NPR: University Goes to Court to Stop Animal Activists

[Ellen Forradalom]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89642154

[rpannier]

1. By aggressively targeting, they mean what exactly

Holding rallies -- that's fine.

Following them home and threatening them -- not fine.

[Chan790]

2. Background:

The incidents which sparked the backlash was a fire-bombing (under FBI investigation) and a not-so-brutal assault on the husband of a researcher (They apparently smacked his hand.), combined with a pattern of bull-horn wielding protesters outside of the researchers houses (sometimes vandalizing or smashing things) and protesters leafleting in "uncomfortable public places" (i.e. the researcher's children's soccer games, following them around the supermarket, disrupting their off-campus lunches).

The restraining order request is also to block all AR protest on-campus as support of domestic terrorism, to block certain groups from discussion of research and to criminalize identification of animal-researchers.

-Information in this post extracted from the following sources: The Chronicle of Higher Education; U.Cal-Berkley's student newspaper, The Daily Californian; The Washington Post; NY Times; Inside Higher Ed; San Jose Mercury News.

(I didn't quote because the entire post would be either quotation, citation or paraphrase)

[rpannier]

4. Thanks for the info. It is much appreciated

[Chan790]

3. I have mixed angry feelings about this.

The lengths which some in the AR community go, while achieving nothing, hurts the cause, which means ultimately it hurts the animals...that's unacceptable. Civil disobedience is fine, being a nuisance is fine; liberating animals, destroying equipment, being underhanded to obtain evidence of animal abuses are all fair-play if one is willing to bear the consequences of their actions. Attacking humans, making threats, booby-trapping, attempted murder are categorically-not.

If we ever want to make headway and stop being viewed as fringe loonies, we've got to self-police...violence advocates and violent activists...no friends of mine. It's counter-productive to the image, and more importantly the ethics, of the animal-protection community to commit violence. It does no animal any good when some self-appointed spokesperson advocates murdering researchers (such as Jerry Vlasik of North American Animal Liberation Press did in a phone interview: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031002591.html) when called to ask for a comment on an attempted firebombing of a researcher's house. That was in the WaPo, so it was widely read. What impression of the rest of us do you think those readers came away with?

On the other hand, U. Cal tried this 10 years ago...using the extremists' actions to shut-down all opposition by using the dangerous few to paint a broad-brush to the courts in order to obtain an overly-broad restraining order criminalizing the far-more-numerous peaceful or nuisance protests which were damaging their image.

A pox on both their houses.