Rosenberg Fund for Children

Is Green the New Red?

Aside from my parents’ case, United States v. Dennis is perhaps the most famous McCarthy Era Red Scare legal action. In that case the government convicted the leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) of conspiring to organize a revolutionary movement. Once the hysteria abated, the Supreme Court decision upholding that conviction became one of the more embarrassing episodes of our judicial history. CPUSA leaders went to prison for coordinating the teaching of the principles of Marxist-Leninism, despite the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of assembly and speech.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Today we have the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) passed in 2006. AETA is a beefed up version of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) that was passed in 1992.

Under AETA, “Whoever travels in interstate commerce…. for the purpose … of interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise, intentionally… causes the loss of any … personal property [or] intentionally places a person in reasonable fear … of serious bodily injury … by a course of conduct involving … harassment or intimidation or conspires or attempts to do so” shall be subject to massive fines and many years in prison. In plain English, if you organize a group of people to take action that results in a financial loss to an animal enterprise or scares the employees of that company then you can go to prison for a very long time. That’s today’s law, and so far, the one prosecution I’m aware of that the government initiated under it, was dismissed without its constitutionality being tested.

However, seven people went to prison for organizing against Huntingdon Life Sciences under the AEPA, the older, “gentler” version. AEPA created the new crime of “animal enterprise terrorism,” but you had to cause physical disruption to violate this law. It was designed to counter the growing underground movement of animal rights and environmental activists who damaged property to disrupt the activities of corporations that tormented animals and despoiled the environment.

But the young people who organized Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), and have become known as the SHAC 7 were not part of an illegal underground campaign. Instead they organized a very public and successful effort to shame and harass a large corporation, Huntingdon Life Sciences. In post-9/11 America, prosecutors developed a new legal theory by expanding the “physical disruption” language in AEPA to include loss of profits. The SHAC 7 were convicted of being animal enterprise terrorists under that interpretation of physical disruption. In 2006 the judge sentenced the “conspirators” to up to six years in prison.

This movement isn’t about being nice to kittens and puppies. It’s about torture of animals on a massive scale, in pursuit of corporate profit. Huntingdon Life Sciences kills at least 71,000 and possibly as many as 181,000 animals annually to test cleaners, cosmetics, drugs, pesticides and other ingredients. Hidden camera videos have recorded employees beating animals and dissecting live monkeys.

Will Potter, in his new book Green is the New Red, describes a particularly horrific experiment at another laboratory: “[O]ne infant primate [was] named Britches. Experimenters had taken Britches from his mother on the night of his birth and sewn his eyes shut with thick black sutures. They attached a sonar device to his head that let off a screeching sound and placed him in a steel cage, alone; the isolation and sensory deprivation caused neurological disorders. Britches would lurch and shake, shrieking.”

What’s this got to do with United States v. Dennis? Just as in Dennis, the courts in the SHAC 7 case have criminalized organizing. And if that can be done under AEPA, you can imagine the result under AETA, which could be considered as AEPA on steroids!

I know there are RFC supporters who feel that fighting for animal rights is a somewhat trivial pursuit compared to trying to prevent the horrific crimes against humanity carried out by multi-national corporations and the many governments they influence or control. But the behavior against which these activists are organizing, is part of the same culture that permeates the military industrial complex, the energy companies, the private prison corporations, and so on. These are the same foes we all face every day. The rights the corporations and their political flunkies seek to curtail belong to us all. And the sensibilities these heroic young militants seek to spread are the same values to which other progressives aspire.

Let’s not look down our noses at a new generation of activists whose causes vary from our own and who are doing things a little differently from what our generation did. Instead, let’s emphasize our points of convergence. We need as much solidarity as we can get in taking on the corporate juggernaut.

[For more information pick up a copy of Green is the New Red, by Will Potter, City Lights Books, 2011; or visit www.greenisthenewred.com/blog, www.shac7.com, or www.shac.net.]

---------------------
To receive a notification whenever there is a new post to Out on a Limb Together, subscribe now.

Permalink

Free Pass for Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act

Federal Judge Joseph Tauro put yet another dent in our First Amendment rights two weeks ago when he dismissed a suit brought by five animal rights activists. The activists had claimed that the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) made them fearful of protesting in public against animal abuse committed by corporations, and therefore, impinged upon their First Amendment rights. The law states that anyone can be prosecuted if their actions cause property loss to an animal-related business or laboratory, or who “intentionally places a person in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury through threats, vandalism, harassment or intimidation.” Judge Tauro dismissed the suit and ruled that the actions the protestors had planned were not prohibited by the law, and therefore, they had failed to demonstrate “an objectively reasonable chill on their First Amendment rights.”

First, to disclose my personal connection: the plaintiffs were represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and more particularly by my daughter, Rachel Meeropol, who is a senior staff attorney there.

AETA was passed towards the end of the Bush administration. It is a sweeping federal law that brands as terrorism protests that hurt the finances of corporations that conduct animal research or deal in animal products. This is a terrible law, and can be used to attack a broad range of activists for engaging in non-violent actions that harm corporate profits. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have used this law and “terrorist enhancements” in other legislation as part of on going actions called the “Green Scare” aimed at repressing animal rights and environmental activists. The RFC has provided support for the children of several imprisoned Green Scare defendants.

If one were looking for a silver lining here, one could interpret Judge Tauro’s ruling as gutting much of the force of AETA by narrowly interpreting its expansive language to limit its impact on the First Amendment. However, my daughter pointed out the limitations of this reasoning. “While this judge reads the law narrowly in a way that is more protective of the First Amendment, there is no guarantee that other judges will agree or that prosecutors will be respectful of animal rights advocates’ freedom of expression. In fact, all the evidence we see is to the contrary, given that there’s been a national crackdown on animal rights activists for the last decade or so.”

Rachel and the CCR plan to appeal the ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Many within progressive movements have taken little note of this alarming law. Some in my generation don’t have much respect for the politics of animal rights activists, and so remain silent in the face of this escalating attack on First Amendment rights. One friend of mine described animal rights activists as “people who care more about animals than people.”

First, nothing could be further from the truth. Beyond that, this plays into the hands of the agents of repression whose time-worn divide and conquer tactic is to attempt to pick progressive groups off one at a time. AETA presents the same type of danger that the PATRIOT Act and a host of other post-9/11 laws pose to progressive activists of all stripes. We must resist them all with equal force.

-------------------
To receive a notification whenever there is a new post to Out on a Limb Together, subscribe now.

Permalink

Rosenberg Fund for Children

In This Section

Follow Us:

Category View v2