AETA 4 Benefit with Peter Young and Will Potter

Hey Portland: Another benefit for the AETA 4 when I’m in town. This one with former animal liberation prisoner Peter Young. Young was prosecuted using the original version of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act for releasing mink from fur farms. The recent arrests, under the new Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, are for largely First Amendment activity. We’ll be talking about the recent arrests and where this is all heading.

Liberty Hall
March 29th
speakers @ 630
Peter Young and Will Potter
Bands @ 8
Death A.D.
Unrestrained
Parasitic Skies

Sliding scale 5-15 dollars

Found flier warns of terrorist protesters.

Ongoing anti-fur protests by Portland animal rights activists have helped shut down one fur salon, Schumacher Furs. (The owner unsuccessfully tried to retaliate by calling on federal prosecutors to use the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act against the protesters).

Now activists are protesting Ungar Furs. But be careful, everyone, the grammatically-impaired right-wingers of the Republic of Portland are not going to take your Constitutionally-protected activity lying down!

“Why wait till they are in front of your business protesting. Stop these Terrorists now! There is something called The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act that is supposed to protect merchants from these people but the left wingers who run Portland will not stand up for decent folk trying to make a living. If they were protesting in front of a gay vegan hemp store, you bet your ass the city would be trying to stop them. Enough is enough. The last time I looked this was America.”

And the last time I looked there was still a First Amendment.

But hold up, forget all of my typical “protect the Constitution” rhetoric. Gay vegan hemp store? How have I never heard of this magical place?

If such a place were to exist, it would truly represent a “domestic terrorist” Axis of Evil. On this site we’ve seen how Pat Boone is fighting “sexual jihadists” and homo-grown terrorism. We’ve seen how “vegetarians are terrorist scum.” And we’ve seen how environmental activists like Tim DeChristopher are “eco-terrorists.”

This store would reflect a dangerous new development in the War on Terror, and the unification of the gays, the vegans and the hippies into the Holy Trinity of Terrorism.

Maybe it could move in to the vegan mini-mall? I hear the hemp-lovers at Food Fight have a vegan cheese pump.

(Thanks to Chad for sending the photo.)

AETA 4 Flier for Portland Benefit

I can’t wait to get out to the Northwest. If you’re in the area, please come out and say hello!

Benefit for the AETA 4

On February 19th and 20th four people, Nathan Pope, Adriana Stumpo, Joseph Buddenberg, and Maryam Khajavi, were arrested and charged with violating the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. They will need your support as they face a long trial process to prove their innocence.

March 28, 2009
6pm

Speakers:
Lauren Regan (Civil Liberties Defense Center)
Will Potter (GreenIsTheNewRed.com)

Bands:
Mike XVX
Camping Party
Slow Teeth

Red and Black Cafe, 400 SE 12th & Oak, 503.231.3899

I got a kick out of how this Norwegian enviro/animal/anarchist group took a scare-mongering ad campaign, used to label activists as “terrorists” in major media outlets, and spun it into activist propaganda.

[UPDATE: From a comment on this blog post, I learned that this flier was actually created by the UK chapter of the group and then translated into many languages. I swapped out the image for the English version, because I think it gives a better idea of how the original ad was turned on its head. Thanks for clarifying!]

Click here for the original.

The great folks at Eberhardt Press are ready to print an updated version of these wonderful fliers. I had been taking them to speaking events, and my first run of several hundred was gone after about two events. They’re able to print them at $10 for 100 fliers, which is a steal.

I rarely make requests for donations, but I’d love to get a few thousand of these printed (or more, because they’ll definitely get used). Plus, I’m about to place an order for some pretty cool super-secret stuff that’ll be available on the site, and it requires several hundred dollars up front. So, if you can chip in, even a few bucks, please do so! (If we raise enough to cover both of these projects, any money left over goes right back into the website, of course).

There’s a PayPal button in the middle column.

Thanks everyone!

Beware the Green Scare!

The term Green Scare, alluding to the Red Scare of the 1940s and ’50s, refers to legal and extralegal actions taken by the U.S. government against the “radical” environmentalist movement. It is a strategy that has been used before: attack the margins of a movement as a way to limit dissent more generally.

Read on to educate yourself on the government’s campaign against environmental activism, and to learn what you can do to support those who have been targeted by this repression.

You can also download the PDF for distribution. Thanks to the folks who produced this for referencing my work and providing a link to GreenIsTheNewRed.com.