Prior to Raid, Fur Farmers Labeled Peter Young’s Report a “Terrorist Handbook”
Mar 18th, 2010 by Will Potter
Peter Young’s home was raided the FBI this week, and the search warrant repeatedly mentions his name in relation to “animal enterprise terrorism.” In the last article we looked at how this Utah raid is, ostensibly, related to the investigation of an Animal Liberation Front raid at the University of Iowa.
As with all of these cases, though, it’s important to put this in a bigger political context. Few attempts have been made to connect Young to Iowa (the government argued in court that Young was an “associate” of Scott DeMuth, the defendant in the Iowa case, because DeMuth identified someone in his journal as ‘P’).
Young says he has never met DeMuth, a graduate student whose research has included radical social movements.
However, attempts have been made to repeatedly label Young a “terrorist” not for underground crimes like raiding fur farms (which he was convicted of years ago) but for lawful, aboveground, First Amendment activity. For instance, he published The Blueprint, a listing of fur farms in the United States.
Young wrote in the introduction:
While past fur industry investigations focused on the treatment of animals, this one sought something else: names and addresses. Of all forms of animal rights outreach, the dissemination of “names and addresses” is at once among the most overlooked, and most potent…
The fur industry is among the most vulnerable targets in our sights. We rented a car, and set out to create the roadmap to its collapse.
Fur farmers responded by labeling this document, which is listing of public information obtained lawfully and disseminated lawfully, a “terrorist handbook.”
Multiple newspapers in Utah and Wisconsin published stories with industry soundbites along these lines. The Park Record in Utah reported:
“‘The Blueprint’ is a little disturbing. Basically, what ‘The Blueprint’ is, is a terrorist handbook,” a mink rancher in Coalville told The Park Record on Wednesday.
The man, who is in his 20s, spoke to the newspaper at his ranch on the condition of anonymity.
“All this is is domestic terrorism, and I have a target on my back,” he said in the interview. “They’re out there calling death threats in to ranchers. We spend many sleepless nights on the ranch.”
Most times he is armed, the rancher added.
All of this has the effect of increasing fear of animal rights activists as “terrorists,” and legitimizing any subsequent actions such as FBI raids of activists’ homes. As in all of these Green Scare cases, these media campaigns and this raid are, above all else, about instilling fear.
Read the story behind “The Blueprint” in the new issue (#15) of Bite Back magazine. More info here: http://directaction.info/mag_15.htm
Thanks, I just signed up to receive the mag.
Hi Will & friends, so happy to have come upon your page recently!
I've just finished a video for a song I recorded “Hidden Crimes” about vivisection.
Please take a moment and watch it, then you might want to link or embed or pass along –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQcwhOcE2Y8&feat...
thank you!
-Andi
Read the article on Bite Back. Highly recommended!!!
Basically the only purpose of publishing this info is to facilitate vandalism and harassment. I wouldn't call that “terrorism” but if I was the target of death threats I doubt I would care about the distinction.
It is public information that has been used for lawful protests.
Really. Name one? What would you gain from protesting some farm out in the middle of nowhere, and why would you need the owner's name and contact info to do it?
Page 14:
Palmer Erickson fur farm
Jewell, IA
Received anonymously.
“After receiving a request for more
information on the Palmer Erickson
fur farm, we entered the property in
the middle of the day and compiled
this brief report. Enclosed, please nd
photos of the animals and layout of the
farm. This is the last fur industry target
in Jewell untouched by the A.L.F.
Inside the Erickson farm, which is not
visible from Saratoga Ave, we found
the following: many thousands of both
black and white mink, and approxi-
mately 100 foxes held in pens at the
rear of the property. We would like to
point out Erickson’s house is located
quite a distance from the mink and fox
pens. We were able to freely move about
this farm during the day, an effort that
would be made even easier under dark-
ness. While we failed in our duty to save
these animals, we hope these photos in-
spire others to act with their hearts and
bring this sick enterprise to an end.”
This sounds legit. Maybe the next time I'm passing through this 1,000-person town in Iowa I'll swing by this farm and see if there's a lawful protest going on. I guess I'd probably have a better chance of coming across some unfairly maligned totally above-board activists if I show up at night.
Maybe somewhere this book has been used to pick a location for a protest, but it's more useful for property destruction and anonymous threats. Since the author supports those tactics it's safe to assume that's what he's hoping for, and since the readership supports those tactics it's safe to assume that's what will happen. Like a lock picking set, it's a legal tool that's primarily useful for committing crimes.
http://animals.change.org/blog/view/protesting_...
And, not surprisingly, people like you tried to silence them.
I think the point here is that this is an extremely slippery slope. If you label publication of this material as terrorist, then you may as well label the Yellow Pages as terrorist because many people have used it to obtain more information on their would-be victims. If you label a lock-pick set as criminal because some people engage in illegal behavior with it, then you may as well label handguns and kitchen knives criminal as well. Scissors too. Just because a certain portion of people perpetrate illegal acts with a (insert legally-acquired and lawfully-owned object here), it does not mean that it should now be a criminal offense for all.
I just have a problem with labeling everything “terrorist” in the first place. Application of this term has inspired more fear than the terrorists themselves. Take 2007: How many Americans died as a direct result of terrorism? 4. How many died of obesity-related diseases (heart disease, diabetes)? 700,000. What should we be more scared of? Because of the way this country (i.e. the government and the mainstream media) applies the term, “terrorist,” we are allowed to invade and occupy other countries. We are allowed to strip away the civil rights of our own citizens. We are allowed to capture and detain innocents from other countries for an indefinite amount of time. The real damage to the American people is not being done by violent animal rights activists or crack addicts or Muslim extremists or Christian fundamentalist militiamen. It is being done by the government in conjunction with the corporations that keep America's poor poor and America's fat fat (because of the cheap cost of fast food these two often go hand-in-hand). Their other main goal is to keep all of us frightened because it is through that fear that they can control us. One look at how irrational our fear of “terrorism” has become and one begins to see the awesome power of a single, simple word.
(Sorry for the slightly off-topic rant, but the more cases of this sort of thing that I see, the more I think there is a need for people to realize just what is being done to them and their fellow man in the name of freedom, liberty, justice, or whatever.)
[...] He’s the closest thing to a SHAC-like entity in Utah. Since his release from prison, he’s compiled The Blueprint, a national directory of hundreds of mink farms across the country and distributes it [...]