetoric of good protestor/bad protestor. Best states:
Many critics of the ALF, SHAC, and direct action tactics poorly understand what
makes social change movements possible and effective. They rely on a naive
model of political struggle and human nature that assumes rational dialogue can
solve all conflicts. They use facile generalizations such as "violence is always
wrong" and "ALF actions always get bad publicity" that are flat out wrong. In
addition, they consistently misrepresent direct action advocates as naively
believing that sporadic acts of vandalism and intimidation alone can win animal
liberation. Looking at modern social history, it is clear that civil disobedience,
property destruction, and violence have been important political tactics for the
American Revolution, the abolition of slavery, labor and national independence
movements, suffragette struggles, and the civil rights movement. Similarly, the
history of the ALF and SHAC shows that break-ins, liberations, property
destruction, arson, and intimidation tactics have completely shut down some
operations, weakened others, and provided otherwise unobtainable documentation
of animal exploitation in fur farms, vivisection labs, and elsewhere. As evident in
the 1980s era of ALF-PETA press conferences, the exposes of Huntingdon Life
Sciences (HLS), and the summer 2003 attacks on foie gras chefs and restaurants
in the Bay area, dramatic sabotage and direct action methods often get good press
that reform campaigns cannot generate. This valuable publicity exposes vicious
industry practices and sparks important public dialogue about animal wrongs and
animal rights. Whereas advocates of direct action such as Paul Watson, Rod
Coronado, and Kevin Jonas use inclusive approaches that acknowledge the
validity of different approaches in different situations, critics of direct action
wield exclusive approaches that deny the need for and validity of a plurality of
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tactics -- both legal and illegal, aboveground and underground. Mainstream
"exclusionists" speak ex cathedra as if they alone possess Truth and can infallibly
predict which tactic will work. (Best n.d.)
The critiques of direct action often privilege nonviolent indirect action as the only
effective method to bring about change. This sentiment is echoed in the erasure of illegal
direct action in the retelling of successful social movements’ history. Despite the
challenges to these critiques, there remains a dominant discourse surrounding the
dichotomized good protestor/bad protestor. Direct action is situated within the construct
of the bad protestor as a method that is limited because of the use of violence. Within this
critique, methods of property destruction and obstruction are framed as violence. This
framing is challenged by activists and academics that point to the ways in which anarchist
antispeciesists emphasize protecting all forms of life through carefully planned and
implemented tactics that only target mechanisms of violence (Jensen 2012). In addition,
defenders of direct action argue that the real violence is being perpetrated by agricultural
industries, that as industries commodify ecological entities there is a violent
dispossession of resources and habitats, and many cite the anarchist principle that
property itself is violence through theft (Best et al. 2007; Best and Nocella 2006; Harvey
2004; Proudhon 1840).
The dialectics of effective/ineffective, direct/indirect, single issue/intersectional
coalition, and violent/nonviolent remain the significant splinters within the animal and
ecological advocacy movements. These debates become more visibly polarizing between
the three overarching tenets of the advocacy movement: the animal welfare
movement/ecological conservation movement, the animal rights movement/ecological
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sustainability, and the animal and ecological liberation movement.62 I have previously
conducted ethnographic studies focusing on traditional animal rights organizations that
utilize indirect action and publicly condemn illegal direct action taken by anarchist
antispeciesists. In 2011, I began attending home demonstrations with DARTT and the
Occupy Movement. The critiques of direct action dominate social movement discourses
within the mainstream media as well as in academic disciplines.
Academic discourses reinforce the privilege of indirect action by co-constructing
the rearticulation of social movement histories to erase the effectiveness of direct action
that violently confronted systems of violence and successfully brought about radical
social change (Pellow 2014). I was hesitant to engage in direct action and was entrenched
in these academic and mainstream discourses. I began this project with the belief that
direct action was too confrontational to gain public support and relied on masculinist and
militant rhetoric that was ineffectively aggressive (Adams 2010; Donovan and Adams
2007; Adams and Donovan 1995). Somewhat naively, I found the targeting of individual
corporations
and
employees
to
rely
on
neoliberal
logic
that
ignored
the
interconnectedness of powerholders. As I continued to attend home demonstrations
affiliated with the animal liberation movement, began networking with anarchists in the
D.C. area, and immersed myself in primary sources from direct action activists, it became
62.
The ideological divisions between these social movements, though oftentimes described as
being a part of an overarching advocacy movement are based on the stance on speciesism. The welfare and
conservation movement accept the ideology of speciesism but argue humans can alleviate some of the
“undue” suffering. The animal rights and ecological sustainability movement challenge speciesism under
the constraints of a rhetoric of rights. Animals and ecological systems should be awarded rights and it is
then human obligation to protect those rights. The animal and ecological liberation movement, however,
challenges the notion of rights as relational privilege. These activists believe that liberation from
exploitation is necessary for survival and challenge the speciesist notion that humans posses a unique
ability to act rationally in the relationship of rights. Liberation is justified by any means necessary.
171
clear something more was going on. The performances, or the spectacle of direct action,
did not just refuse to submit to the good versus bad protestor dichotomy, the
performances queered the dichotomization itself and created alternative forms of
disidentification.63
The chants, press releases, proclamations, and tactics are so blatantly neoliberal
that it simply is not hegemonic ignorance. I attended demonstrations organized by several
anarchist antispeciesist campaigns that were announced through social media. The
campaigns spanned across the U.S. and in St. Catharines, Canada. For archival and legal
purposes, many of these demonstrations were recorded and archived by activists. During
the demonstrations, I took extensive field notes and my own video footage. The texts
used in this chapter include the transcripts I recorded from demonstrations outside of
corporations and individual homes, my personal interactions with participants and
observers, and website material (including footage from other related demonstrations)
from anarchist anti-speciesist. I also reviewed online videos of demonstrations with these
campaigns, some of which I did not personally attend.64
All of the movement
organizations and campaigns included in this analysis have made explicit references to
the SHAC model as an influence on their use of direct action.
63.
Primary sources include Press Office websites, activist-academic collaborative books,
CrimethInc literature, investigative footage, videos of actions, and communiqués. I also made personal
connections with activists and began attending convergences that were primarily activist-based rather than
academic.
64.
In the Washington, D.C. area, there is a visible activist that attends many demonstrations in
various anti-oppression movements to capture video footage and publish. The activist has his own Youtube
channel, and also submits video to DCindymedia.org. In other cities, videos were obtained through online
sources.
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The direct action campaigns included in this analysis provided rich ethnographic
texts gathered through personal experience, video footage, and online first-hand accounts
from activists. In addition, the campaigns are able to “perform” animal liberation through
digital media in ways that further queer traditional academic understandings of a social
movement. As a form of text, these online “performances” were archived over the last
two years and serve as part of the corpus included in the study. The texts analyzed are
woven throughout, and challenge the incorrect assumptions that informed my original
hypothesis that confrontational direct action relied too heavily on masculinist and
neoliberal modes of activism. Direct action activists are not simply angry individuals who
got a hold of a bullhorn and spent the afternoon taking out their frustrations with the
world on one neoliberal subject who works for a vivisection company. The presentation
of blame and shame is a rhetorical performance that relies on a stage, actors, and a script.
These are complicated demonstrations that are filled with tension and contradiction
between the more prissy and explicit chants and the methodical proclamations delivered
by key organizers. The demonstration attendees rely on different elements of political
theatre to highlight aspects of neoliberalism in order to expose it. These tensions became
an informative source of text for analysis, “I argue that the best opportunities for analysis
arise when it is difficult to see how this coherence has been achieved: where there seem
to be logical gaps, logical clashes, and unexpected silences, or disturbances and
violations of the presumed default universal structures of narrative” (Hill 1995:159).
Utilizing Jane Hill’s optimism regarding inconsistencies in the text, this analysis
emphasized the different rhetorical tactics and their significance in the overall success of
the demonstrations.
173
After carefully reading through the texts of the home demonstrations with
DARTT in 2011, I saw a pattern with the symbolic exaggeration of neoliberalism and,
interestingly, a pattern of contradictions between the proclamations and the chants. As
linguistic performance, these speech acts are dynamic in their use of voice. I adopted the
framework of text analysis presented by Hill and her emphasis on inconsistencies and
gaps in coherence within the narrative. Through a textual analysis comparing the
proclamations to the chants, I measure these inconsistencies using Hill’s concept of voice
as she demonstrated with the many voices of Don Gabriel. The confrontational direct
action that took place on the lawn of MarineLand during 2013 Opening Day
Demonstration created a public performance that highlighted contradictory voices that
included playful chants and confrontational rhetoric. I noted the confrontational chants
used during the demonstration, “Their blood, their blood, their blood is on YOUR
hands,” “Your ticket. YOUR FAULT. Your money. YOUR FAULT,” and how they
contradicted the individual dialogue activists attempted through the chain-link fence that
physically separated them MarineLand customers entering the park, “Ma’am, why would
you want to show your child such cruelty toward those beautiful creatures. Please teach
your child compassion” (Grubbs 2013b). Within a five minute time span, one activist
would shift their voice from more a neoliberal performance while speaking with an
individual about pay admission to the park to an aggressive call-and-return chant with
activists.
The literature on drag performance and political theater further contribute to the
theoretical framework, as these texts historicize the tactics of political theatre and
articulate its liberatory potential. This project makes significant contribution to the
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anthropological theorizing of social movements. Gramsci provided a frame to understand
how individuals participate in systems of domination, further articulated by Louis
Althusser (1971). Rosa Luxemburg, however, clarified that although individuals
participate in the reproduction of oppressive systems, they are not fools (Glaberman
2012:31). This analysis extends that sentiment to activists, emphasizing the rhetorical
efficacy of play and performance during home demonstrations. Applying Luxemburg’s
empowering sentiment regarding workers under capitalism, the activists are not fools in
their loud, confrontational, aggressive public performances that narrowly blame systemic
issues on individual capitalists and vivisectors (Glaberman 2012:31). They are, in fact,
creating a public theatre for onlookers to view the conditions in which capitalism,
speciesism, and neoliberalism is foolishly accepted and promulgated by the viewer. The
fool is the hegemonic viewer.
Play as powerful resistance
As a challenge to the neoliberal moment, Graeber encourages activists to utilize
the political and social imaginary (Gusterson, Besteman, and Ehrenreich 2009:93) This
type of mobilization is predicated on the imagined reality of a post-capitalist and postneoliberal society. Political theatre taps into this imaginary through the inherent play in
exaggerating neoliberal individualism and choice through disidentification. According to
activist and performance theorist Benjamin Shepard, play creates “open spaces where
new sets of rules and social relations take shape. Play refers to the jest infused with
satirical performance that brings joy and lightheartedness to otherwise serious and
enraged activism. Here social actors feel compelled to participate in a broader social
change drama” (Shepard 2010:244). Shepard argues that these types of direct actions
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serve to empower individuals that are systematically excluded from bureaucratic
decision-making processes; rather than passively accepting the laws, rules, and
regulations made by detached decision makers, people directly participate in the
reconstruction of alternative reality. That reality may not be wholesale or long term, but
it is, at the very least, the creation of a new now that challenges a targeted grievance. The
ability to create and recreate shared realities during a direct action relies on playfulness
exemplified by a series of sarcastic and satirical rituals such as collective chants. The
spectacle of the protest queers, in other words, it re-imagines and rearticulates, the ways
in which dissent is performed and understood.
As discussed in Chapter One: Introduction, anarchist antispeciesists are not the
first to use play and political theater, and key theorists used in this analysis have
examined political performance through Pêcheux’s (as an extension of Althusser)
framework of disidentification (Althusser 1971; Muñoz 1999; Shepard 2011; Pêcheux
1982). Although it is outside the aim and scope of this project to recount the complicated
history of these strategies, it is suffice to say play and political performance are part and
parcel of most if not all contemporary social movements: the Occupy movement, the
Quebec student strikes, the anti-Iraq war movement, the global justice movement, ACTUP and the anti-HIV/AIDS movement, Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies, etc (Shepard,
Bogad, and Duncombe 2008; Shepard 2010; Shepard 2013; Shepard 2011; Shepard and
Hayduk 2002; Shepard 2013). Playful demonstrations and theatrical protests create a
public space, a spectacle, to challenge oppressive systems such as homophobia,
globalization, economic inequality, and health disparities. Direct action, through its
boundary blurring of the public and private sphere, brings marginalized issues to such
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centers of daily life as shopping districts and residential neighborhoods.
Social
movements use play to creatively fuse critiques of social structures with such joyful
activities as drum circles, dance, and song. For example, the use of political theatre was
an important strategy during the 1980’s HIV/AIDS advocacy movement.
From ACT UP to Circus AMOK, queer activism challenged systems of power
with exaggerated mimicry on the public stage of the streets. Circus AMOK organized
home demonstrations that targeted defense subcontractors in an effort to challenge the
disproportionate government budget for defense rather than public health (Shepard
2010:258). In effort to queer the anti-war effort, campaigns such as Absurd Response to
an Absurd War emerged and relied on the strategic rhetoric of exaggeration. Activists
utilized public die-ins and drag races to draw attention to the health disparities and
violence disproportionately inflicted on the gay community in New York City. Play, as a
political strategy, refers to the playful jest infused with satirical performance that brings
lightness to otherwise fiery activism. Drag races, whether it is a reenactment of Judy
Garland’s funeral or marking the anniversary of the police violence at Stonewall Inn,
manage to mix glitter, fishnet stockings, and holistic political analyses of queer
repression. Similarly, bullhorns, posters of maimed animals, and elaborate neoliberal
proclamations strategically coincide during home demonstrations to embody a critique to
neoliberalism, capitalism, and speciesism.
The use of playfulness is quite telling in the face of its topic and target—animal
abuse and exploitation. Activists utilize the empowering nature of play as an attempt to
counter the overwhelming sense of loss of animal lives. Continually thinking about the
overwhelming sense of animal cruelty and repeatedly protesting outside of a lobster
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restaurant or a university laboratory is emotionally exhausting. Constantly reminding
oneself of the millions of animals that are killed dominates the work of an animal
liberationist. The power structure is so blatantly controlled by animal oppressors that
even the most strident campaign can appear miniscule compared to multi-billion dollar
agri-vivisection industries. Shepard elaborates on how a sense of loss can strengthen
community, “…feelings of loss lingered within a tense struggle to create a different kind
of space. People needed a space to come together. I think what drove people to ACT
UP…it brought together people who were desperate for some kind of cultural, social,
political change, like now. Not tomorrow, but right now. It was a place where a new
generation of activists found their voices” (Shepard 2010:246). The statistics remain
glaring to those holding the signs. Every second, every minute, and by the end of the
hour, millions of animal bodies have been maimed, raped, and murdered. While activists
chant and march, the reality of those animal bodies remains starkly within conscience.
Thus, it could be argued that direct action activists are mobilized on the basis of
desperation rather than rhetorical strategy. That assumption, however, does not account
for the movement’s articulation of a multi-pronged approach. Perhaps some of the
activists attending a demonstration are initially motivated by feelings of urgency and
desperation, but that does not embody the movement as a whole. Political theatre and
home demonstrations rely on the empowering nature of play as an attempt to counter the
overwhelming sense of loss of animal lives. Play is a way to combat these negative
emotions—it is a cathartic release and a creative re-channeling of one’s emotional life.
Play enables animal activists to laugh even while confronting some of the worst atrocities
committed by fellow humans.
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While recounting the animal abuses through a megaphone, activists may
intersperse a call-and-return chant to lighten the tense atmosphere. For instance, MAD
activists in Niagara Falls, Canada had gathered outside the home of John Holer, founder
of the Marineland amusement park. Holer and Marineland were targeted because the
amusement park’s animal exhibits are not only exploitive, but also negligent and cruel,
keeping animals in unsanitary and unsafe conditions. The demonstration concluded with
a remix of Carly Rae Jepsen’s dreadful (but catchy) radio hit “Call Me Maybe,” changing
the lyrics from “Hey I just met you and this is crazy. But here’s my number so call me
maybe” to “Hey, shitheads, I just met you and this is crazy. But you can’t have my
number so don’t call me. Ever!” The activists’ playful remix was directed at the Niagara
Regional Police (NRP) who had been present for the entire demonstration. One
demonstrator shared a video and commented that, “five hours with the NRP. We ended it
off with a dance party blasting ‘Call Me Maybe’ into their cars. Don't call me. Ever.”
(This quote was found on a 2012 Facebook post). The song and dance party was
obviously done in jest, which helped create an uplifting and “spectacular” moment for the
activists engaged in a long campaign against Marineland. Again, this was a shift in voice
from the aggressive proclamations direct at Holer to the playful singing toward the NRP.
The activists, through this shift in voice, queered the spectacle of the protest as both
confrontational and festive.
The creativity and playfulness of such direct action queers the ways in which
marginalized peoples can confront systems of power. SHAC activists, for instance,
commonly infuse their chants, proclamations, and printed materials with humor and
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sarcasm. But this humor and sarcasm are also aggressive, seeking to effect serious social
change. As SHAC-7 defendant Josh Harper states:
This was the threat of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty; we saw through all of the
social conditioning that tells us that we are too weak to effect change. We went
straight to the homes of those in power, challenged them on their golf courses,
[and] and screamed at them while they vacationed at summer homes. We were
the barbarians at the gate, an alliance of the kind of people who did not usually
get heard by the mega-rich of the world. Tooth and nail we went after their
profits, and along the way refused to divide and fracture over broken windows or
graffiti. Everyone was welcome if they would fight, and I smile so big [that] it
hurts when I think of the grandmothers, the punks, the students, and all the other
unlikely comrades who marched together in defiance of the false hierarchy that
tells us to keep separate and leave the rich to their own devices. We didn’t stay in
our place. In fact, we recognized that our place was wherever the hell we chose,
and the world of finance and animal abuse was rocked as a result. (Harper n.d.)
Harper illustrates how home demonstrators blend both humor and creative aggression
into an effective campaign. The strategic use of humor, in combination with physical
performance, infuses power into play. A playful chant, such as when protestors would
shout, “Holer is Voldemort,” can help to interrupt activists’ aggressive proclamations and
heated interactions with neighbors.65 That humor then places people at ease, which can
actually aid the persuasiveness of the direct action. The fact that any activist can (more
or less) spontaneously create and lead a chant at any point during the demonstration also
establishes a more open space. In this way, then, the playfulness of chants reflects a
wider goal and vision: to create a more inclusive, bottom-up social order in which
everyone, both humans animals and other-than-human animals, are able to live freely and
joyously.
65.
John Holer, the owner of Marineland, is the target of the Marineland Animal Defense campaign
against the Marineland amusement park. Activists used the chant to make a humorous comparison between
Holer and the fictional character (and leader of the evil group of witches and wizards called Death Eaters)
from J.K. Rowling’s series Harry Potter.
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The concern, as raised by gender theorists with regard to drag performance, is the
degree to which mimicry actually subverts rather than reinscribes ideology.
The
skepticism questions the agency of the activism because, “…even when self-consciously
addressed to the matter of gender, drag can reinscribe dominant ideology-not because it
provides an exemplary resolution into that system [as in the literature on ritual reversal]
but because the subject of conscious manipulation can never fully enter into the realm of
the unconscious” (Morris 1995:584). Judith Butler interrogated the subversive potential
of drag performance, though Butler and other queer theorists remain skeptical of the
hegemonic constraints that can hinder this liberatory potential (Butler 2011:90–95;
Muñoz 1999:89–115; Halberstam and Volcano 1999:2–7, 35–39). She suggests that,
“…drag fully subverts the distinction between inner and outer psychic space and
effectively mocks the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender
identity” (Butler 1990:174). Drag, according to Butler, moves the “reality” of gender into
crisis mode as it blurs the naturalized boundaries artificially created that link masculine to
men and feminine to women (Butler 1990:xxiii). This blurring of reality calls into
question what constitutes gender and the constructed sources of knowledge about gender,
further opening space to challenge the shaky reality of gender as social creation. This
shift in mental frame can serve as an impetus to a radical rethinking of gender as a social
construct. Similarly, the exaggeration of neoliberalism within the street theatre of satirical
negotiation can shift the way audiences conceptualize their own position within
neoliberal capitalism. “Audience” remains a loose construct, ranging from those passing
by on the street to those watching from within their homes, to those who will view the
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protest online later that evening. The potentiality for change is vast, and the subversion of
neoliberal norms is glaring.
Play, and particularly the performance of neoliberal exaggeration, relies on
exposing the disjointed relationship between the signifying system (neoliberal capitalism)
and the reality (alienated labor and mystified perceptions of individual power) that is
facilitated by ideology. The use of play during home demonstrations “…is part of a larger
holistic framework for social change, which includes a clear, well-articulated proposal, an
analysis, media advocacy, and an element of freshness and surprise, with a jigger of
intelligence, play, and performance” (Shepard 2010:273). The tactic of exaggeration
exposes the ludicrous disillusions of neoliberal capitalism, and it relies on a combination
of other tactics as well. Public demonstrations are oftentimes preceded or followed by
educational forums such as a teach-in or film screening. The DARTT collective as well
as The Bunny Alliance have co-sponsored teach-ins that involved showing a
documentary about various animal industries at a community space in conjunction with a
punk music show. The MAD campaign partnered with the U.S.-based anarchist initiative
“Punk Rock Karaoke Northeast” that creates a space for activists to gather outside of the
public demonstration and strengthen community surrounding an oftentimes-shared
identification with punk music66. In other cases, organizers schedule a film screening
featuring a political documentary and provide dinner prepared by activists or a local Food
66.
While in St. Catharines in 2012, I met the founder of Punk Rock Karaoke. He had traveled from
the U.S. and was also connected to Powell. The events serve a social function to gather activists in an
informal, recreational space that solidifies a sense of common identity. The project, alongside the sister
project, Punk Rock Karaoke Chicago, also raise funds for prisoner support networks, activist legal defense
funds, and various political support avenues.
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Not Bombs chapter.67 Direct action activists insist that political engagement must
continue after the demonstration ends, as well as playful release from the violent realities
in agri-vivisection industries detailed at the demonstration. It is not uncommon to see an
overlap at political events and run into the same people participating in film screenings,
DIY shows, workshops, skill set trainings, and public protests. These events are often
insular and exist to solidify rather than promulgate, thus strengthen internal community
and commitments. The public protest, however, creates a spectacle because the intended
audience is not those with affinity politics.
The MarineLand Animal Defense Opening Day demonstration illustrated this
spectacular use of both private social gatherings to solidify community and political
resolve within the AELM, while anarchist antispeciesist organizers simultaneously
mobilized confrontational direct actions that promulgated a critique of speciesism and
authoritarianism to those outside the AELM. The 2013 Opening Day demonstration was
preceded by targeted memes, tweets, and other forms of outreach shared through digital
media. In the days leading up to the demonstration, organizers held a bake sale sponsored
by the Toronto Vegan Baking Militia, there were merchandise sales promoted through
digital media, and punk shows that distributed leaflets condemning MarineLand. These
were smaller, in-group acts of solidification, but they do not move the campaign into the
realm of the spectacle. The demonstration provided a stage for activists to engage in
67.
Food Not Bombs emerged after the arrests of antinuclear activists were arrested at the Seabrook
Nuclear power station in New Hampshire. The collective wanted to critique the excessive military spending
and investments in nuclear weapons. In playful jest, activists purchased military uniforms and donned the
uniforms while attempting to sell baked goods they claimed would fund a bomber. The performance was
less about raising funds, and more about raising awareness of the absurd allocation of federal funds.
Chapters of Food Not Bombs emerged in over 60 countries, totaling over 1,000 chapters. The collective
fosters relationships with grocers and food distributors to collect and disperse food to political activists,
houseless individuals, and fundraisers. The collective also raises awareness on the gross amount of waste
(over 40%) American producers are responsible for.
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direct action, providing an alternative screen for individuals to respond to the process of
interpellation and subject formation. The mere presence of individuals chanting, shouting
proclamations into bullhorns, and storm the gates without paying admission to disrupt a
dolphin show illustrate that something else is possible. The spectacular moves the
audience to question their decision to identify with speciesism, and to possibly reimagine
a different relationship between human animals and other-than-human animals.
Protest as Spectacle
Graeber encourages activists to utilize the political and social imaginary in order
to challenge the “neoliberal moment” (Gusterson, Besteman, and Ehrenreich 2009).
Neoliberalism refers to a new form of “neo laissez faire economics." As activist and
author Jason Del Gandio succinctly states:
[Neoliberalism is] based on the deregulation of free markets and the privatization
of wealth. It subordinates government control to the interests of private profit.
The government—rather than regulating the market to assure a level playing
field—becomes an extension of market activity, the servant of the industries to
which it is captive. Neoliberalism provides tax breaks for the rich, reduces
spending on social programs and welfare, expands corporate control and
eradicates labor rights, environmental protections, drug and food regulations and
even national law. The basic purpose is to allow private interests to own and
control every aspect of the human, social and natural world. (Del Gandio 2010)
In reference to a key topic of this chapter, the animal industry privatizes and profits from
the suffering and murder of nonhuman animals. Challenging this hegemonic cruelty
must involve imagining a post-capitalist and post-speciesist reality. Such imagining is
facilitated by disidentification, encouraging others to disidentify with the current
conditions and practices of neoliberalism, the animal industry, and speciesism. The use
of direct action, conceived in this analysis as a form of political theatre, is one way to
facilitate an alternative political imaginary.
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The home and public demonstrations conducted by anarchist antispeciesists often
rely upon the use of spectacle to create disidentificatory thoughts. By spectacle, I am
referring to the construction of reality through public theater as discussed in Chapter One:
Introduction, with both Debord’s explanation and critique of the spectacle (Debord
1967). The critiques put forth by Debord (and others) argue that authentic social life has
been replaced by mediated representations, or as Burke calls them, terministic screens. I,
too, remain weary of the proliferation of digital activism (sharing an article or sending a
formal complaint through email) and how it impedes physical, confrontational direct
action. All of the campaigns included in this study, however, engage in and advocate for
confrontational direct action in the public sphere. One common tactic, home
demonstrations (protests at the personal residences of employees and affiliated
constituents of targeted animal/ecological exploiter) provide a salient example of a
spectacular direct action that intends to produce disidentifactory thoughts.
The
performativity of such demonstrations creates a scene, similar to a theatrical play, in
which the grim and hidden realities of vivisection are publicly staged for all to see.
Activists, through the political theatre, utilize voice as a central tool in which the
demonstrators utilize exaggeration to create alternative screens as well as alternative
presentations of themselves. The modes of subversion, political street theater and drag,
rely on the activists’ use of voice in combination with physical bodily performance. The
performance of exaggeration does not solely rely on what is said, but also how it is said
and how their bodies are presented. Dressed in similar clothes as the observers, you
would not necessarily pick the demonstrators out of the crowd (if it were not for the
bullhorns and posters). Part of their performance is also wearing some sort of animal
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liberation swag, whether it is clothing, a button, or a patch on their messenger bag.
Demonstrators are not usually wearing masks or bandanas across their faces; they are
dressed casually as if they joined the demonstration ad hoc68. Before a demonstration
begins, demonstrators select someone to be the “public relations representative and police
liaison.” This job entails holding the demonstration permit, presenting it to the police
when they arrive, and engaging people on the street. The public relations representative is
not a predetermined role, but often given to someone willing to remain calm while
discussing issues with those who may not agree with the demonstration. Their
performance of exaggerated neoliberalism is not only embodied in chants and
proclamations, it is further articulated through dress, communication styles, posture, and
bodily presentation.
The home demonstrations I attended with DARTT and The Bunny Alliance
expose HLS’s violence (which is often masked behind corporate walls) is brought to the
forefront by the garishness of the publicly performed spectacle. During one of the home
demonstrations, I was holding a large sign that had a picture of a maimed beagle and the
words, “This is not my kind of “science.” After ten minutes of chanting, a neighbor came
outside and began to scream at us. He explained that the person we are targeting has a
young baby that is probably trying to sleep, and more importantly, the person we are
targeting is a “good person” (Grubbs 2013a). One of the protestors stepped aside and
68.
There are many forms of protest utilized by direct action anarchist antispeciesists. The method
of veiling one’s identity and wearing black clothing is an anarchist tactic refered to as Black Bloc. At many
of the home demonstrations, public protests, and gatherings I met activists dressed in black bloc. Several of
the videos included in this study also feature activists dressed in black bloc. The strategy is not only in
response to resisting the police state, but also as a way to challenge other social movements that use their
physical appearances to as vehicle of privilege.
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began to engage the neighbor in a conversation. The protestor lowered the tone of her
voice; she slowly explained one of the experimentations that the target had facilitated.
The neighbor’s body language began to shift from anger toward the protestors to disgust
at the description of injecting beagles with chemicals. His brow softened, his clenched
mouth relaxed, and his crossed arms released and fell by his side. The protestor was able
to suspend her “proclamation voice” and invoke her “public relations” voice to facilitate
the
neighbor’s
disidentifactory
thought
process.
The
spectacle
brought
the
experimentation out of the laboratory and to the neighborhood to confrontationally assert
disidentification, but also relied on the malleability of voice to ease the abrupt
interruption of interpellation.
The spectacle of the home demonstration is an attempt to amplify the problem
(animal exploitation) and the motivation (profit) by creating an alternative spectacle (one
based on truth-telling and the adoption of an ethical relation to nonhuman animals).
Demonstrators do this by creating a public performance. The demonstrators use their
bullhorns to amplify their message and turn a sidewalk or front lawn into a public theatre.
The power of the spectacle lies in its ability to demand attention and render abstract
concepts into accessible courses of action. The method is both confrontational and
invaluable. As Jean Baudrillard states, “This is our theatre of cruelty, the only one left to
us—extraordinary because it unites the most spectacular to the most provocative” (The
Spirit, 2001, n.p.) The creation of a spectacle, however, relies on Goffman’s concept of
the stage, the self, and Burke’s concept of terministic screens.
Though Goffman is applied more aptly to how individuals interpret and perform
gender, public protest benefits from the framework of theatre. The concept of the self
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cannot be understood without problematizing the concept of reality through performance.
Social actors, activists, create and rearticulate understandings of themselves through
performances of self that participate in the contentious process of co-creating reality
through symbolic actions (Burke 1969; Goffman 1959). Further, activists rely on
performance to present themselves to an audience, a public that interprets their own
reality through the performance. Sociologist and performance theorist, Erving Goffman,
argued that theater serves as a metaphor for how people present themselves to one
another based on cultural values, norms, and expectations (Goffman 1959). Digital media
provides an omnipresent stage in which activists are always already performing crafted
versions of themselves. In this sense, direct action allows for not only the activist to
create a spectacle for the onlooker, but to also perform an idealized vision of which they
imagine themselves. For activists that are oftentimes (intentionally) ostracized for their
physical appearance (circle-A tattoos, septum and facial piercing, a-symmetric and dyed
haircuts, DIY tattered clothing, and body odor) demonstrations provide a suspended
space to playfully and temporarily reinvent them. In the creation of self as activist,
individuals rely on the stage of social media. One must decide what their character will
be, which screens they want to engage, and how they will present themselves through
physical representations, intellectual and political articulations, kinship networks, and so
on. These performances create terministic screens in order to create forms of
disidentification.
The activists, through the dialectic of confrontational rhetoric and playfulness,
subvert the dominant screens of society, the screens in which most Americans understand
social order, by performing a screen in which those do not exist. It is a form of
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disidentification that is predicated on a political imaginary. When activists release 2,000
mink from a fur farm outside of Chicago, it creates a screen in which those who break the
law can get away with it. During many of the demonstrations I attended, I experienced
confrontational onlookers that were convinced protestors were breaking the law. The
assumed screen was one of complacency, that individuals engaging in public assembly
were violating social and legal norms. In attempt to create a different screen, activists
happily reminded the angry onlookers they do not have to bother calling the police
because activists themselves had received a permit.69 Referring back to Althusser and the
concept of the ISA/SA social structure, individuals are socialized through institutions to
not simply fear the Establishment, but to also revere it. In this sense, activists create an
alternative screen where the Establishment is challenged publicly and is forced to show
its veiled violent hand.
The demonstrators with DARTT began their performance by ringing the doorbell
or buzzing an apartment complex intercom70. “Hi, Joe/Jane [Doe]. We spoke several
days ago, but you refused to meet with me in person. I wanted to meet with you and talk
about your client, Huntingdon Life Sciences.” Once the activists confirmed that the
“target” is home, the performance took off and began with a series of chants. “One, two
three, four. Open up the cage door! Five, six, seven, eight. Smash the locks and liberate!
69.
There is a lot of debate within the movement regarding protest permits. Many activists believe
the process of obtaining a permit minimizes the impact and also reduces the ways in which they are
confronting the establishment. During the Occupy encampments, many regional Occupy chapters refused
to even file permits on the basis of pandering to the system.
70.
Although this ethnographic description of events is focused on home demonstrations with
DARTT, the larger ethnographic data illustrated commonalities and overlap in the scripts used by anarchist
antispeciesists during home demonstrations. In this way, the example here illustrates a commonly used
performance to create a specific spectacle.
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Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Joe/Jane can go to hell!” These chants solidified the activists’
solidarity and reminded onlookers that the demonstration was all about targeting
Joe/Jane. In between chants, a few of the organizers gave speeches and proclamations
that addressed the target loudly enough for all to hear. One of the organizers took the
bullhorn and shouted, “We tried to meet with you, Joe/Jane. We are sure you would not
want to be affiliated with the grotesque cruelty that Huntingdon Life Sciences is
conducting on your behalf.” The demonstrators then recounted the horrific vivisection,
the thousands of animals ordered from the breeding facility, and the discredited research
that results that Astra-Zeneca had engaged in with animals supplied by HLS. The
activists, with the aim of maintaining a consistent screen, appeared rational and eager to
resolve the issue. The demonstrations intended to make it all look simple: cease relations
with HLS and the campaign against you will cease (Grubbs 2013a).
This spectacle invited the audience (onlookers and passersby) to witness the
exchange as it exposed HLS, challenged the violent archetypal portrayals of animal
advocates, and mocked many of the taken for granted truisms of global capitalism (for
example, that our lives should be based on profit and/or that “the market” equals
freedom). The proclamations ensure that the audience clearly understood how many
animals were (are) being exploited through HLS-contracted vivisection.
The
demonstrators did not break from their theatrical characters during the performance; they
playfully engaged their audience and politely but markedly turned off their bullhorns
when a leashed animal was walked past (Grubbs 2013a). All of this accentuated the
heightened sense of spectacle that was being enacted. The activists remained committed
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in character to ensure the audience clearly understood the problem through the terministic
screen created.
The demonstrators consistently used the first name of the person targeted while
repeatedly asking the target to come outside and discuss the situation. Those in the
“audience” might have thought (as I once did) that the demonstrators were shortsighted
by their faith in such an invitation to talk and discuss the corporate relationship between
Astra-Zeneca and HLS. A passerby challenged the demonstrators and asked me, “Don’t
you guys realize this person can’t do anything about it? S/he works for some larger
company that doesn’t care what one person has to say. S/he has the job to pay his bills,
and if s/he stands up to company practice then s/he will just be fired” (Grubbs 2013a).
But the demonstrators were not so naïve; they knew full well that the target is unlikely to
come outside and even less likely to change his/her company’s practice of animal
exploitation. Instead, this kind of demonstration, as queer a performance and powerful
disclosure of normativity, rather than a literal political plea, exaggerated the agency of
the target and, therefore, highlights powerlessness common to the average person living
within capitalism (Leap and Motschenbacher 2012:6–9).
As an additional queering
effect, this demonstration highlighted the passerby’s implicit understanding of this
powerlessness.
The onlookers were already aware that corporate sovereignty, as
discussed in Chapter Four: Neoliberal Capitalism and Constructing the Ecoterrorist,
produces good subjects that, for the most part, are powerless to effect change (Pêcheux
1982:158; Grubbs 2014a:246–248). The spectacle, through this alternative screen, called
attention to what the onlookers (and the target) already knew, but also forcing them to
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confront the issues and problems of the current system and thereby become more
empowered to actually enact social change.
The neighbor that came out to defend the vivisector described above became part
of the performance through his confrontation with disidentifcatory thoughts as he listened
to the graphic details of vivisection. The protestors utilize the paradigm of good versus
bad protestor in their performance insofar as they can shift their voice to accommodate
the onlookers. Ultimately, however, the flexibility in their performance queers the
dichotomous thinking that protestors must be either good or bad. These campaigns
encouraged activists to publicly disrupt exploitative structures through creative means.
The use of performance, direct action, and spectacle queers the act of protest that is
aimed at primary, secondary and tertiary targets. Activists creatively engaged in playful
direct action while aggressively attacking corporations.
The successes of these
campaigns, and specifically the implementation of the SHAC model, demonstrate the
power in playful protest, and the importance of direct action in anarchist antispeciesist
movements to disidentify with neoliberal capitalism, speciesism, and State repression.
Alternative screens: Challenging notions of science
This particular mode of activism, direct action that targets the exclusively
capitalist aims of agri-vivisection, provides an effective critique of speciesism. The
campaigns against agri-vivisection industries point to how capitalism facilitates the
systematic domination and exploitation of other-than-human animals. The rhetoric of
pharmacaptialism has interpellated the public, or the good subjects; to believe that
vivisection industries can “cure” ailments and illnesses if only individuals raise or donate
more money and more thus industries can conduct more animal-based research. People
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who have lost someone to illness know the powerlessness that comes with waiting for
“science” to have a medical breakthrough. Whether someone wants to sparkle in their
hot pink attire and walk a few miles for breast cancer or fundraise by washing cars
outside of the grocery store, it is apparent that people are affected by disease and death.
But the notion that human life warrants animal death is predicated on the constructed
hierarchy that divides and privileges human over animal, refered to throughout this
analysis as speciesism.
Confrontational direct action, however, places footage and
photographs in the public eye that capture the conditions in which these animals live, the
violent handling and grotesque maiming at the hands of vivisectors.
During the
demonstrations with The Bunny Alliance, the public was confronted with the realities
veiled behind the corporate walls of agri-vivisection industries through signs,
proclamations, and chants (Grubbs 2014c). The utilitarian rationales were confronted
with what that actually means to excuse the violent vivisection of some to possibly aid
others. The speciesist hypocrisy embedded in the vivisection logic, that through animal
death we save human lives, is exposed through the violent laboratory reality. The
laboratories may be veiled through security walls and barriers granted by corporate
sovereignty, but the onlookers at the CVG Airport could not exit the airport without
being confronted with bloody images and damning proclamations held by The Bunny
Alliance activists. The ability to expose existing acts of violence at the hands of agrivivisection industries is perhaps one of the more powerful spectacular components of
confrontational direct action. The use of surveillance to capture these manifestations of
violence and publicize them through physical and digital spaces has been met with State
193
acts of repression, as described in Chapter Four: Neoliberal Capitalism and Constructing
the Ecoterrorist (Potter 2012; Potter 2014; CLDC (Civil Liberties Defense Center) 2012).
The dichotomizing and privileging of the human-over-animal boundary is
challenged through anarchist antispeciesist direct action and it creates forms of
disidentification with ISA’s naturalize speciesism. These actions create alterative screens
through a political performativity that attempt to subvert species boundaries and
neoliberal capitalist motives that ultimately alienate beings from one another. Within the
artificial confines of the laboratory, the beagles and rabbits stuffed into wire cages and
forced to endure exploitation are far removed from “scientific rigor.” The emphasis
throughout these campaigns is to consistently expose the systematic oppression of otherthan-human animals at the hands of human animals. From the bunnies that live in school
classrooms, to the frog dissected in 7th grade biology, and the pig fetus used in
undergraduate human reproduction courses, these manifestations of violence, according
to anarchist antispeciesists, all a part of a larger discourse on species relations. The
AELM publicizes the violent treatment of other-than-human animals and ecologies
within agri-vivisection industries, and creates a queer counter public to understand a type
of human/animal relation not reflected in speciesism or neoliberal capitalism.
Conclusion
Neoliberalism, according to Graeber, has become part of the fictional narrative of
U.S. capitalism and globalization. Marx would call is the opiate of the masses,
comparable to religion. Alas, it is during the performance of direct action, the spectacle,
that demonstrators expose the alienation, the powerlessness, the veiled accountability,
and overt frustrations felt by those subject to neoliberal capitalism through
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disidentification.
The
performances
purposefully
exaggerate
the
rhetoric
of
neoliberalism: rationality, individual agency, free enterprise, market driven capitalism,
and individual responsibility. In turn, those observing, participating, and targeted are left
counting the ways these portrayals are ludicrous. Thus, the spectacle successfully creates
disidentifactory thoughts that are critical of globalization and capitalism, undermining all
of the euphemisms embedded in the hegemonic corporatization within the neoliberal
moment.
This chapter integrated the ways in which anarchist antispeciesists refuse to
submit to the dichotomy of good versus bad protestor through the use of direct action to
create spectacular resistance as a form of disidentification. The ethnographic data woven
throughout (and concentrated in Chapter Three: Ethnography) contextualize the nuanced
use of voice as confrontation, voice as neoliberal performance, and voice as playfulness.
Through textual analysis and ethnographic observation, it became clear these are not
merely street theatre of public shaming, but rather they directly challenge the
restructuring of global capitalism within the contemporary neoliberal moment. These
demonstrations utilize the strategic rhetoric of exaggeration and satire as a mode of
resistance. Anarchist antispeciesists are not unique in their use of political theater to
exaggerate systems of oppression, as evidenced in the history of drag performance in the
gay liberation and queer liberation movements. The next chapter moves beyond the
rhetoric of protest, and interrogates the ways in which the State retaliates by interpellating
the AELM’s use of direct action as disidentification into ecoterrorism. The use of
political theater may not be exclusive to the AELM, but the dialectic between direct
action and political repression as modes of discipline are unique within the construct of
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the ecoterrorist. Graeber posits that the political imaginary is constrained to only think
within the current modes of existence presented: capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization,
and authoritarianism. Because anarchist antispeciesists rely on an anarchist political
imaginary beyond the existence of current modes of social relations, the concept of play
serves as an essential tool to analyze their rhetorical significance.
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CHAPTER SIX
DIALECTICAL DISCIPLINE
AND PERFORMATIVE POWER
“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” [Orwell 1946]
The potentiality to create disidentifactory thoughts through performance has increased
through the queered boundaries of public and private spheres through physical and digital
direct action. The State, however, recognizes this threat and retaliates by interpellating
disidentification (direct action) into ecoterrorism. The following chapter interrogates the
relational dialectic between anarchist antispeciesists confrontational direct action,
described in Chapter Five: Direct Action as Spectacle, and the State through the interplay
of activist resistance and repressive acts of the State. Specifically, this chapter examines
how the repressive construct of ecoterrorism, as discussed in Chapter Four: Neoliberal
Capitalism and Constructing the Ecoterrorist, is used by the State to discipline anarchist
antispeciesists’ use of direct action (as a spectacular performance) through interpellation.
The AELM is responsible for the direct rescue of thousands of animals from captivity,
slaughter, and vivisection (Phelps 2007:260). The AELM has inflicted millions of dollars
in damages each year to industries that exploit animals and the environment (Best and
Nocella 2006:47; Loadenthal 2013a; Loadenthal 2010).
Direct animal rescue and
property destruction effectively threaten agri-vivisection industries through the public use
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of pressure tactics described in earlier chapters.71 The use of direct action remains an
internal splinter within the animal and eco advocacy movements, and invites public
scrutiny from those outside the movements. More importantly, however, the acts of
agitation are interconnected to the acts of the State. The physical and rhetorical volley of
performative power between the AELM and the State-Corporate Industrial Complex
between political activism and repression exists within a relational dialectic.
Anarchist antispeciesists simultaneously feel powerful through direct action and
repressed through State violence. Activists’ act and exercise power yet also experience
coercive punishment that minimize their power from the State. These contradictions
cannot be parceled out and fractured from one another because they exist within the
totality of a holistic relationship of power and repression. Activists are not able to
experience or articulate the power embodied in direct action, regardless of how
symbolically or viscerally the power if experienced. No demonstration, direct rescue, or
act of arson exists outside of a system in which the State holds coercive power. Thus, the
direct action is an attempt to subvert or overthrow the power of the State through
performance, with an understanding that the action alone holds no symbolic value outside
of the existing power structure. The praxis of relational dialectics provide the influx
terrain in which activists and State actors gain deeper understandings of the needs and
desires of one another. The dialectics are continuously influx and depend on the changing
nature of the relationship. In this sense, the theory of relational dialectic provides a useful
71.
The direct action tactics used by the contemporary AELM have been credited to the SHAC
Model described in the previous chapter. The tactics include public protests, political theatre such as dieins, mass funerals, hot iron branding, home demonstrations, cyber attacks and cyber security breaches,
document leaks, investigative footage, direct rescue, property destruction, and blockades.
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way to understand the performative interplay, tensions, and contradictions between the
State and the AELM.
Each direct action by anarchist antispeciesists challenges the State and the
systems of capitalism, speciesism, and authoritarianism. Each challenge is met with
actions of the State that both react to and proactively prevent threats to their power. Both
the activists and the State engage with power through performance to silence and subvert
the other. Despite the significant challenges these non-State actors make, there is an
asymmetry of power that monopolizes [legal] modes of violence (Baudrillard 2001;
Weber 1919; Weber 1978; Loadenthal 2013b). The previous chapter focused on the ways
in which activists engage with the repressive acts of the State and neoliberal capitalism
through spectacular performances of direct action. This chapter further relies on activist
narratives told through their personal voice, digital media, and captured in ethnographic
notes to examine the ways in which individuals interpret and perform the relational
dialectic between activists and the State. Specifically, this chapter examines how activists
interact with the State’s rhetorical construction of ecoterrorism as part of the larger
project of statecraft through political repression. This chapter relied on participantobservation, interviewing, and analyzing activists’ use of social media to gain in-depth
understanding of how activists view their response to State’s surveillance and the role of
security culture. Respondents remarked how they viewed direct action as an effective
way to challenge the State’s reliance on disciplinary punishment, and many of the activist
convergences I attended featured tactical trainings to resist security culture (Grubbs
2013b; Grubbs 2014c; Grubbs 2014b; Anonymous 2014a). This examination is guided by
a series of interconnected questions including: How is power articulated and performed in
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the contemporary neoliberal movement by both the State and anarchist antispeciesists? In
what ways does the State dialectically engage in monarchical power and disciplinary
punishment to interpellate direct action as ecoterrorism72?
State Violence Masked through Performance
Corporate sovereignty, as facilitated by neoliberal capitalism, not only allows for
agri-vivisection industries to operate through veiled ISA’s, but it also requires the State to
use repressive acts to disincentivize dissent. Through the conflation of the good subject
and the good protestor, activists are presented with one, nonthreatening form of dissent
as effective (Best n.d.; Churchill and Wall 1990; Pellow 2014). The rewriting of past
liberatory struggles to erase confrontational direct action as not only effective, but
engaged in ad hoc by activists heralded as good protestors. The disciplinary function of
corporate sovereignty is illustrated through the frameworks provided by Althusser,
Foucault and Agamben. Foucault and Althusser focused a great deal on the social
functioning of power, and it’s relationship to discipline. In Discipline and Punish,
Foucault traced the role of governments in shifting modes of punishment. With the birth
of the modern prison, Foucault argued a move from monarchical punishment to
disciplinary power.
Monarchical punishment, the repression of a group through violent public
performance, was no longer necessary after the birth of the modern day prison. Athusser
expanded on this, but focused on the process of subject formation through interpellation.
72.
Although Foucault argued the increased use of surveillance facilitated a veiled use of state
violence through disciplinary punishment, the targeted legislation, terrorist enhancements, and excessive
police force follows a monarchical construct of State power (Foucault 1977; Foucault 1980; Foucault
1991).
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Subjects can be disciplined because they are “hailed,” and thus have the agency to accept,
reject, or reconfigure through discursive practices of ideology (Althusser 1971:132, 143–
144; Pêcheux 1982:158). Monarchical power, on the other hand, relies on public displays
of grotesque violence to maintain rule through explicit fear of violence. In effort to
discourage theft through fear, the government would gather entire communities to
witness a thief’s hand get cut off. The punishment was based on mutilating the body so
that fear of physical pain would instill self-discipline into the soul. In his discussion of
the prison system,
Foucault expands on the panopticon model put forth by Jeremy Bentham
(Foucault 1977:200–217). Prisons were built in a circular shape, with a tall tower in the
center. Every prison cell was exposed to the tower, centralizing all surveillance to one
specific tower. Tinted windows and obscured architecture designed the watchtower to
have clear views of the entire prison, while making it impossible for prisoners to see in.
Prisoners assumed there were always a guard in the tower, and became accustomed to
constant surveillance. Over time, they began to self-discipline and it no longer mattered if
someone was actually in the tower. Contemporary shopping malls utilize this
conditioning through the installation of surveillance cameras. There are even signs in
dressing rooms that read, “Smile, you are on camera” or “You steal, we prosecute.”
Consumers are constantly shown representations of surveillance without necessarily
being presented with evidence that anyone is watching the footage. However, the
shopping experience is conditioned through the lens of assumption. Individuals do not
know who is watching, what the store’s legal capacities of prosecution are, or even the
scope of the camera itself. And yet the shopper behaves as if they are being watched, as if
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they have assumed the store to hold significant enough power that they will not steal. The
cameras, though omnipresent, appear less violent than armed security guards in every
store.
With regard to the AELM, there is dialectic between the use of the surveillance
and explicit State violence that is visible to create a repressive terrain for political
activism (Grubbs and Loadenthal 2011a; Loadenthal 2011b; Grubbs and Loadenthal
2011b; Loadenthal 2014b) . The surveillance of activists represents a systematic
disciplining of dissent. The targeted legislation such as the AETA, use of Federal Grand
Juries, use of Communications Management Unit prisons, and terrorist-enhancements
represent an explicit coercive punishment more in line with monarchical power. The
rhetoric of terrorism itself serves a disciplinary function to discourage dissent (Chomsky
2001:155, Hoffman 2006:32, Lovitz 2010:109, Jackson and Sinclair 2012:2). The
combinations of disciplinary conditions that activists engage in include self-censorship of
communication, clandestine operations rather than in networks, and a proliferation of
“security culture” demonstrate an internalization of the panopticon. However, coercive
legislation such as the AETA and State authority that protects neoliberal capitalism
unveils the violent nature of political repression [4]. Direct action activists are publicly
punished through Federal Grand Jury subpoenas, home raids, government infiltrators, and
terrorism enhancements. This hybrid of both disciplinary punishment and monarchical
power represents a particular type of political repression targeting anarchist
antispeciesists.
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Disciplining the Activist
The disciplinary power of the State fits within the neoliberal rhetoric of a
forgiving judicial system indoctrinates the prisoners to believe regardless if anyone is
watching, it will benefit them if they are on their best behavior73. Foucault argued there
was both symbolic and physical significance within the body/soul divide during this shift
from monarchical punishment to disciplinary power (Foucault 1977:280–281). The
professionalization of power via prisons, parole officers, and house arrest, have
conditioned the soul to behave in ways that allow the State to police through conditioning
rather than public displays of grotesque violence74. This shift, however, had more to do
with cost and efficiency rather than the State’s desire to be less violence (Foucault
1980:38–40). The body/soul internalization of power facilitated a shift in the public
performance of State violence as penal system capable of restorative justice. Before I
began this project, I was traveling to the West Coast for a conference. I had packed a few
zines and the ALF Primer in my messenger bag. I went through the standard modes of
surveillance screening at the airport and then was selected for additional inspection. The
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer carried by scattered belongings
over to a metal table. She instructed me to stand on the plastic mat and turn my palms
facing upward. As she snapped on blue sterile gloves, she explained that she would be
patting down my body. I answered a series of questions clarifying: I did not have
73.
The judicial system, in particular the Prison-Industrial Complex, promulgates the false idea that
a convicted individual is able to serve a prison sentence or complete a mandated punishment in order to be
forgiven for their crime and thus granted access to rejoin society as a reformed citizen.
74.
It is of importance to note this section focuses on North America and the U.K. It is outside the
scope and aim of this study to include an overview of the intricacies of policing internationally.
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“tender” places on the body, I did not need to be moved to a private area for the
screening, and I do not need the instructions translated from English. She also explained
that my messenger bag was going to be opened and the belongings would be examined.
Though I had prepared to travel, knew my bags and body were subject to search, and was
aware my name had been run through security databases, it was during this “further
inspection” that I viscerally felt the State’s power. My heart rate began to increase as the
sweat beads began to form at my hairline. As the second TSA officer approached my
messenger bag, I felt my hands begin to shake. Despite years of political activism and
academic research on the civil liberties guaranteeing my right to protest, I began to fear
what would happen if the TSA officer found the ALF literature.
The internalization of these threats of physical violence (being selected for further
inspection, having my body and possessions searched, the risk of being handcuffed and
escorted into police custody, being added to security watch lists and labeled as a terrorist,
and having my property confiscated) were externalized through the increased heart rate,
the sweat, and the shakiness felt in my hands. To paraphrase from Foucault’s concept of
disciplinary power, activists’ souls have been conditioned to use discretion when
traveling and conceal political markers because of the physical fear in the veiled threat of
the State75. Activists monitor conversations with one under because of the internalized
fear of being caught discussing legal and illegal confrontational direct action. The State is
able to wield its power without publicly exposing the ways in which it uses violence to
75.
There are many activists that make it an intentional practice to travel in clothing that clearly
marks their politics and solidarity with political prisoners, to pack political propaganda, and to adopt an
aggressive posture with TSA security.
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repress dissent76. Foucault provides a detailed explanation for how the State was able to
move away from monarchical punishment that relied on visible acts of violence and
instead rely on insidious, omnipresent mechanisms of surveillance. The State, essentially,
engaged in a significant public relations campaign to restructure the penal system to
embody neoliberal truisms of justice, rehabilitation, fairness, and democracy.
Disciplining the State
The dialectical praxis between activists and the State within the contemporary
moment continues to evolve through technological advances. The technopower (the
internet, smart phones, d/encryption, surveillance devices, etc) available in tandem with
direct action tactics, provide significantly destructive mechanisms to subvert Statecraft
(Chomsky 2005; Žižek 2008). The available means and modes of activists expose the
tenuousness and vulnerability of State power in both the physical disruptions of agrivivisection industries, but further the tactics undermine the hegemonic foundation of
disciplinary power itself. The anarchist rejection of governmentality and coercion,
coupled with the antispeciesist rejection of capitalism and speciesism, utilize direct action
to create a spectacle that expose the fragility of State power without consent and produce
disidentifactory thoughts. When activists walk into the headquarters of a multinational
corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio, dressed in black clothing, glue the locks to an office
shut, drop two 60 ft banners, and hang from a zip line strung between two buildings to
protest the company’s sourcing of palm oil, the audience is confronted with the
contradictions of State power. Employees, onlookers, activists, and the targets themselves
76.
This is one of the central points that activists have argued create divisive and debilitating
fractures amongst clandestine cells in the AELM. Ethnographic data will expand upon the ways in which
this is interpreted and challenged by activists.
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are witnesses to the performance of disidentification that interrupts hegemonic power.
The employees of the company must reconcile feeling unsafe despite the heavily policed
fortress, onlookers must reconcile distrusting the effectiveness of security, and the
Cincinnati residents must reconcile why activists would challenge the highly-regarded
local pride77. The activists credited their ability to penetrate security during the day to
technology, a destabilizing mode of protest that disrupts the State’s monopoly of
surveillance. When Potter announced the Kickstarter campaign to purchase two drones in
order to capture aerial footage of factory farms, the State’s monopoly of violence was
disrupted78. When SHAC activists hack into the email accounts of HLS executives and
leak internal documents, power is disrupted. When activists release 500 mice from a
laboratory and widely distribute a communiqué, power is disrupted. The power of the
State, or the State’s power of interpellation, is further disrupted when the activists remain
at-large after the attack. The communiqué explicitly calls out the State and declares
monarchical power over by stating the attacks will continue until the industries cease to
exist. Following an act of sabotage, a chemical abrasive was put in the fuel system of a
mobile slaughter truck operated by Warts Custom Meat Cutting in Washington, a
communiqué was sent to the North American Animal Liberation Front Press Office:
77.
In 2014, Greenpeace activists entered Proctor & Gamble (P&G) headquarters in Cincinnati,
Ohio to engage in direct action challenging the controversial sourcing of palm oil. Greenpeace had
contacted P&G throughout the campaign, but the company refused to engage in the conversation. The
protest garnered national attention and led to the announcement from P&G that the company would change
its practices over the course of several years. The activists faced a collective sentence of 9.5 years, and
ultimately the felony chargers were dropped.
78.
Activists cannot take footage inside factory farms in 6 states, however the State can record
phone conversations and archive emails of activists without oversight (Weber 1978; Potter 2012; Potter
2014).
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There is nothing humane about turning a living-breathing animal into a lifeless
commodity in order to satisfy frivolous human desires. The so called ‘humane
meat movement’ is not about respecting the ‘welfare’ of non-human animals, but
about masking and normalizing a culture of violence and exploitation directed
towards sentient non-humans. This is an act of solidarity with the pigs and cows
that are slated to be killed by this company and with all the victims of animal
agriculture.
Until the last slaughterhouse truck is idled and the last butchers blade is snapped.
A.L.F. Freedom Summer 2014 has officially commenced. [Washington State
Mobile Slaughter Truck Sabotaged by ALF  » North American Animal Liberation
Press Office n.d.]
The activists are able to issue clear threats to the State while simultaneously
demonstrating the power of their threat through illegal direct action. The activists that are
caught, entrapped through infiltrators, or implicated by cooperative witnesses have the
ability to issue monarchical challenges to State power through the legal proceeding.
Political prisoner, Walter Bond, is incarcerated for several arsons in Colorado and Utah,
and utilized his trial and sentencing hearing to publicly denounce the State and
speciesism79. Bond was first tried and convicted in Colorado for burning down the
Sheepskin Factory in Glendale, Colorado. Bond received the minimum sentence allowed
by a Colorado court, 5 years prison and 3 years probation80 (Bond 2011a). The judge
made several references during the trial to Bond’s intelligence, acknowledged that she
read all 50 letters of support sent from activists, and also encouraged Bond to focus on
79.
Walter Bond began using the name Abdum Haqq after taking Shahada (the declaration of full
faith in Islam) in August of 2014, while imprisoned at a Communications Management Unit in the U.S.
Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. The name, Abdul Haqq, translates to “Servants of The Truth” and is used
throughout Bond’s essays after that date. I will refer to him as Walter Bond in essays written prior to
August 5, 2014, and Abdul Haqq in all subsequent writings in which he signs that name.
80.
Bond’s brother, Trapper Zuehlke, was contacted by the FBI and worked with the government in
a sting operation. Bond was arrested for 3 arsons in 2010: a sheepskin factory in Denver, Colorado, a
leather factory in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a foie gras restauraunt, Tiburon, in Sandy, Utah. He pled guilty
to all three charges and was also charged with one count of AETA. His total prison sentence is 12 years and
3 months, with a scheduled release in 2021 (Walter Bond Prison Support Network n.d.).
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writing rather than illegal acts. Bond responded to the patronizing proceedings with the
following speech:
I’m here today because I burnt down the Sheepskin Factory in Glendale, CO, a
business that sells pelts, furs and other dead Animal skins. I know many people
think I should feel remorse for what I’ve done. I guess this is the customary time
where I’m suppose to grovel and beg for mercy. I assure you if that’s how I felt I
would. But, I am not sorry for anything I have done. Nor am I frightened by this
court’s authority. Because any system of law that values the rights of the
oppressor over the down trodden is an unjust system. And though this court has
real and actual power, I question its morality. I doubt the court is interested in the
precautions that I took to not harm any person or by-stander and even less
concerned with the miserable lives that sheep, cows and mink had to endure, unto
death, so that a Colorado business could profit from their confinement,
enslavement, and murder.
Obviously, the owners and employees of the sheepskin factory do not care
either or they would not be involved in such a sinister and macabre blood trade.
So I will not waste my breath where it will only fall on deaf ears. That’s why I
turned to illegal direct action to begin with, because you do not care. No matter
how much we Animal Rights activists talk or reason with you, you do not care.
Well, Mr. Livaditis (owner of the Sheepskin Factory), I don’t care about you.
There is no common ground between people like you and me. I want you to know
that no matter what this court sentences me to today, you have won nothing!
Prison is no great hardship to me. In a society that values money over life, I
consider it an honor to be a prisoner of war, the war against inter-species slavery
and objectification! I also want you to know that I will never willingly pay you
one dollar, not one! I hope your business fails and you choke to death on every
penny you profit from Animal murder! I hope you choke on it and burn in hell!
To my supporters, I wish to say thank you for standing behind me and showing
this court and these Animal exploiters that we support our own and that we as a
movement are not going to apologize for having a sense of urgency. We are not
going to put the interests of commerce over sentience! And we will never stop
educating, agitating and confronting those responsible for the death of our Mother
Earth and her Animal Nations. My Vegan sisters and brothers our lives are not
our own. Selfishness is the way of gluttons, perverts and purveyors of injustice. It
has been said all it takes for evil to conquer is for good people to do nothing.
Conversely, all it takes to stop the enslavement, use, abuse and murder of other
than human Animals is the resolve to fight on their behalf!
Do what you can, do what you must, be Vegan warriors and true Animal
defenders and never compromise with their murderers and profiteers. The Animal
Liberation Front is the answer. Seldom has there been such a personally powerful
and internationally effective movement in human history. You cannot join the
A.L.F. but you can become the A.L.F. And it was the proudest and most powerful
thing I have ever done. When you leave this courtroom today don’t be dismayed
by my incarceration.
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All the ferocity and love in my heart still lives on. Every time someone
liberates an Animal and smashes their cage, it lives on! Every time an activist
refuses to bow down to laws that protect murder, it lives on! And it lives on every
time the night sky lights up ablaze with the ruins of another Animal exploiters’
business! That’s all Your Honor, I am ready to go to prison. [Bond 2011]
Bond’s ability to exercise power against the State was performed through his direct
actions and the speeches in which he rhetorically refused to identify with the disciplinary
function of the State. In the opening paragraph, “I guess this is the customary time where
I’m suppose to grovel and beg for mercy…but I am not sorry…nor am I frightened…And
although this court has real and actual power, I question its morality,” Bond challenges
the ways in which neoliberal capitalism unethically values capital over the lives of other
species (Bond 2011a). Throughout the speech, Bond frames the current legal-political
landscape as a capital-driven system that supports violent exploitation, whereas his own
actions fall within a trajectory of liberation activists that act ethically to destroy an
unethical society. His narrative demonstrates the following syllogism: society has
immoral practices toward other species, laws supporting these practices are tied to profit
for the State, therefore it is justified to defy society and the laws by disrupting these
practices and profits because they are immoral. Thus, if you agree that society has
immoral practices toward other species, and you agree that these practices are facilitated
by and profited off of by the State, then the State supports immoral practices. The
syllogism challenges the neoliberal logic that the State acts with the public’s best interest,
and draws attention to the ways in which the State creates and enforces laws based on
profit rather than ethic. The logic, then, contributes to disidentifactory thoughts as the
audience questions their own support for these immoral practices and the complicity of
the State.
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Bond symbolically shifts the traditionally repentant practice where the convicted
demonstrate remorse during the sentencing hearing. Bond, however, uses the words:
oppressor, unjust system, sinister and macabre blood trade, gluttons, perverts and
purveyors of injustice” to describe the State and agri-vivisection industries that are
facilitated by the State. Conversely, Bond addresses his supporters, the vegan warriors
and true Animal defenders, and encourages them to continue to act with urgency and with
disregard for the law. He does so by valorizing his acts within a context of war. He states,
“Prison is no great hardship to me…. it is an honor to be a prisoner of war, the war
against inter-species slavery and objectification!” He concludes the speech with a final
rallying call for the ALF, “…you can become the A.L.F. And it was the proudest and
most powerful thing I have ever done…don’t be dismayed by my incarceration. All the
ferocity and love in my heart still lives on…every time an activist refuses to bow down to
law that protect murder…it lives on every time the night sky lights ablaze with the ruins
of another Animal exploiters’ business.” The final sentence, in many ways, is the
guillotine that splices at the disciplinary power of the State. Rather than request mercy or
special consideration, Bond excitedly declares in martyrdom, “That’s all Your Honor, I
am ready to go to prison.” The declaration undermines the disciplinary function of the
State, explicitly asking for the punishment that will elevate his status to Prisoner of War
within the anarchist antispeciesist movement.
Bond was sentenced to 60 months (five years) in federal prison for the arson in
Colorado. The US. Attorney’s Office issued a statement on February 11, 2011 wherein
the State responded to Bond’s speech to interpellate his rhetoric into ecoterrorism. The
statement focused on Bond’s criminal history with arson to depoliticize the act in
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claiming, “His claimed ‘cause’ is mere pretext: The evidence in this case demonstrates
that he has a history of committing crimes involving fire before he ever began advocating
animal rights” (U.S. Attorney’s Office 2011). Rather than respond to the ways in which
Bond challenged the disciplinary power of the State, the U.S. Attorney’s office asserted
that the sentencing, “…sends a strong message that violence is never an acceptable road
to change in our democracy…arson is a violent crime that often results in catastrophic
loss of life and property” (U.S. Attorney’s Office 2011). The statement concluded by
invoking the rhetoric of terrorism, “Preventing and pursuing domestic terrorism- those
acts of violence committed in furtherance of a political or social agenda- remains one of
the top priorities of the FBI…this sentencing demonstrates again that the FBI and Joint
Terrorism Task Force partners remain dedicated…to work together to bring justice to
those who would resort to acts of violence” (U.S. Attorney’s Office 2011). The narrative
of the State does not acknowledge the critique of speciesism or capitalism found
throughout Bond’s speech, however it does use neoliberal rhetoric to interpellate Bond
through performative power. The use of terms like gratified, dedicated, determined,
justice, and victim to describe the interagency collaboration between the ATF, FBI, and
local police and the Sheepskin Factory in Glendale. Bond is described with phrases like
using violence, history of committing crimes; destroy a business to demonstrate a
justified use of disciplinary punishment.
Bond was then extradited to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he was tried and
convicted of two additional arsons claimed with the Animal Liberation Front. In October
2011, Bond delivered a similar speech to the court that followed a similar disregard for
the State and lack of remorse. In the months between the two trials, Bond gave interviews
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and delivered a keynote speech to an animal liberation conference I attended in Long
Beach, California. Bond utilized this social capital and delivered another scathing speech
to the court before his sentencing. His speeches serve to solidify and mobilize anarchist
antispeciesists to engage in illegal direct action without fear of the State. The second
speech delivered in court in Utah focus on undermining the ways in which the State
expects defendants to succumb to the power of the state through apology. Instead, he
utilizes this classic rhetorical use of apologia to mock the State:
I’m here today because of the arsons I committed at The Tandy Leather Factory
in Salt Lake City, and the Tiburon Restaurant in Sandy, Utah which sells the
incredibly cruel product foie gras. The US Attorney wants to give me the
maximum sentence and beyond, not because of my ‘crimes,’ but because I am
unrepentant and outspoken. My intuition tells me that this court is not going to
show me mercy because I became ‘suddenly sorry.’ So instead of lying to the
court in a feeble attempt to save myself, as I’m certain many do when they face
their sentencing day, allow me to tell you what I am sorry for.
I am sorry that when I was 19 years old I built two slaughterhouses that
are still killing Animals, even now as I speak. I am sorry that Tandy Leather sells
skin that has been ripped from the dead, and often live bodies of such Animals as
cows, ostriches, rabbits, snakes and pigs. I am sorry that the leather tanneries that
supply Tandy Factory, poison the earth with dangerous chemicals. I am sorry that
the restaurant Tiburon profits from the force feeding of geese and ducks until their
livers explode, so that rich people can then use that as a paté for crackers and
bread. I am sorry that they make a living from the dead bodies of wild and exotic
Animals. I am sorry that we live in a day and age where you can rape a child or
beat a woman unconscious and receive less prison time than an Animal Rights
activist that attacked property instead of people. I am sorry that my brother was so
desperate to get out of debt that he flew from Iowa to Colorado just to get me in a
taped and monitored conversation for reward money. I am sorry that I am
biologically related to such a worthless little snitch! I am sorry that I waited so
long to become an Animal Liberation Front operative. For all of these things, I
will always have some regret. But as far as the arsons at the Leather Factory and
Tiburon go, I have no remorse.
I realize that the laws of the land favor a business’ ability to make a profit
over an Animal’s right to life. It also used to favor a white business owner’s
ability to profit from a black person’s slavery. It also used to favor a husband’s
ability to viciously attack his wife and act on her as if she were an object. Those
who broke the law and damaged property to stand against these oppressions were
also called ‘terrorists’ and ‘fanatics’ in their time. But that did not change the fact
that society progressed and is still progressing along those lines. So today I’m the
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bad guy. That is just a matter of historical coincidence. Who knows… perhaps a
less brutal and less violent society will one day exist that will understand that life
and earth are more important than products of death and cruelty. And if not, then
to hell with it all anyway! Whether my supporters or detractors think I’m a
freedom fighter or a lunatic with a gas can makes no difference to me. I have
spent years verifiably promoting, supporting and fighting for Animal Liberation. I
have seen the Animal victims of human injustice — thousands of them — with
my own eyes and what I saw was blood, guts and gore. I made a promise to those
Animals, and to myself, to fight for them in any way I could. I regret none of it,
and I never will! You can take my freedom, but you can’t have my submission.
[Bond 2011]
The second speech also made refuses to identify with the [dis]functions of disciplinary
power used by the State. Bond challenged the neoliberal trope of rehabilitative justice by
calling out the U.S. Attorney. He claimed that it was not his crimes that would be judged
in handing down a sentence, but that it was because he is, “unrepentant and
outspoken…this court is not going to show me mercy…instead of lying to the court in a
feeble attempt to save myself…” (Bond 2011b) . In an interesting dialectic of
performativity, Bond disidentifies with disciplinary power while being interpellated
within it through the judicial proceedings that legally reify the construct of ecoterrorist.
He recognizes the “hailing” and attempts to suspend the interpellation momentarily
through this performance.
The second portion of the speech relies on apologia to shame the State and agrivivisection. Bond does not apologize for his actions; rather he is “sorry” for the ways in
which speciesism and capitalism naturalize the violence of foie gras. The speech queers
the rhetoric of apologia itself, forcing the audience to question who is shaming who here,
given the presumed protocol of this type of speech? He created disidentifactory thoughts
amongst his audience, treating the courtroom as a theater and stage, by using poignant
rhetoric such as: killing, sells skin ripped from the dead, poison the earth, and force
213
feeding to describe Tandy Leather. Bond also apologizes for being related to his brother,
an accomplice in the sting operation that led to Bond’s arrest, as a worthless little snitch.
Bond apologizes for the unjust function of the legal system, “I am sorry that we live in a
day and age where you can rape a child or beat a woman unconscious and receive less
prison time than an Animal Rights activist that attacked property instead of people…I
realize the laws of the land favor a business’ ability to make a profit over an Animal’s
right to life” (Bond 2011b).
Bond creates a moral trajectory between anarchist antispeciesists and those who
broke the law during slavery to protect African Americans, women that fought against the
objectification of women under the law, and those who have been called “terrorists” or
“fanatics” during their time. He argues that the illegality of his crimes and the label of
terrorist are simply historical coincidence that will not stand the test of time. The speech
concludes, again, with a refusal to submit to the power of the State, “You can take my
freedom, but you can’t have my submission” (Bond 2011b). Bond is a significant player
in the anarchist antispeciesist movement through his actions prior to incarceration, his
courtroom speeches, as well as the essays and speeches given while in prison. Though it
is outside the scope of this chapter to focus on Bond in-depth, his rhetorical arc continues
to evolve and warrants examination through academic scrutiny. Bond represents one of
the first convicted of violating the AETA that utilizes online networks to publish while in
prison. He has also undergone significant transformation while in prison with his
personal and religious identity that are evident in his writings on anarchism and
speciesism. In relation to performative power, Bond also has never strayed from his
courtroom speech regarding remorse. Several environmental activists that have been
214
arrested have spoken out against direct action, or specifically the direct actions they were
arrested for, and publicly questioned the efficacy of property destruction81. The remorse
may be a public performance rather than introspective reflection, but they serve to
reinforce the State narrative of a rehabilitative justice system. It also reinforces the power
of the State by demonstrating a level of submission required from activists to reenter
society. It is as if Homo Sacer is allowed to rejoin the general population only after a
thorough disavowal of his crimes.
On the other hand, Bond has not publicly questioned his actions or his
endorsement of illegal direct action remains unwavering. His lack of remorse minimizes
the perceived power of the State for activists as he rearticulates his role as martyr. He
continues to be a source of encouragement to activists and academic scholars in solidarity
through his writings in academic texts, conferences, and activist convergences. Bond, in
many ways, is a contemporary Homo Sacer, someone given the maximum jail sentence,
assigned to a maximum-security prison reserved for domestic terrorists, and stripped of
all civil liberties as punishment for his crime. But, his disavowal of the system that
imprisoned him, his explicit critique of how the State supports violence, and his refusal to
identify with the neoliberal rhetoric of rehabilitation show there is more performative
power than simply exerting State power over Bond’s body. Bond demonstrates a
particular articulation of disidentification that performs monarchical punishment from a
position of power. Bond, and other activists alike, has the ability to challenge the State
through these public condemnations that remain prolific through digital media.
81.
Several of the environmental activists arrested with Operation Backfire participated in the
filming of a documentary titled, If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. Activists such as
Daniel McGowan questioned their actions and if they were effective.
215
Aboveground activists engage in solidarity through social media to publicly align
themselves with the illegal direct action, disidentifying with the presumed power of the
State aimed at targeted AELM activists. Prisoner support websites, Twitter feeds,
Facebook forums, Instagram pictures, activist trainings, conference papers, book
chapters, and even baked good fundraisers are public performances that challenge the
disciplinary function of the State through disidentification. In this sense, activists rely on
direct action to create the spectacle of monarchical punishment, punishment by the
sword, to undermine State power and capital through destruction.
Every time an activist knowingly breaks the law to liberate an animal or destroy
property, the public is reminded of the potentiality of revolutionary change. Similar to
how the monarchy would execute someone in public to instill fear in the citizens, and
remind the public that the government posses power over all life, anarchist antispeciesists
use direct action as an exposure of monarchical power to create disidentifactory
thoughts. These activists use monarchical power as a way to remind the public the State
is not all-powerful. It is not impossible to penetrate. They [activists] can pull back the
curtains and expose the violence behind speciesist capitalism, and utilize the internet to
spread this exposed violence widely through undercover footage inside agri-vivisection
industries. Property destruction presents a unique challenge to the State’s reliance on
disciplinary punishment, particularly when the activists go un-captured. Clandestine
activists issue damning communiqués that undermine State authority and call out the
State-Corporate Industrial Complex. Further, these acts disrupt the social contract
between corporations and the State. Neoliberal capitalism is predicated on the support of
the State. The de-regulation of industry and global trade agreements attempt to restore or
216
renew the social contract between corporations and the State. The public performance of
direct action activism demonstrates a hole in this contract, and the possibilities of how
interpellation can be resisted. The State is weakened, unable to protect agri-vivisection
industries from arson, a cyber attack, or a raid. Thus, the State must perform monarchical
punishment and retaliate to illustrate it still has a monopoly on violence that will
guarantee the social contract of capitalism. Further, the State relies on the dichotomy of
good versus bad protestor to interpellate anarchist antispeciesists as ecoterrorists
deserving of monarchical punishment.
Dialectics of Power in the Age of Neoliberalism
The proactive and reactive measures of the State, however, are tasked with both
recouping power while maintaining the disciplinary truisms of neoliberalism. The State
must respond with coercive punishment that instills fearful disincentives for challenging
agri-vivisection industries, yet also demonstrates fairness and justice. This challenge
relies on asymmetric modes of technopower to frame and conceal the punishment82. The
passage of the AETA created the chilling coercive threat that acted as a disincentive, but
did so in a way that revealed the punitive potential of the State. This potential was visibly
manifest in the rhetoric used to legally invoke its power (Lovitz 2010; Parker 2009;
Potter 2011). The heavy reliance on terrorism rhetoric negated a performance of justice or
presumed innocence during anarchist antispeciesist trials that invoked the AETA (Lovitz
2010). The AETA is a form of monarchical punishment that publicly violates protected
82.
Activist-scholarship has interrogated the role of technology in State violence against anti-war,
anti-nuclear, and anti-capitalist movements (Scheper-Hughes and Philippe Bourgois 2003; Žižek 2008;
Price 2004; Price 2011; Loadenthal 2011b). The growing discourse, however, has historically ignored the
ways in which the State targets the AELM. Contemporary scholarship, particularly from activists rather
than academics, has begun to focus on the AELM since the passage of the AETA (Potter 2009; Potter 2011;
Salter 2011; Salter 2012; Grubbs and Loadenthal 2013).
217
rights of citizens, such as criminalizing legal expressive activity that results in economic
damage, establishing vanguard protections for legal and illegal “animal enterprises,” and
creating legislation that uses broad brush strokes to define “conspiracy” (American Civil
Liberties Union n.d.; Lovitz 2010) In addition, the legislation increased penalties and
prison sentencing, redefines the trial processes for AETA defendants, and carries with it
“terrorist enhancements” that have been used to house anarchist antispeciesists in
maximum security Communications Management Unit (CMU) prisons that committed
nonviolent crimes (Potter n.d.).
Louis Althusser, in his investigation of the reproduction of power, illustrated how
ideology is not epiphenomenal (Althusser 1963; Althusser 1970; Althusser 2005). In
other words, ideology does not just happen or solely exist as a top-down social force.
Rather, ideology and power are negotiated and reinforced in a much more dialectical
performance of hegemony (Luxemburg 1900; Gramsci 1971; Chomsky et al. 1967;
Gramsci 1994; Žižek 2009). Despite the limits placed on freedom of speech through the
AETA, the legislation was voted through and supported by politicians. The legislation
has been written into law for almost a decade, there have been several high-profile
political activists tried under the AETA, and the label ecoterrorist continues to be used in
popular media. Outside of anarchist antispeciesists that advocate direct action, there is a
small constituency of activists invested in the efforts to challenge the legislation. The
support for the AETA is more insidious than simply claiming the federal government
forced an unjust legislation to protect industries. The public framing of the AETA
indicates there is far more manufactured consent through interpellation than dissent.
Media outlets produce vague reports that paint U.S. democratic principles as
218
being under siege by ecoterrorists as a way to situate the disidentifactory thoughts
produced by anarchist antispeciesist direct action. News reports emphasize that farmers
and scientists constitute the American fabric of the U.S. economy. Politicians campaign
on the platform of protecting American industries from ecoterrorists. Local communities
and centers of education erase confrontational protest from the collective memory of
social change, while simultaneously romanticizing individual leaders through
exceptionality (Foucault 1980; Ong 2006; Harvey 2007a). Medical professional continue
to profess the nutritional necessity for animal-based products in human diets.
Consistently, the messages presented through institutional sites of ideological influence
coalesce corporate and State interests as American interests. In other words, to challenge
(or disidentify with) agri-vivisection industries is to challenge the State. Regardless of
whether or not agri-vivisection industries are under siege by said ecoterrorists, the focus
is on manufacturing of consent irrespective of validity. What becomes relevant are the
ways in which individuals participate in the process of legally restricting access to
speech. The State relies on this construction of the ecoterrorist to discourage not only
direct action, but also the very disidentifactory thoughts they make possible.
Individuals actively participate in this interpellation of State power through ISA’s.
These ideological apparatuses rely on the hegemonic consent of the general population to
accept and promulgate the unjust and coercive punishments of the AETA. The
disciplinary nature of the AETA depends upon the willingness of the general public to
accept and enact roles in self-policing. The general population would not engage in
confrontational direct action against a vivisection lab because they identify with the
ideological discourse that asserts the industry exists to protect and cure individuals of
219
disease. Further, the general population is consistently reminded that effective social
movements use accepted channels of protest such as letter-writing campaigns. Not only
are the industries presented as benign and beneficial, but also the act of protest is
stigmatized as ineffective. Yes, the general population fears going to prison and thus does
not throw a brick through the window of a slaughterhouse. But more importantly,
individuals undergo a process of interpellation through various ISA’s that insists the
slaughterhouse is a necessary component of nutrition and human dominion over otherthan-human animals (Harper 2010). Through the Althusserian ISA’s, the power of the
State manifests to produce a spectacle of both monarchical and disciplinary punishment
that targets anarchist antispeciesists through this interpellation as ecoterrists. The good
subjects of neoliberal capitalism and speciesism refrain from home demonstrations or
brick-throwing through a slaughterhouse window because they not only fear punitive
legal punishment, they also do not believe the slaughterhouse is violating the (normative)
species boundary of human-over-animal.
But this audience, the general population that consumes animals and believes in
the necessity of government, is an easier sell. The State’s bigger challenge is to find
creative manipulations of power that can inflict fear in a group of activists that actively
critique the neoliberal rhetoric of the Prison-Industrial Complex. Inherent in the anarchist
antispeciesist critique is the foundational belief that governmentality is violent,
oppressive, and coercive(Amster et al. 2009; Best and Nocella 2006; Graeber 2009b).
These activists would throw a brick through a slaughterhouse window because they reject
the notion that industries exists for their best reason, nor do they fear going to prison.
Anarchist antispeciesists do not rely on traditional social organizing that lend themselves
220
to State surveillance, and activists do not necessarily participate in mainstream ISA’s that
provide the State with access to individuals83. The State relied on the AETA as a
performance of power to legalize the interpellation of the bad protestor into the
ecoterrorist. The State needed a way to swiftly repress anarchist antispeciesists that
would locate activists on the periphery to create fractures inward.
Surveillance through Seduction: Sexual Infiltration
Sexual infiltration demonstrates spectacular hybrid of disciplinary and
monarchical punishment that promulgates a security culture within activist circles.
Infiltration is not a new phenomenon. From the Black Panther Party to the American
Indian Movement to the modern-day case of Eric McDavid, government agencies have
always placed infiltrators into activist cells to deceive. Arguably, they acted most
aggressively toward the very organizations they feared most. The U.S. and the U.K.
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on activist surveillance programs, domestically
these tend to be run through the Department of Homeland Security. These include
funding infiltrators that use heteronormative sexuality as a tool to glean information.
With each exposed infiltrator, the sense of invasion intensifies. Activists are meant to be
distrusting, reluctant to work with one another. The Panopticon-inspired modes of
discipline have morphed, or been manipulated, as the guards are no longer in the tower.
83.
Anarchist antispeciesists practice lateral organizing that does not centralize a membership base.
The organizational structures of collectives are also lateral, leaderless, and clandestine. Activists within the
movement have challenged religious, educational, familial, and local institutions that promulgate
speciesism, capitalism, neoliberalism, etc. These activists oftentimes disengage with the institutions and
create alternative forms of community.
221
They are lying in bed posing to be activists.84 The watchtower has moved to the bedroom
with a domestication of the panopticon, a domestication of interpellation. There are six
case examples that are woven throughout the analysis. These include three infiltrators in
the U.K., and three in the U.S. The three U.K. infiltrators include: Mark Kennedy, Jim
Boyling, and Mark Jacobs. The three U.S. cases are “Anna,” Frank Ambrose, and
Brandon Darby. In different ways, these government employees used their physical body
and sexuality to glean information from activists. They helped activists conspire to
commit property damage, participated in years of demonstrating, and one used their role
as a government employee to commit sexual violence against female activists with
impunity. The cases demonstrate the magnitude of this practice and the years invested by
these infiltrators.
Mark Kennedy worked for the Met, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit
for over sixteen years, and asked to be moved to a more risqué unit. He spent between 79 years embedded in climate camps, protests, and convergences. While being involved in
the movement, Kennedy held meetings in over 22 countries. He traveled to convergences
all over the world, and never hesitated to get in on lock downs, banner drops, the
occupation of energy infrastructures, sabotage of facilities, and often served as the
logistics person, driver, and funder of activities. He was paid an annual salary of $75,000
pounds plus expenses. The U.K. estimates they spent about $3,000,000 on the total
84.
This topic and specific case studies have been expanded upon in several formal paper
presentations and activist workshops. These include: Conference presentation presented at the New York
Anarchist Bookfair, New York, NY, April 2011, Conference presentation presented at the Animal
Liberation Forum, University of California Long Beach, CA, April 2011, Public Anthropology Conference
-- (Re)Defining Power: Paradigms of Praxis, American University (Washington, DC), October 2011, and
Graduate Student Sociological Association, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA), October 2011.
222
operation. Once his identity was revealed, women began to speak out that they had
carried out long romantic and sexual relations with Kennedy. This was not a good turn of
events, given that Kennedy had maintained a wife and child in his “non-undercover”
world. He often joked about his “horizontal interrogation techniques,” and his ability to
gain trust from young female activists (Grubbs and Loadenthal 2011a; Loadenthal
2014b).
Jim Boyling, known to activists as Jim Boyling, spent over five years infiltrating
leftist movements in the U.K. He served as the lead organizer in many demonstrations
with Reclaim the Streets. He was even responsible for organizing film and debate nights
that were organized solely for the purpose of spying. The rooms in which the meetings
were held were pre-wired with audio and video surveillance to record all of the
conversations. While he was undercover in the movement, he married an activist and had
two children with her. In order to testify against her, however, he filed for divorce after
his investigation was over.
Mark Jacobs spent over four years infiltrating the Cardiff Anarchist Network,
international anti-globalization networks, No Borders, and climate camps. He was the
first to volunteer for positions that activists viewed as less desirable, often chairing
meetings and recording notes. In several instances, he provided the funding for meetings
and events that others could not front. He maintained a long-term relationship with an
activist while conducting his investigation, and is accused of sleeping with activists while
the relationship was going on. Several activists have spoken out that Jacobs pushed the
Cardiff Anarchist Network to engage in drinking, gossiping, and backstabbing to
encourage splinters in the group.
223
The three domestic cases include a female infiltrator, an activist gone cooperative
witness and informant, and an infiltrator who abused his job and sexually assaulted
women. A woman by the name of “Anna” entered the leftist scene in the early 2000’s and
was initially cast aside85. Anna, then 18 years old, was paid more than $65,000 by the
federal government as an infiltrator. She editorialized her transformation into the animal
and earth liberation movement in an infamous interview that appeared in Elle Magazine
in 2008 (Potter 2008b). The magazine later printed a retraction, though it has more to do
with journalistic accuracy than ethics:
Following consultation with federal agencies, we at Elle wish to retract this
article. Not because of the stream of factual inaccuracies beginning in the second
sentence (there has never been a CrimethInc. convergence in Athens, Georgia),
but because in the current political climate it is irresponsible to even pretend to
give a fair hearing to radical anti-capitalists. Even if Anna’s story is a cut-anddried case of entrapment, we have to understand this as a necessary defense of our
free market freedoms. [Potter 2008b]
The article was filled with inaccurate and sensationalized misrepresentations of the
anarchist antispeciesist movements that Anna spent years infiltrating. Regardless, Anna
was outspoken about the ways in which she relied on her physical appearance to gain the
attention and trust from activists. Anna talked about how she adjusted her appearance to
“blend in” and altered her flirting mechanisms to appease McDavid’s nonheteronormative preferences. She seduced the then 19-year old Eric McDavid, spent long
conversations talking about how they would commit these acts together, and made
several mentions of promising sex. She encouraged him to come with her on a getaway,
85.
As an informant with the FBI, the individual was given the pseudonym “Anna” and is only
referred to as this in legal proceedings, media coverage, and all documents discussing the case. Similarly,
she is refered to as “Anna” throughout this chapter.
224
and they went to a cabin in the woods to prepare incendiaries. Anna took McDavid to the
store, explained what he needed to buy, and took him to a cabin. The cabin, however, was
pre-wired with audio and video recording and owned by the FBI. Shortly after McDavid
said he was going to do what Anna was taught him to, the FBI raided the home and
arrested McDavid. He never actually committed the act, but based on the entrapped
conversations with Anna, McDavid received the maximum sentence of 20 years
conspiracy to damage property by fire and explosive.
The Civil Liberties Defense Center attorneys, Ben Rosenfeld and Mark
Vermeulen,
worked
closely
with
McDavid’s
partner
and
director
of
www.supporteric.org, Jenny Esquivel, have maintained that this was a case of
entrapment. The team expressed concern that the government failed to produce all
documents to conceal the level of coercion Anna exercised. In 2013, they filed a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) request for the documents. The defense struggled to obtain the
documents, but finally received over 1500 pages containing withheld details in the fall of
2014. The documents contained incident after incident of Anna suggesting direct action,
offering to assist, making verbal threats when activists would not explicitly describe a
hypothetical direct action, and sexual innuendos shared between Anna and McDavid. It
became clear that Anna entrapped McDavid and played a central role in instigating the
plans for the direct actions. The government refused to submit 1000 of the pages,
however there was enough evidence to reopen the case. In January 2015, Judge England
accepted an alternate plea to general conspiracy that carried a maximum sentence of five
years (Civil Liberties Defense Center 2015). Because McDavid had already served over
nine years, he was released forthwith. The plea deal required McDavid to waive all
225
claims for civil damages. The case and release of McDavid call into question the ways in
which disciplinary punishment utilize sexual and emotional coercion to entrap activists.
McDavid and his support team have given interviews to discuss the case in the days
following his release. Rather than simply focus on Anna or the ways in which McDavid
was entrapped, the interviews draw attention to the prevalence of this tactic of
punishment (York 2015). McDavid commented, in an interview with Democracy Now!
the number of inmates that shared a similar experience with government infiltration
overwhelmed that he. The CLDC attorneys has emphasized the precedence set by this
case and the need to interrogate the ways in which the State relies on infiltration to
penetrate activist cells.
Frank Abrose and Marie Mason lived in Cincinnati, Ohio with their two
children86. He and his wife, Marie Mason, had been involved in local environmental and
animal liberation demonstrations and teach-ins. They seemed compatible in their quest
for justice and community engagement. That is, however, until the helicopters swarmed
their hometown and dozens of government vehicles came barreling down the street.
Frank Ambrose, an activist involved in several direct actions with the Earth Liberation
Front, was approached by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and offered a
plea deal if he would gather evidence on his wife, Marie. Ambrose agreed and began
recording conversations with his wife, and encouraging her to engage in actions with
him. After months of cooperation with the DHS, the government had a strong case
86.
In 2014, Marie Mason’s support commit published a statement on www.supportmariemason.org
announcing that Marie would like to transition to the male sex. Moving forward, the article requests people
use the preferred name, Marius Jacob Mason, and male pronouns. To remain consistent with legal
documents and newsreporting, I will only use the name, “Marie” and female pronouns for all events prior
to July 7, 2014, and the name Marius from then after (Free Marius Jacob Mason n.d.).
226
against Mason to convict her of the 1999 crimes at the University of Michigan. Mason
was arrested in 2008. The day Mason’s home was raided by the DHS, Ambrose filed for
divorce so that he could testify against Mason in court. There are protections that protect
spouses from having to testify against their significant other in a federal grand jury.
Mason was threatened with a life sentence in prison unless she plead guilty to charges of
arson at a Michigan State University lab and confessed to 12 other acts of property
damage. She received the maximum sentence requested by the prosecution, and two
additional years from the added “terrorism enhancement,” a total prison sentence of 22
years. Mason’s sentence is the harshest prison sentence of anyone convicted of
environmental sabotage to date (Support Marius Mason n.d.).
The last case demonstrates another way this power is utilized. The activists
discussed thus far illustrate how the State appointed individuals as infiltrations or
cooperative witnesses that utilized emotional and sexual coercion to glean information.
This case, however, illustrates how government employees utilize their role as a
government employee to legally assault activists while infiltrating leftist movements.
Brandon Darby had been active in leftist circles for three years when charges of sexual
assault began to circulate. In effort to abstain from the prison-industrial complex, activists
encouraged Darby to engage in accountability processes87. These are used to help
communities deal with sexual assault, and create a sense of accountability to the
individual and the community. Darby, however, refused. When his identity was revealed,
87.
Anarchist organizers have relied on accountability processes as a way to address abusive and
disruptive behavior within social movements to circumvent the coercive and hierarchical processes of legal
action. Rather than rely on the State to discipline activists, accountability processes facilitate collectivity by
holding individuals accountable to one another. These processes also maintain autonomy by not subjecting
one another to State discipline.
227
women began to speak out about the assaults they endured. The accusations were public
and documented thoroughly. Darby was never charged with assault, and further never
held to any accountability for how he abused his power as a government hired infiltrator.
By having others pose as activists and permeate radical circles for years, often using their
bodies to sexually engage activists, these infiltrators perform disciplinary punishment
reliant on monarchical power. Further, the State relies on the construct of ecoterrorism to
excuse these exposed cases of sexual violence. It is within the rhetoric of terrorism that
the State argues it justifiably engages in otherwise socially unacceptable behavior to
protect agri-vivisection industries (and all they claim to provide) from terrorism. The
State’s violence is not with physical force or weapon, but rather it is with hiring
individuals to sexually exploit activists and manipulate the trust in social organizing.
Ripples of Distrust in the Field
The State relies on sexual infiltration to not only gain access to activists through
insidious violations of privacy, but to also fracture activists from one another through the
performative functions of disciplinary punishment. Rather than solely relying on the
AETA and the prison-industrial complex as a mechanism of violence, the presence of
infiltrators in activist circles causes a more insidious internalization of fear. These
mechanisms of violence are deemed acceptable through the retaliatory interpellation of
anarchist antispeciesists as ecoterrorists. The growing sense of distrust amongst activists,
particularly those engaging in romantic relationships, is constantly redefining security
culture. While attending the Resistance Ecology conference in Portland, Oregon, I
approached a well-known activist that had just given a workshop. I had to leave the panel
several times because my then two year old was jumping around and woke up my
228
sleeping infant. I came back in the room to introduce myself. As we were talking, my
toddler began to scream she wanted to leave. Without thinking, I said I had to leave, but
asked for his phone number. The conversation quickly turned uncomfortable and he
looked at me very confused. His pause caused an immediate reflection on my part, where
I realized I had just made a rookie mistake. He responded, “I’m sure we can find ways to
get in touch… I am online”. My partner was with me while we were having the
conversation, and he remarked his own discomfort by my comment.
Throughout the conference, I had several markers that set me aside as different.
Upon arrival, I forgot to take off my wedding band that contains several [handed down]
diamonds. After receiving two elongated stares of disgust at my hand, I quickly took off
the ring and put it in my pocket. I was also the only woman breastfeeding in two of the
panels. My presence throughout my fieldwork invited raised eyebrows and distrust, and
for the authenticity of my data, I oftentimes did not disclose that I was doing research
unless someone asked me. The ironic sense of paranoia during public gatherings that
claim to challenge the surveillance State made it increasingly difficult to maneuver the
boundary between academic and activist.
Sexual infiltration, as a performance of disciplinary punishment, has done more
than just create a sense of distrust for activists in romantic relationships. It has also
established the ways in which the State uses surveillance in intimate circles that are nonromantic.
The
largest
federal
investigation
of
environmental
and
animal
activists, Operation Backfire, was a collaborative criminal investigation led by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that brought together seven State investigations
including high profile arsons in the Pacific Northwest. Following multi-departmental
229
investigations dating back as far as 1996, on 20 December 2005, nationally coordinated
police raids captured seven individuals residing in four US states. The individuals were
charged through a 65-count indictment (Immergut et al. 2007) that included the charges
of arson, attempted arson, conspiracy to commit arson and using a destructive device
during the commission of a violent crime. The charging document alleges that the eleven
defendants were responsible for 17 attacks, carried out in five states over a period
stretching nearly a decade. The use of a conspiracy framework, and the additional
“Terrorism Enhancements” which add time to a defendants’ sentence served to pressure
some individuals into cooperating with State prosecutors in the hopes of differentiating
themselves from the larger group. In constructing the charging documents and
recommended sentences, the State aimed to overcharge defendants to force compliance
and the production of cooperating witnesses.
To this end, facing multi-decade jail
sentences, six of the eleven defendants acted as “confidential sources” in service of the
prosecution. Four of the non-cooperating defendants—Nathan Block, Daniel McGowan,
Jonathan Paul, Joyanna Zacher—negotiated plea bargains with the prosecution wherein
they pled guilty but were not required to provide information on other defendants. One
defendant, Briana Waters, entered a plea of “not guilty” but was convicted at trial. A
twelfth individual said to be a senior member of the group, William Rodgers (known as
“Avalon”) took his own life while in police custody prior to entering a plea.
Operation Backfire helped the State set a precedent within the prosecution of
ALF/ELF activists though the use of the conspiracy framework wherein a grouping of
individuals are collectively charged with a series of crimes they may or may not had
individual participation in. While charging documents do specify what individuals played
230
a role in each attack, the conspiracy framework discursively and legalistically links the
group together, pressuring those who are less centrally involved to provide evidence
against those active individuals in an attempt to mitigate sentencing. In addition, the
Operation provided some information concerning the State’s use of domestic surveillance
and intelligence, previously assumed to be reserved for the collection of foreign
intelligence. During the trial of Daniel McGowan, the State uncharacteristically offered
the defendant an unexpected plea bargain when it the defense demanded the prosecution
produce documentation explaining the source of signals intelligence. While no official
documentation had been made public, it is presumed that the National Security Agency
(NSA), a single intelligence agency explicitly barred from being used against American
citizens, gathered the information being used against McGowan. The McGowan
controversy occurred alongside public outrage over President George W. Bush’s
admission that warrantless wiretapping and NSA surveillance had been used in a number
of domestic cases. The assumption is that during this period of heightened criticism on
Bush and his use of the NSA, that McGowan’s prosecutors were pressured into offering a
plea bargain rather than admit in open court that the agency had provided evidence to the
prosecution. Finally, the Operation demonstrated for the FBI the effectiveness of multidepartmental taskforce-styled investigation. Operation Backfire involved the participation
of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms, and Explosives (BATF), the FBI, the
Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the US Forest Service, Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), as well as police departments from Eugene, OR, the Oregon state
police, the University of Washington police, and the Lane County Sheriff’s Office of
Western Oregon. The cooperation and overlapping State agencies interpellated the
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activists as ecoterrorists through the performative conflation of an “us” versus “them,”
that warranted local, state, and federal agencies to work together and utilize surveillance
mechanisms reserved for international terrorists.
The use of sexuality to infiltrate social movements and the ability to turn activists
into cooperative witnesses through the threat of excessive prison sentences have created
ripples of distrust amongst activists. With the increased technopower available to activist
challenging the State there are increased ways for the State to exercise power through
political repression. The Corporate-State Industrial Complex relies on ISA’s to naturalize
the State’s monopoly of violence through speciesism and neoliberal capitalism. The State
also has coercive mechanisms of punishment like the prison system to demarcate dissent
as terrorism rather than responsible patriotism. Laws such as the AETA are a legal
manifestation of the social contract between the State and agri-vivisection industries that
have interpellate anarchist antispeciesists into ecoterrorists. But, anarchist antispeciesists
have been critiquing the way capitalism and nepotism dictate laws for centuries
(Proudhon 1840; Kropotkin 1897; Goldman 1911; Bonanno 1987). Activists have been
tragically aware of the ways in which the State manipulates activists in order to
undermine their efforts in the Black Power movement, the American Indian Movement,
and anti-nuclear movement, to name a few (Davis 1983; Churchill and Wall 1990; Della
Porta 1995; Della Porta and Fillieule 2004; Churchill and Vander Wall 2002; Price 2004;
Morris 2010; Davis 2013). But the recent release of McDavid is a jarring reminder that
legal entrapment through government infiltration continues to be used in activist cases.
However the use of digital media requires a level of social encryption that has not
available historically. Security culture proliferates leftist circles and is predicated on the
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omnipresence of technology. While attending the Earth First! Rendezvous in 2014, my
partner and I went through a checklist of security measures before entering the forest for
the convergence. We left our wallets at home, did not bring any photo identification, took
all political insignia out of the car that we had been traveling with, and only brought one
cell phone. When we arrived to the campground, we left the cell phone locked in the
glove box. I resisted the urge to take pictures of the physical surroundings, but also could
not stop to take written notes. Whenever we met someone new, they were introduced by
their pseudonyms such as Raven and Twinkle. Similar to my experiences at the
Resistance Ecology conference, I censored each interaction to remain vague and
disinterested in asking questions.
The first workshop I attended at the Rendezvous was on security culture itself.
Two attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) presented on the legal protections
of activists in the U.S. Seated in a loose circle between the tall trees, scattered blankets,
and makeshift chairs, the activists participated in a series of role-playing exercises. Phone
and email encryption, forcible removal from a blockade, and stop-and-searches in your
vehicle were among some of the exercises that I participated in. There is a palpable
climate of suspicion in these convergences that make it difficult to forge honest, new
connections with individuals. Someone attending the Earth First! Rendezvous brought up
the use of cell phones in recording conversations and taking photographs, and insisted
that all technology be placed in a locked box when activists get together. My role as an
anthropologist, in many ways, may have been seen as threatening to the security of the
culture. It created a moral and practical dilemma while gathering data in the “field” as I
wanted to maintain credibility as an activist and protect the identities of those I worked
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with, yet I was also attending with the intention to extract ethnographic notes for
research.
Activists are constantly faced with the challenge of expanding their connections
but not appearing predatory, trusting in their peers but minimizing their vulnerability, and
ultimately advocating collectivity despite engaging in autonomous clandestine direct
action. The volley of punishments between the State and anarchist antispeciesists attempt
to discipline one another through performative power. The State continues to utilize a
hybridity of disciplinary and monarchical punishment to repress activists, however
technology has provided a new terrain for dissent. Anarchist antispeciesists are able to
fracture infiltrators through social media campaigns that expose suspected individuals.
Activists rely on social media to expose cooperative witnesses, suspected infiltrators, and
to train one another in ways to resist State surveillance. There are entire websites
dedicated to exposing government infiltrators, cooperative witnesses, and individuals’
accused of committing sexual violence88. Activists have formed prisoner support
networks and above ground networks that challenge the State’s monopoly of violence
through civil lawsuits, FOIA requests, and supporting legal defense funds for accused
activists. Activists can expose the State’s use of monarchical punishment through social
media in ways that challenge even the most apathetic individual’s view on speciesism.
Activists can educate one another, including justice-focused legal centers such as CLDC,
88.
Activists have created webpages devoted to exposing surveillance in the sustained security
culture in the AELM. These sites include, but are not limited to, the Informant Tracking on
www.earthfirstjournal.org, the Movement Snitches page on
https://animalliberationpressoffice.org/NAALPO/snitches/, Internet Security guidelines on
https://animalliberationpressoffice.org/NAALPO/security/, SnitchWire on http://snitchwire.blogspot.com/,
Snitch Alert on Tumblr https://www.tumblr.com/search/snitch%20alert, and Snitch Watch on
https://snitchwatch.wordpress.com/. These websites provide names, background, and warnings for activists.
The websites also provide practical skills to protect against surveillance (both digital and physical).
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about encryption to resist wiretapping, grand jury indictments, search warrants, and
security culture itself. These workshops do not even require a physical space that may
increase individual vulnerabilities, but rather can exist solely online on encrypted sites.
Within this constant exchange of power between activists and the State, anarchist
antispeciesists are particularly effective in their performance of monarchical power to
undermine speciesism and neoliberal capitalism.
Through social media forums, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram,
activists engage in talkback. I became an active participant in these online forums,
particularly in the days before and after large demonstrations. Activists are able to
posture, knowing these mediums are heavily surveilled by the State, and undermine the
State’s use of disciplinary and monarchical punishment. In the preceding chapters, I
explored the commonly used hashtags on Twitter, the playful Facebook posts, the
powerful declarations accompanying photographs on Instagram, and the ways in which
this rearticulates power. Within such a tightly protected interpersonal security culture, the
internet became an integral site for this study. It became increasingly difficult to engage
in personal conversations during demonstrations or convergences because of a sense of
suspicion and the personal challenges of conducting research as the mother of small
children. The use of CDA, in combination with utilizing narrative as a tool for analysis,
provided a useful lens to examine the ways in which individuals utilize the internet to
(re)create their identities as a rearticulation of power. The internet provides a platform for
social actors to express their politic veiled by anonymity. Activists are able to veil their
identity in a communiqué following a direct action, whereas other activists rely on the
public nature of their social media accounts to maintain status and credibility within the
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movement. Activists face the punitive powers of the State for advocating anarchist and
antispeciesist political leanings, whereas the State relies on anonymity and deception to
gain authenticity and credibility as a provocateur in anarchist and antispeciesist circles.
This dialectic of visibility and anonymity is one of the marked tensions between activists,
oftentimes debated through public forums at convergences and academic conferences.
The performance of monarchical and disciplinary punishment, particularly
through interpellating anarchist antispeciesists as ecoterrorists, represents a powerful
sentiment; direct action as disidentification successfully challenges fundamental
ideologies that undermine State power. Although activists remain fearful of targeted
legislation such as the AETA, police violence, and surveillance, activists are also aware
of the ways in which direct action anarchist antispeciesists have been successful. These
campaigns continue to claim victory against the State-Corporate Industrial Complex
through illegal direct action that forces the State to violate its performance of a fair and
just juridical system. These activists are targeted because they pose successful challenges
to both State-sponsored capitalism and the monopoly of violence. The interpellation of
disidentification as ecoterrorism suggests there is something that the State feels
particularly threatened by. The rhetorical and revolutionary potential of direct action pose
a threat to the industries most profitable for the federal government (Lovitz 2010; Potter
2011; Loadenthal 2014a). The State’s social contract with agri-vivisection to protect
these capitalist entities is challenged with each arson, laboratory raid, and each time the
letters A.L.F. are spray painted across the walls of a slaughterhouse.
The State is expected to perform the disciplinary functions of a punitive justice
system that guarantees each citizen a trial in which they are innocent until proven guilty.
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The State must also perform the neoliberal functions of disciplinary punishment in order
to maintain the façade of freedom of speech and assembly. However, the State must also
uphold its contract with the targeted agri-vivisection industries. Thus, the State engages
in illegal surveillance of activists, hires individuals to entrap activists, and passes targeted
legislation that creates disproportionate sentencing to place ecoterrorists in CMU prisons
with Al Qaeda operatives (Center for Constitutional Rights 2012). These tactics
demonstrate that the State still does utilize monarchical punishment to deny citizens the
right to free speech and assembly. However, the tactics of monarchical punishment used
by the State beg several moral questions. Is sexual infiltration a form of rape,
acknowledging that activists engaged in sexual relations based on deception? Should
government infiltrators that intentionally deceived activists and engaged in sexual
relations be held accountable? If an activist who engaged in sexual relations with a
government infiltrator became pregnant, is the State then liable for child support? Alas,
none of these manipulations of State power are particularly noteworthy given the history
of surveillance and violence against activists. What is noteworthy, however, is the ways
in which anarchist antispeciesists utilize tactics that emulate this performance of
disciplinary and monarchical punishment to further disidentify with the interpellation of
activism as ecoterrorism.
Conclusion: Dialectical disidentification and Resisting ‘ecoterrorist’
Anarchist antispeciesists engage with State power through a rhetorical dialectic of
performing repression and punishment as disidentification. On the one hand, direct
actions represent a disregard for coercive State capitalism; it is a refusal to submit to this
ideology. They act without fear of the legal system. They denounce hierarchy and
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promote collectivity. Holistic politics that formulate into total liberation. Walter Bond, in
his essay titled, “I am the Lone Wolf,” Bond specifically addresses the Green Scare.
Bond argues that the concept of “Green Scare” is a moniker that is used to silence
activists. And that to even call it the “green scare” gives it power. From the walls of his
prison cell, Bond proclaims that activists should act collectively and without fear, they
should disidentify with the State’s interpellation into ecoterrorists. Bond’s perspective,
however, struggles with this disidentification several essays later when he laments that he
acted without fear a trusted his brother and told him about the arsons in Colorado and
Utah. Bond continues to sign his essays with the pseudonym The Lone Wolf and
advocates the importance in acting alone. Political prisoners simultaneously claim there is
power in collectivity and that the reactionary punishment of the State is ineffective, while
also lamenting that their peers deceived them. Thus, activists outside of the PrisonIndustrial Complex rely on performance to posture a cohesive response. The online
presence of prison support websites and solidarity actions demonstrate that activists have
not internalized the fear of the State, or become subjected to the interpellation into
ecoterrorists. In responses that do acknowledge the interpellation as performed through
punishment by the State that manifests as political repression, activists highlight the
continuous acts of direct action in spite, or as a refusal to submit. Foucault’s theory of
power and punishment, as a framework in which the interpellation of disidentification is
visible, provides a useful way to understand how the spectacle of direct action is
retaliates against the state through punishment by the sword.
Direct action, particularly illegal direct action, effectively challenges the State’s
monopoly of violence through performances that queer the retaliatory interpellation of
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disidentification. Defacing and destruction of property. Liberation of animals from
vivisection labs. It is a different type of monarchical punishment that interrupts
interpellation. This type of monarchical punishment used by anarchist antispeciesists
blends disciplinary power because it relies on the creation of a different kind of
panopticon, one that intends to create a corporate fear through disidentification. This type
of disidentification challenges the perceived power of the State and reminds the public
the importance of demolishing the internalized watchtower. Agri-vivisection industries
question, or disidentify with, whether they are actually protected by the State, through the
neoliberal capitalist social contract, from the ecoterrorist. The performative protests with
The Bunny Alliance that engaged the angry neighbors of vivisectors in detailed
descriptions of experimentation created disidentifactory thoughts that called into question
what constitutes “science.” Anarchist antispeciesists create a form of disidentification
through direct action, and its performative spectacle of discipline, that challenge the
State’s reliance on good versus bad subjects. The spectacles call into question deeply
held beliefs about species, capital, and authority while proposing an alternative political
imaginary in which agri-vivisection industries should be fearful. Rather than allow the
State to monopolize monarchical punishment, anarchist antispeciesists create these
performative spectacles of direct action through a symbolic beheading of capitalism.
Direct action as a form of disidentification recapitulates neoliberal capitalism and
speciesism through the spectacle created by the performance of monarchical punishment
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CHAPTER SEVEN
CONCLUSION
By the time the fire burned itself out the next morning, all that remained was a 12foot-long banner that read: "If you build it, we will burn it." [Schorn 2005]
Welcome to the struggle of all species to be free. We are the burning rage of this
dying planet…The war of greed ravages the earth and species die out every day.
ELF works to speed up the collapse of industry, to scare the rich, and to
undermine the foundations of the state…We show the enemy that we are serious
about defending what is sacred. Together we have teeth and claws to match our
dreams. Our greatest weapons are imagination and the ability to strike when least
expected….1000’s of bulldozers, powerlines, computer systems, buildings and
valuable equipment have been composted. Many ELF actions have been censored
to present our bravery from inciting others to take action. We take inspiration
from Luddites, Levelers, Diggers, the Autonome squatter movement, the ALF, the
Zapatistas, and the little people- those mischievous elves of lore. Authorities can’t
see us because they don’t believe in elves. We are practically invisible. We have
no command structure, no spokespersons, no office, just many small groups
working separately, seeking vulnerable targets and practicing our craft. Many
elves are moving to the Pacific Northwest and other sacred areas. Some elves will
leave surprises as they go. Find your family! And let’s dance as we make ruins of
the corporate money system… [Earth Liberation Front 1997]
Anarchist antispeciesists engage in physical and digital direct action to challenge the
State’s interpellation of good versus bad subjectification through spectacular
performances that create disidentifactory screens. The dialectic between physical and
digital activist spaces, the use of terministic screens, the role of the stage, and the
performative functions of protest were negotiated through anthropological discourses of
power, resistance, and performativity. The study was structured to address a series of
research questions that guided the data collection and analysis. The project had both
political and personal ramifications that impacted my dual roles as an academic and as an
activist. I was called to task on several occasions to clarify my political priorities after
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activists found out I was also gathering academic research. Initially, I had intended on
conducting in-depth interviews with activists throughout the data collection period. After
receiving a few negative responses from activists when I requested an interview, and in
the face of a growing fear of State surveillance, I decided to revisit the notion of
interviewing. Through a flexible, mixed-methodological approach, I conducted an 18month participant-observation ethnographic study that incorporated digital media as text.
The research was guided by a central research question: How is leftist resistance
strategized and actualized within the ideological, social and economic [super-] structures
of the State and neoliberal capitalism, and how does such a positioning impact effective
activism from the left? To address the questions, I integrated the data gleaned from both
physical participation and digital engagement in activist spaces.
Similar to how the data collection led to a reexamination of my selected methods,
the process of aggregating data led me to the realm of performance studies. I had
originally relied solely on queer theory as a way to articulate the disidentification
facilitated through direct action, but later found that queer theory also provided a useful
lens to examine the performative function of political action that rearticulates and
reimagines the revolutionary potential of anarchist antispeciesist direct action. In Chapter
Three: Ethnography, I collated a series of significant experiences during the data
collection period that set up the subsequent data analysis chapters. Though the analysis
primarily focused on ethnographic events, activists’ use of digital media to organize and
publicize political action, to engage in national and international networking with
activists, and disseminate information to a wide audience necessitates the multi-sited
analysis used throughout this study. The use of CDA and a queer linguistic approach
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facilitated the focus on how power is negotiated through language, and how ultimately;
the oppressed can use language in social justice aims. Activists engage with digital media
to strategize and actualize anti-authoritarian and antispeciesist critiques as a form of
disidentification because it facilitates an international, anonymous stage to reimagine the
ideological and economic [super-] structures of the State. When activists converge in
public spaces to organize or engage in political theater, the social labor of finessing new
members or interrogating the authenticity of one another has already been filtered
through the screen of digital media. There were many instances in which activists in a
public space approached me and disclosed they recognized me from my presence on
digital media. In a particularly telling moment, a stranger approached me at the grocery
store in Washington, D.C. and asked how a particular activist was doing. Although the
space was not necessarily marked as political, the stranger recognized me and felt a sense
of connectedness to me through digital media, even though we had never met. The
intricacies of voice during the performances of direct action demonstrated a constant
renegotiation of aggressive language, playful tones, public relations, and educator. CDA
provided a useful framework to incorporate these sometimes contradictory voices that
challenged structures of power (speciesism and neoliberal capitalism).
The ideological, social and economic [super-] structures of the State detailed in
Chapter Four: Neoliberal Capitalism and Constructing the Ecoterrorist map the
interconnected institutions of power facilitated by neoliberal capitalism and speciesism.
The political economy of the State functions as an interconnected nexus of legal,
political, corporate and medical industries that ultimately reify and extend dimensions of
sovereignty. The concept of corporate sovereignty illustrates the ways in which the
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ideologies of speciesism, capitalism, and neoliberalism naturalize political repression
through the passage of industry-vanguard legislation such as the AETA. These
legislations and subsequent legal trials of activists serve a performative function as
disciplinary punishment, relying on the rhetoric of fear to fragment activists from one
another. The conditions in which anarchist antispeciesists engage in confrontational
direct action are extrapolated within the structures of neoliberal capitalism and
speciesism themselves. As discussed in Chapter Four: Neoliberal Capitalism and
Constructing the Ecoterrorist, anarchist antispeciesists face disproportionate financial
penalties, prison sentences, and mechanisms of surveillance to silence dissent. These
mechanisms of repression have drawn the attention of the National Lawyers Guild, the
Civil Liberties Defense Center, and other legal collectives aimed at protecting the First
Amendment.
The political economic terrain of neoliberal capitalism described in Chapter Four
called into questions the processes of interpellation that construct protest as terrorism.
Specifically, the construction of the ecoterrorist relies on a “hailing to” and acceptance of
speciesism and neoliberal capitalism. The examination of this construction contextualized
the subsequent chapters that focused on the dialectical relationship between anarchist
antispeciesist direct action and State repression. The analysis of Chapter Five: Direct
Action as Spectacle, provided a close examination of how the performance of direct
action creates a spectacular screens in which activists, targets, and onlookers can
disidentify with interpellation. Each public convergence I attended featured at least one
panel discussion addressing technology and surveillance. Although activists utilize digital
media to advance their aims of radical social change, activists are also astutely aware of
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how these technologies are being used to fragment them from one another. There is a
growing literature on the ways in which digital media is revolutionizing social
movements, both in creating advancements and debilitating challenges. For example, the
Earth First! Rendezvous featured panel discussions about surveillance also provided
tactical trainings in cryptography, hacking/hacktivism, and security practices regarding
the use of cellular phone. The trainings serve a performative function, as they undermine
the State’s monopoly of violence and use of surveillance through a refusal to submit to
the paradigm of good protestor. Activists are able to effectively challenge the State
through performances through a disidentification that allows them to deny the
asymmetric distribution of power. For example, activists establish temporary spaces that
suspend the overwhelming violence perpetrated against other species and demand the
(unfathomable) recapitulation of neoliberal capitalism and speciesism. Direct action
engages with the political imaginary through creative political theater facilitate
disidentifactory thoughts through comical, humorous, satirical, and emotional
performances that make the impossible seem possible.
The research illustrated, interestingly, that the interplay between the State and
anarchist antispeciesists did not adhere to the initial theoretical framework I had
proposed. Preliminary research and personal experience had pointed to the State utilizing
the technopower of surveillance through Foucault’s concept of disciplinary punishment to
silence dissent by interpellating the bad protestors into ecoterrorists. As Chapter Six:
Dialectical Discipline and Performative Power demonstrated, although the State does rely
on this traditionally theorized mechanism of power, and the State does interpellate the
bad protestor into ecoterrorists, the State also engages in very public displays of
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grotesque violence through sexual infiltration and a punitive prison system that exercises
de facto sovereignty. This hybridity of State power is used to punish activists for
engaging in antiauthoritarian and antispeciesist direct action. But upon close analysis of
this volley between direct action and political repression, it became clear that activists
were relying on direct action as monarchical power. Critical scholars have already begun
to examine the ways in which the State actively represses social movements. This study,
however, provided a unique lens to examine the ways in which direct action activists are
actively resisting the hybrid use of disciplinary and monarchical punishment. Chapter
Six: Dialectical Discipline and Performative Power examined the ways in which
confrontational, playful, and satirical performances not only create disidentifactory
thoughts with onlookers, but the performances also queer the State’s monopoly of
violence through monarchical punishment. The State focuses on how they can interpellate
the bad protestor into the ecoterrorist; meanwhile anarchist antispeciesists are
rearticulating the very meaning of terrorism through spectacular protest. Rather than
accept the repressive construct of ecoterrorist, anarchist antispeciesists encourage brick
throwing, refuse to grovel during sentencing hearings, and publicly support political
prisoners that are legally labeled ecoterrorists.
The integration of performance studies made space for the creatively crafted
political theater that publicly punishes the State, interrupting the attempt to interpellate
anarchist antispeciesists as ecoterrorists. Direct action, from its inception to its
implementation to the rhetorically crafted communiqué disseminated, relies on a
symbolic appropriation of the guillotine. As the flames radiate off the slaughterhouse, as
the beagles are carried over the laboratory fence, and as the undercover footage of
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vivisection is displayed on the digital screen, speciesism hangs from the gallows and is
severed from the paradigm of good versus bad. The paradigm itself is queered, forcing
the audience to disidentify with omnipotent power of the State when confronted with
activists that refuse to submit, the altruistic values of science when face-to-face with
photos of maimed beagles, and ultimately, the rhetoric of terrorism. The potentiality for
revolution, then, feels palpable to anarchist antispeciesists. Through disidentification,
activists create alternative screens that politically reimagine the currently commodified
relationship between human animals and ecologies. This disidentification, facilitated by
the performance of direct action, talks back to the State’s reliance on interpellation in
powerful ways.
The physical and digital direct actions are predicated on the lingering threat that
they will be back. Although the actions only temporarily sever these structures of power
and may not create sustained disidentification, the actions create a lasting financial
impact. Further, the ability to engage in political theater in these temporary spaces serves
to solidify the resolve of activists that are otherwise overwhelmed by the loss of otherthan-human animal life and State power. Neoliberalism, according to Graeber, has
become part of the fictional narrative of U.S. capitalism and globalization. Marx would
call is the opiate of the masses, comparable to religion. Alas, it is during the
proclamations that demonstrators disidentify with the alienation, the powerlessness, the
veiled accountability, and overt frustrations felt by those subject to neoliberal capitalism.
The demonstration purposefully exaggerates the rhetoric of neoliberalism: rationality,
individual agency, free enterprise, market driven capitalism, and individual responsibility
to force targets, onlookers, and participants to question the paradigms in which they are
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interpellated. In turn, those observing, participating, and targeted are left counting the
ways these paradigms are ludicrous. Thus, the demonstration, as a spectacle, successfully
creates an alternative screen in which audiences can disidentify to critique the ways in
which globalization and capitalism serve to naturalize the hegemonic corporatization
within the neoliberal moment.
Voice becomes the central tool in which the demonstrators utilize exaggeration.
Similar modes of subversion, political street theater and drag, utilize the voice in
combination with physical bodily performance. The performance of exaggeration does
not solely rely on what is said, but also how it is said and how their bodies are presented.
Dressed in similar clothes as the observers, the demonstrators can perform respectability
through conforming to the societal norms of protest. Specifically during home
demonstrators in densely populated areas, activists may forego the use of black bloc and
dress as if they joined the demonstration on their way to brunch. As an anarchist
principle, these collectives are not organized through hierarchical leadership. However,
there are pragmatic horizontal organizing practices used to ensure someone participating
in the political action will serve as a liaison to both the public and law enforcement. Their
performance of exaggerated neoliberalism is not only embodied in chants and
proclamations, it is further articulated through dress, communication styles, posture, and
bodily presentation.
This analysis contributes to social movement theory within anthropology, and
specifically to the growing discourse surrounding neoliberalism. Through a queer
linguistic approach to CDA, textual analysis, and ethnographic observation, it became
clear these are not merely street theater of public shaming, but rather they directly
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challenge the restructuring of global capitalism within the contemporary neoliberal
moment. These demonstrations utilize the strategic rhetoric of exaggeration and satire as
a mode of resistance to facilitate disidentification. The paradigms in which the State
relies on to interpellate audience members are exaggerated to the extent that it is both
laughable and tragic. Through the viewing of these paradigms as laughable and tragic,
audience members begin to question their complicity with them. The AELM is not
unique in its use of political theater to exaggerate systems of oppression, as evidenced in
the history of drag performance in the gay liberation and queer liberation movements.
Despite the historical trajectory of its utility, the use of play and performance in the
AELM is understudied within anthropology. Hierarchical animal rights organizations
such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are given academic
credence through feminist critiques that emphasize the racist, sexist, and heteronormative
nature of PETA’s street performances. But collectives such as SHAC and DARTT
remain outside the scope of anthropological discourses on social protest. Graeber posits
that the political imaginary is constrained to only think within the current modes of
existence presented: capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization, and authoritarianism.
Because anarchist antispeciesist direct action relies on a political imaginary beyond the
existence of current modes of social relations, the concept of play serves as an essential
tool to analyze their rhetorical significance.
Throughout Chapter Five: Direct Action as Spectacle and Chapter Six: Dialectical
Discipline and Performative Power, the ethnographic texts demonstrated the significant
rhetorical functions of performing monarchical punishment against the State. From the
unapologetic rhetoric of Walter Bond during the sentencing hearings following his arsons
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claimed by the ALF to the free stylin’ delivered on the lawn on Marineland, anarchist
antispeciesists utilize monarchical punishment to challenge the State. There is a growing
prevalence of anarchists that have leaked classified government and corporate documents
through hacktivism, inspiring anarchist antispeciesists to gravitate toward the larger
anarchist movement. The anarchist movement in the U.S. has a long-established history
of direct action against the State, whereas the antispeciesist movement became more
visible in the late 1970’s. The use of direct action remains marginalized in the
overarching animal advocacy movement, whereas direct action is a necessary component
to anarchist organizing. In this way, the identity as “anarchist” serves an important
rhetorical function when attempting to punish the State through direct action. The State
has a far more palpable fear of the anarchist movement than the antispeciesist movement,
in part because it is so marginalized.
There is gap within social movement literature that overlooks the theoretical
contributions of direct action activists that identify as antispeciesists. The erasure of these
activists has meant the absence of dissenting voices that effectively challenge State
authority. Perhaps it is because of the effectiveness of these strategies that they lay
outside the neoliberal university that benefits from capitalism and speciesism. This
project is part of a larger intellectual political effort to incorporate anarchist antispeciesist
direct action into anthropological discourses on resistance. Admittedly, I began this
project with the expectation to attend frustratingly problematic demonstrations that
merely reinscribed neoliberal individualism in naming, shaming, and blaming. My own
scope of analysis was hindered, initially, through these assumptions and they almost kept
me from attending at all. Following the insistence of Graeber, I challenged myself to
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think outside of existing modes of protest and tap into the political imaginary. The
political imaginary, in this case, involved subjecting myself to potential arrest and public
embarrassment. In the populated areas near my own home, I stood with these activists
and chanted, proclaimed, and engaged on-lookers. I dressed in casual clothing, but
sported a pro-vegan shirt and button on my messenger bag. I allowed myself to be
videotaped and was photographed by corporate-hired private investigators throughout the
day. Although all of the participants’ names are anonymized within this analysis, mine
remains publicly in solidarity within academic circles.
Future research should continue to include direct action, regardless of legality,
within the spectrum of both strategies and tactics analyzed. The act of analyzing direct
action does not imply approval or complicity of the actions, though it should be
encouraged to maintain transparency. There has been a historical devaluation of
qualitative research that not only acknowledged the researcher’s subjectivities, but also
explicitly embraced them. Reflexivity is a powerful methodological approach that
contextualizes the unique contributions of the researcher. The veiled subjectivities that
become masked in the rhetoric of objectivity lead to speculation and distrust between
research participants and the researcher. The violent history of vulnerable populations
being exploited in the name of scientific progress and academic research serve as
constant reminders that research has political and ideological ramifications that extend far
beyond the specific study. Future research should interrogate the methodological
approaches to ethnographic research with activists that are both transparent and
empowering. Critical scholarship should be held accountable to advance aims of social
justice through praxis-based research. Specific to this project, future research should
250
include academics that do publicly endorse confrontational direct action as an effective
form of resistance. Reflexivity, in this case, provides a methodological explanation to
address the assumptions and interpellated paradigms brought to the table by the
researcher. The researcher can then interrogate their transformation or disidentifcatory
thoughts, allowing a more transparent engagement with the discourse.
In the final moths of this project, Marineland Animal Defense issued a statement
that the campaign was defunct effective immediately (Marineland Animal Defense n.d.).
The announcement specifically referenced the financial and social pressures that have
been exacerbated by Marineland’s use of SLAPP suits. The marine amusement park has
filed eight lawsuits over the last three years, tying the activists’ efforts up with legal
proceedings and the performative disciplining of bureaucracy. Future research should
interrogate the rhetorical significance of this decision from MAD, and the ways in which
future organizing takes place against the marine amusement park. The activists will also
utilize the public stage of digital media to further articulate their decision and the
functions of anti-captivity activism in the Niagara Falls, Canada area.
The focus in this study on performativity provided a particularly useful frame to
engage with direct action activism. The combination of performance studies and
linguistic analysis, specifically critical discourse analysis, facilitated an inductive analysis
that incorporated local modes of communication to uncover the ways in which anarchist
antispeciesists engage in direct action. The transdisciplinary approach integrated
rhetorical theories within communication, performance studies, and anthropological
discourses to examine the symbolic use of political theater as a mode of protest. Future
research should foster an integrative approach that does not rely on the constructed
251
boundaries of academic disciplines. Where one discipline falls short, another discipline
may provide a complementary lens to expand the analysis. Specifically, the study of
direct action facilitates a transdisciplinary framework that values symbolic, satirical,
humorous, and aggressive rhetoric that lies at the intersections of various social
movements. Activists engage in coalitional politics and have integrated the strategies and
tactics from other movements benefit from collaboration and creative appropriation.
Academics, similarly, can benefit from a collaborative and creative exchange that
rearticulates fragmented discourses into intersectional dialogues.
The use of participant-observation in this ethnographic analysis facilitated a level
of imaginary that required anthropological play and performance. In order to even
analyze the data collected, I had to think in terms of drag and political theatre and
disidentify with the paradigms of good versus bad protest(or). The proclamations and
chants were not literal, nor were they meant to endorse the façade of agency in neoliberal
capitalism. The rhetorical nature of these protests is playful, constantly mocking the
rhetoric that interpellates us all as subjects within neoliberal capitalism and speciesism.
As an audience seated in front of the stage in which anarchist antispeciesists expose the
fallacies of individualism and capitalism, we are supposed to feel sadness and repulsion
when the demonstrations provide graphic proclamations detailing vivisection. We, as an
audience, are meant to laugh at the childlike chants and reapproriated versions of pop
songs that mock the police. Disidentification is an intended response to the performance
and it is met with the challenge to act upon those disidentifcatory thoughts. Affect is a
necessary and powerful tool for revolutionary change. Similar to how the performative
spectacle of drag challenges the static construction of gender and pushes it into a state of
252
crisis, so too, does the use of voice through exaggerated mimicry and aggressive rhetoric
move neoliberal capitalism and speciesism toward a state of crisis. The dialectical
discipline of disidentification through both the construction of ecoterrorism and the
refusal to submit to that paradigm, illustrate the performative power at stake. Those who
are targeted by direct actions are left feeling helpless and frustrated with their lack of
agency within the globalized neoliberal corporate terrain. On-lookers are left counting the
ways in which politicians, corporate figureheads, scientists, and medical practitioners are
cogs within the vast terrain of globalized capitalism. Neoliberal capitalism becomes the
joke; it becomes the laughable social construction that holds no salient relationship to the
false promises the demonstrators are calling out. Science is seen as violence. Meat is seen
as murder. Milk becomes a manifestation of rape and infanticide. The spectacular
performances of anarchist antispeciesist direct action confront the State’s interpellation
and propose an alternative. It is this strategic re-framing that situates the chants and
proclamations delivered by anarchist antispeciesists, the use of digital media, the public
vigils, and so on, within a trajectory of effective political theatre. The bullhorn is the
stiletto heels and corset; anarchist antispeciesists are but merely spectacular
revolutionaries in drag.
253
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
I am going to try and make this as quick as I possibly can,
and as painless as possibly as I can.
But I need everyone’s attention for the next little bit.
And I need people to pass along this information on to others as they come in.
So, as most people are aware, I think, at this point,
Marineland is very litigious.
So that means they want to go to court a lot.
They sued five people at this point
They are claiming damages of a total of $13 million.
One of those people being sued is myself.
What happened with that claim is they filed December 12, 2012.
In early March, we sent them back terms striking their statement of claims.
Which means that we believe it all to be false and fictitious
Which means it's a lie.
And they agreed to the terms on April 12.
So, I have to give you guys a legal PSA
So that everyone here is on board and at least aware of what is happening
What your rights are at this demonstration.
Really quickly,
If people don’t know the property line.
The property line is not these stakes that John Holer put in the ground yesterday
To try and confuse you,
The property line is the tree line.
Everything from the shoulder of the road to the trees is municipal property.
Under the charter of Rights of Freedoms, Freedom of Speech, and Freedom of
Assembly,
You have a right to stand here.
No one can tell you otherwise.
Okay?
Now
Everything on the other side of the tree line
Is Marineland’s property.
Including that fence.
That is on Marineland’s property.
Now, the legal agreement we have
Is that we will respect their property and their rights
254
As long as they take their claim back from court
Which they haven’t at this point.
So I really need everyone today to be aware of this
We need everyone to basically stay between
The shoulder of the roadway and the tree line over to this side.
Obviously the bus driver got confused (laugh),
He was told to park up on Rapport’s BLVD
But that didn’t happen.
But that’s not a big deal.
Basically one thing I really need to get across to everyone
As well,
Marineland can get an injunction,
if there is repetition of law breaking
what does that mean?
What they wanted was 500 meters
A buffer around their property of 500 meters.
Look at this space. This is not 500 meters
On the other side of the road is Niagara Parks property.
If Marineland ever successfully gets an injunction
This can never happen.
This is what we fought for since October 7
Was to be able to hold this demonstration today.
That is why it is so widely important
That everyone understands their rights here today
And also try and stay within those boundaries.
And honor the agreement that we made.
At the end of the day,
I am in the legal system
You guys are not.
But I need to rely on you guys to be responsible
And act responsibly
And, you know, have a good inspiring
Powerful day, powerful event.
So, now that that is said
I pass it off to other people
And there are a couple things I want to get set up.
We need some Road Warriors
On this side, signs out
To all the cars going by.
And then we’re gonna need some
255
“Shut it down”, “Turn away crew”
Over on the fence side
To try and get people going into the park
To not go in.
And you can try whatever you want
As far as appeals or chants or anything like that
Just try and do it in unison and work as a team
We need folks to sign the whale over here
Check out all the tables and all the information
There’s kid tables over there
For folks that want to fold origami
If anyone wants to lend a hand and help out
Just find someone with a black armband.
This is also, if you have a question,
There’s a legal concern,
There is a police officer telling you something that is contrary to what I just told
you,
Look for the black armbands and tell those cops
“Hey, you need to find someone with a black armband”
someone who is a police liaison at that point.
Are we all good?
(Cheers)
Did everyone get sleep last night?
(Muffled screams)
Okay, so thank you very much for listening to that
let’s pass this off to someone else.
And let’s have a good demonstration
(Cheers)
256
APPENDIX B
257
APPENDIX C
My thirst-I thirst for the freedom of certain animals. There are the animals you
think are happy.
You pay a lot of money to go and see.
I thirst for them to be treated well.
You may think of Marineland as a fun place to gather and enjoy a fun day.
But have you seen what they look like up close?
The terror and horror in their eyes
What happens behind the scenes is not what you think.
How they are treated won’t be a secret, after you listen to me.
Good morning, protestors.
Today I am going to talk to you about a place where beautiful animal lives starts
and dies.
What’s so wrong with Marineland anyway? I mean, they have rides, marine
shows and lots of wild life to look at all day.
While we are having fun, we know Marineland’s owner, John Holer, illegally
catches his wildlife.
And
now,
Marineland
has
one
Orca
whale
left,
Kiska.
She had to watch 26 of her own kind die, five of which were her own children.
She is now sad and alone. Living in a small tank, her own blood trailing behind
her.
The secret behind Marineland is slowly being exposed.
The natural habitat of the majority of the animals at Marineland is the ocean.
When they arrive to Marineland, they are welcomed into small pools that are
made out of table salt and water.
That’s the kind of salt you put on your French fries.
Not what they really need…
Which is marine salt.
The land animals also suffer.
There have been many complaints about the bears
And how they always fight
And kill each other’s cubs.
You will also notice that they never have a chance to hibernate…
Which isn’t natural to the bears.
Many people lose sight of the animals when they are having fun,
But MAD, Marineland Animal Defense, can clear your mind.
They work to educate the public about what is really happening at the park.
I was lucky enough to meet with one member from MAD, Mrs. Sefton,
Who is also a teacher at our school.
258
Mrs. Sefton also protested in front of Marineland and MAD was created in early
2011.
It was made up of citizens who were concerned about the welfare of the animals.
Their main goal is to protect them by telling people what really happens at
Marieneland.
One particularly sad story is about Junior, an Orca whale who didn’t like
performing
So they kept him in a warehouse with two other dolphins
Who he watched die and then later died himself,
Sad and alone
With no one to say goodbye to.
Male orcas spend their whole lives with their mothers
And live in big family units.
Clearly this does not happen at Marineland
Because they get split up.
Orcas swim hundreds of kilometers every day,
Which is very difficult to do
In those small pools.
So what can we do about this?
What can we do about what is happening
To the animals in Marineland?
Don’t go.
My family stopped going five years ago
When we learned about the treatment of the animals there.
If people don’t pay to go
Then they can’t keep the park open.
Are you going to do your part?
I ask of you.
For the sake of the animals,
That don’t have a voice.
For the justice of these animals.
I thirst. (Speaker 2013)
259
APPENDIX D
“Freestylin for Freedom” by Darius Mirshahi from Test their Logik
Alright yo.
Everyone make some noise for [Anonymous A], though.
He’s actually, like, bringing everyone out here
And actually going across across so many different communities
and getting support from everyone.
I think its so fucking beautiful
That we got so many people here.
Sorry for my language
I forgot.
I’m going to try and keep it family friendly and clean.
I’m a rapper, though.
Anyways.
I think its really beautiful how many people with a passion are here
To shut down this horrible place here.
There are so many different reasons to do it.
John Holer is treating animals horribly
People horribly.
He is acting like an autocrat
He’s definitely someone that needs to be put in check
And also just taken down.
So that’s happening.
That’s happening.
Anyways.
So I am going to start with piece called
“land is freedom”
and actually I didn't really know about it till I came here
but I just found out that
a few years ago, 47 families were evicted
because of john holer
because he just thought he could just move people off the land.
These are people who just had trailer parks here
And he bought the land
And he said he was going to keep it a trailer park,
And then he evicted everybody.
That’s something that is really important to take note of
Because people are getting evicted all over the world.
Because people with money
260
Are buying up the land
And pushing people off the land.
So this one is going out to people
And to animals
And to all live that is really struggling with this land thing.
Because if land is turned into property
We all suffer.
Check it out:
Property is theft
That’s a concept you should get
When you’re dropping most your check
On a spot to rest your head.
Little to see the bread
To pay your mortgage and your debt.
So the bankers and the feds don’t get your home repossessed.
It’s on stolen land.
It used to be the commons.
Before the colonizers came
And started all the problems.
Started pillaging and robbing.
The evil side is squatting.
The show is not stopping.
They conquering the oxygen
Offsetting the carbon.
Borders in the water
Patrolling, coast guarding.
Murdering and bombing
Keep the urban sprawling.
More people starving
Less people farming.
Got a giant green goblin called Monsanto.
Makin’ mad money microcroppin’
Those places of population
Creatin migration problems.
Just bondin’ by buildin’ prisons
Border wars don't stop them
So I’m swinging sledge hammers
Till every wall is droppin’.
Land is freedom
261
Property is theft.
Burn all the flags
Until none of them are left.
Land is living.
Property is death.
Take back the land
Fight to the last breath.
They conquered the world
Till there was nothing left.
Land is freedom.
Property is theft
Gotta slave all day
For a place to rest.
Land is freedom.
Property is theft.
So that goes out to 47 families John Holder evicted, just on some power trip.
47 families, the last one that was there one eviction day committed suicide.
Know it, he is a murderer.
Not just, uh, not just of animals.
He is a murderer of animals, of humans, of the land. (Mirshahi 2013)
262
APPENDIX E
Liberation of All Being by Darius Mirshahi
Liberate the animals
And the earth too
Free the trees
Free the roots
Free the leaves
Free the fruits.
Liberate the earth
And the animals too.
Free the farm
Free the land
Free them from Marineland, too
Liberate the earth
And the animals too
Free the trees
Free the roots
Free the leaves
Free the fruits.
Liberate the earth
And the animals too.
Free the farm
Free the land
Free Marineland too.
ELF, ALF
They never caused a death.
To save lives
They take a lot of risks
Liberation of all creation
Is their politics.
But somehow
They are the terror that tops the list?
Come on.
Who’s really the terrorists?
The slaughterhouse arsonists
Or the slaughterhouse architects?
Would it be terror to burn down Auschwitz?
Nah.
The answer should be obvious.
263
You gotta give props to the ALF
To SHAC
Smash HLS
And those that invest
No torture, no test.
No one is free
While others are oppressed.
Fight for freedom
Until there’s no cages left.
Milk and meat
That’s rape and death.
That we eat at our own expense.
We are killing the animals, planet, and ourselves.
Toxic products
We are the toxic problem.
We are the source of the products
And its our water.
And, I lost it. I keep rhyming….Thank you.
264
APPENDIX F
Bless the Grass by Darius Mirshahi
This one is off the new album. It’s called Bless the Grass. We are standing on
grass, enjoying the grass, sitting on grass right now. I got love for the animals,
love for the people, love for the plants and the earth. The one thing I find really
inspiring, and people overlook it all the time. It’s that grass, you know, growing
through the cracks of the concrete in an urban jungle. The concrete jungle.
You are walking down the street and you see grass coming through. It’s really
inspiring, you know, because they try and kill everything and want to like turn it
into property and parking lots. You know what I’m saying. Life is rebellious. Life
comes back through the cracks. No matter how hard they try to kill it, they can’t
kill. It
That is a symbol of us, of movements. You know, you know what I’m saying.
They try and destroy us and our movements. But they can’t. As much as they try
and kill us, to silence us and pave us over, they can’t. It keeps coming back
through the grass.
So this one is going out to the grass.
We’re everywhere
Hidden like the air
That we breathe together.
And we’re never scared.
The conspiracy is real
They are keeping it concealed
The truth is a virus
These lies will reveal.
They paved over paradise
But it’s gonna heal
Leaking information is like
Watering a field.
Spreading the rebellion
Harvesting the yield.
The infinite potential of the weapons you wield.
Take pickaxes to roads
Free roads that say closed
Nobody is illegal
The people will roam.
Capital is evil
Freedom’s the goal.
265
It’s not where you’re from
It’s where your gonna go.
When the shit goes down
Can we overgrow
Overthrow this toxic overdose
Open those files doors that keep those undisclosed
Enough of the lies
The truth is gonna blow
The dead landscape with life living below
Scratching at this prison
Read to explode.
Pull codes, roll roots, Spread those
Plantin’ seeds in concrete
Life revolts, re-grows till it shifts.
And the paradigm and system is out of time.
This whole time
The system was out of line.
Mass murder
Everyday for the dollar sign.
Then through the cracks
Like the grass to the stone
We climb.
We need to defend the animals that are captive, but we also need to defend the
animals and the humans that are trying to be free. And the oil will definitely not
let them be free. So we got some big problems.
So, we need to shut it down. Shut down Marineland!
Shut it down.
Shut it, shut it down!
Shut it down, shut it down!
Shut it down, shut it down!
Shut it down, shut it down!
Shut it down, shut it down!
John Holer can leave town.
266
APPENDIX G
267
APPENDIX H
268
APPENDIX I
269
APPENDIX J
270
APPENDIX K
271
APPENDIX L
272
APPENDIX M
273
APPENDIX N
274
APPENDIX O
275
APPENDIX P
•
A-B-X what do you say - - - - - - How many animals died today
Polluting the land, polluting the water - - - - - - - - - -Profiting off the animal
slaughter
Polluting our bodies, polluting the water - - - - - - - Profiting off the animal
slaughter
•
A-B-X has blood on their hands - - - - - - A-B-X has blood on their hands
There’s no excuse - - - - for animal abuse
There is no rest - - - - - - - for animal abusers
•
A-B-X shame on you - - - - - - - - A-B-X Shame on you
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 - - - - - - Open up the cargo doors
5 – 6 – 7 – 8 - - - - - - Free the animals… liberate
•
You must, you must, you must understand - - - -The blood, the blood, the blood is on your hands
It’s your money - - - - - - Your fault
Your greed - - - - - - - - - - - -Your fault
Your contract - - - - - - - - Your fault
Blood money - - - - - - - - -Your fault
•
No justice, no peace - - - - - - Until the animal are released
Vivisection is a lie - - - - - - - - - How many animals have to die
Vivisection is a trick - - - - - - They make money and we get sick
•
Blood, Blood, Blood on your hands - - - - - - - - - Blood, Blood, Blood on your hands
Innocent animals died today - - - - - - - - - - - - - A-B-X is to blame
Innocent animals suffered in pain - - - - - - - A-B-X is to blame
Innocent animals died in vain - - - - - - - - - - - - A-B-X is to blame
So many dead and nothing gained - - - - - A-B-X is to blame
•
For the animals we will fight - - - - - How do you sleep at night
We will never back down - - - - - - - - Until you stop the killing
•
If you want to get some rest - - - - - - Cut your ties with animal tests
276
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