CHAPTER FIVE
February 23, 2006 “And if the righteousness of the cause in your belief is right, you don’t care what tactics they take to achieve that?”
“I do care what tactics are taken, sir.”
“When you give those speeches, you’re not speaking the way you are today, are you?”
“At times I am,” Josh Harper says to the prosecutor and the jury. The government has rested its case against Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, and Harper is the defense’s first witness. “At times I am not. Generally speaking, I am more fiery than I am right now.”
“Because you’re trying to incite people?”
“Because I’m nervous right now.”
The government is questioning Harper about a speech he gave to three hundred animal rights activists in October 2001, a key component in their case against him. It was prescient that he began that speech by welcoming the FBI agents in the room. He was not certain that there were any of them present that day in Little Rock, Arkansas, but he knew the campaign to close Huntingdon Life Sciences had attracted the attention of people in high places.
SHAC had awakened and enraged the grassroots animal rights movement like a field of dry grass brought to life by flame. What began in England had spread quickly around the world, and after just a few years, the campaign burned so intensely that the lab shifted operations to New Jersey, where laws concealed shareholder identities. Huntingdon came to the United States hoping to hide.
The campaign drew heavily from the American anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, which led to the dismantling of racial segregation programs in South Africa by targeting one thing which—unlike protests or letters or phone calls—no government can ignore: money. Anti-apartheid activists focused their demands not on the South African government but on universities, businesses and nations with economic ties to the country.
SHAC set out to make Huntingdon the South Africa of the corporate world. Activists incorporated anti-apartheid tactics and expanded on them. They identified banks, suppliers, customers and employees—anyone with any financial ties to the lab, from Fortune 500 companies down to toilet paper suppliers. They focused on businesses with no vested interest in animal experimentation, either philosophically or economically; Huntingdon needed them, but they did not need Huntingdon.
The war room was a website. Through interactive maps, one click could open a state list of every business with ties to Huntingdon. Another click opened a page of contact information, not generic 1-800 numbers but direct office phone numbers, home phone numbers, cell phone numbers, work addresses, home addresses, fax numbers, email addresses and, in some cases, physical descriptions, church memberships, country club affiliations and more. “The Earth is not dying,” the folk singer Utah Phillips once said, “it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.” SHAC activists found those names and addresses, and published them on their website.
Local activists used this information to take the campaign straight to the executives and employees who held the most sway over Huntingdon. Like the anti-apartheid movement, SHAC prided itself on following the money, but animal rights activists went further. They sought to make the anonymous business decisions of corporations personal. Instead of screaming at twenty-story office buildings, activists protested where they knew they would be heard. Homes, conferences, job fairs, vacations—they created a spectacle everywhere. They dubbed Huntingdon’s general manager “Blockhead” and protested outside his home with a twelve-foot banner that said “Blockhead Caulfield, puppy killing scumbag.” When one CEO became a member of the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club, SHAC organized a national call-in to complain. Protesters showed up at the clubhouse.
This was only part of the campaign, a word SHAC carefully used with a lowercase c. While aboveground activists took to the streets, the phones and executives’ homes, there were underground, anonymous activists playing their own role. They set off stink bombs and smoke bombs, they smashed windows, hacked computers, super-glued ATMs, stole credit cards, made threatening phone calls and paint-stripped cars. They snuck into a job fair at Rutgers and stole the files of Huntingdon applicants—and then told them their prospective employer kills puppies. One executive awoke to find a boulder on his car. A Huntingdon director received a subscription to a magazine called Revolver; it was in her son’s name.
On their own, tactics like these are nothing new. All social movements have both legal and illegal elements, and in other movements the extremists have done much more than throw paint. At about the time Mohandas Gandhi was on his nonviolent march against the British salt tax, the Bengal Volunteers were storming prisons and murdering police. Such disparate tactics typically exist in different worlds, with each camp harshly critical of the other, and that same demarcation exists in the animal rights movement. Nearly all national organizations have publicly condemned illegal tactics and groups like the ALF. At best, they have remained silent. SHAC set itself apart by vocally, unapologetically supporting the underground.
Every action in the name of the campaign went up on the news section of the website. Protest recaps were published alongside anonymous communiqués such as one that described the sinking of a Bank of New York executive’s fishing boat. Underground activists lowered his Stars and Stripes, raised the Jolly Roger, sank the boat and signed the communiqué “Pirates for Animal Liberation. . . . HLS thar she blows!” A few days later about thirty people protested outside his house, as they had on multiple occasions, except this time they wore pirate hats.
As Judy Gumbo Albert, a founding member of the Yippies, said of the 1971 Weather Underground bombing of the Capitol building, “We didn’t do it, but we dug it.” SHAC posted disclaimers on the website saying the group did not engage in illegal activity, but supported those who did. The group published a philosophical defense of direct action alongside a photo of an overturned car. At one animal rights conference I attended, the SHAC booth had Animal Liberation Front air fresheners (“Animal liberation never smelled so sweet”) and matchbooks with Huntingdon’s address printed inside. SHAC did not sail through the night with the pirates, but they proudly flew the same flag.
It worked. Citibank, Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab and dozens of other corporate powerhouses decided they would not deal with Huntingdon if it meant dealing with SHAC. Huntingdon’s stock plummeted from $30 per share in 1997, before the campaign began, to 25 cents per share in 2000. SHAC grew bolder. In November 2000 Kevin Kjonaas, one of the defendants in the 2006 trial, called the investment firm Stephens Inc. and said he wanted a personal meeting. This was the power SHAC knew it had acquired.
As a gesture of goodwill, Kjonaas agreed to take down StephensKills.com, a parody website with photos of mutilated puppies alongside the Stephens logo. A Stephens representative and a lawyer met Kjonaas on neutral ground at a law office in New York City in January 2001. At the two-hour meeting, Kjonaas presented brochures and photos of what happens to animals at Huntingdon. Activists had already been calling and emailing Stephens offices, urging them to divest. Do it, Kjonaas said, and SHAC would end its campaign. Refuse, and things would get worse.
Stephens balked. A few days later, news broke that the Royal Bank of Scotland had pulled out as Huntingdon’s senior lender, and Stephens saved the lab from foreclosure with an emergency $33 million loan. Stephens became the primary financier of Huntingdon, and in turn, Stephens became the primary target of SHAC. The group published personal information, printed leaflets, organized phone and email blockades, and told supporters, as they had for so many other corporate targets, “hit ’em hard.”
STRATFOR, a “global intelligence” company that creates custom reports for corporations and governments, explained the campaign model well. There are three legs to the SHAC campaign: illegal activists (the smallest group), legal activists (with signs and bullhorns) and passive sympathizers (opposed to animal cruelty, but not sure how to help). “Since there is no formal membership,” STRATFOR’s report says, “the numbers are in no way fixed—anyone can wake up tomorrow, read about SHAC on the Internet, and engage in an activity that night that propels them directly into the first tier.”
This was the subject of Harper’s speech in Little Rock, as hundreds gathered for a weekend of protests at the homes and offices of Stephens executives. Harper had lived in town for several months prior, submitting paperwork, talking to city council members and meeting with police. His speech made it clear, though, that his work was only one form of social change. He told activists that no matter how they choose to fight Huntingdon, legally or illegally, they should not condemn those who choose other methods. All of it would bring Huntingdon closer to financial collapse.
As he spoke—looking out at hundreds of activists, film crews, mustachioed undercover cops, and men from Global Options, a private security firm—one thing could not have been more clear: his words mattered.
In the nine trial days before Harper took the witness stand, prosecutors built their case against the SHAC defendants. Corporate executives detailed what they had experienced because of their business relationship with Huntingdon. Prosecutors had them read aloud page after page of printouts from the SHAC public website, including action alerts, protest write-ups and anonymous communiqués. Although none of the defendants were accused of any of the crimes posted on the site, the government hoped to convince the jury that by identifying targets, posting personal information and unabashedly supporting illegal actions, they were part of a conspiracy.
Historically, conspiracy charges have been used against political activists when the government cannot make anything else stick. The Chicago Seven, for instance, were on trial for conspiracy to riot and disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 1968 Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby doctor, was convicted of conspiracy to “counsel, aid, and abet resistance” to the draft because he spoke out against the war. Evidence used against him included public speeches and news footage. The alleged SHAC conspiracy was even more amorphous, conflating not just words and actions, but a national organization and an entire underground movement.
Now, all defendants have been charged with conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. For Darius Fullmer and Andy Stepanian, it is their only charge. Fullmer sent emails about protests and helped research corporate targets online. Stepanian took part in protests, and one witness testified that he instructed protesters where to stand in order to comply with police.
Harper faces an additional charge because of two speeches in which he advocated email blockades, electronic civil disobedience and black faxing. Black faxing means sending a completely black piece of paper—sometimes with “Divest” or “Close HLS” in small white letters—to businesses associated with the lab. Continuous faxing clogs company phone lines and drains ink cartridges. The government says that Harper’s speeches promoted these tactics and therefore make him part of a conspiracy to harass using a telecommunications device. Conroy, Gazzola and Kjonaas are also charged with this, in large part because the SHAC website promoted electronic civil disobedience.
The non-conspiracy charges being levied against the defendants are no less nebulous. The government argues that the posting of personal information on the SHAC website, combined with protests at individuals’ homes, phone calls, emails and the crimes of underground activists, instilled a reasonable fear of bodily harm in three Marsh insurance executives. For this, Conroy, Gazzola and Kjonaas have been charged with conspiracy to stalk and three counts of interstate stalking, charges typically filed against abusive ex-lovers or deranged admirers, not political activists organizing a national campaign. All charges against John McGee are dropped, and the remaining six defendants plus the organization SHAC, which is also on trial, have become known as the SHAC 7.
Evidence presented by the government to support these charges included journals, address books, “to do” lists from their homes, Google search records, stickers from Harper’s room, a notebook with a “Support the ALF” sticker, binders full of letters from corporations pledging to sever ties, emails from among the approximately 10,000 that were surveilled and phone calls from among the 8,300 that were monitored. A member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force testified about a job application found during a raid of the SHAC house in New Jersey; Lauren Gazzola, applying for a job at Angelica Kitchen, an organic, vegan restaurant in New York City, had listed as prior work experience “campaign coordinator” for SHAC.
The government seized nine computers from the SHAC house and paid an electronic forensic company $180,000 to scour every file, including those that had been deleted. On most computers was a program called PGP, or Pretty Good Privacy. It is actually really good privacy. The program uses complicated algorithms and electronic key pairs. A public key “signs” emails, and a private key unlocks them. PGP is accessible enough for anyone with basic computer skills and sophisticated enough for Fortune 500 companies. The government depicted PGP as a tool used by those who have something to hide; defense attorneys say that by this logic, the only people who draw their curtains are those about to break the law. The forensic firm ran special software nonstop for days attempting to decode emails, to no avail.
Instead, it was the defendants’ non-encrypted communications—the speeches, home protests, websites and emails on public listservs—that comprised the government’s case. SHAC’s campaign of terror was so brazen, prosecutors said, that they even posted a list of Top 20 Terror Tactics to incite their followers to violence. Fire-bombing cars, flooding homes, mailing death threats, stealing documents and spraying window cleaner into executives’ eyes are among the terrorism tactics that prosecutors said SHAC recommended. “They were the commanders who often got their foot soldiers to go out and do dirty work,” U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna said. “And like many wars or engagements, oftentime the commanders don’t even know who the foot soldiers are.”
McKenna left out a critical detail of this war plan, though. It was not created by SHAC. The Top 20 Terror Tactics list was created by the Research Defence Society, a British animal testing lobby group that supports Huntingdon. In typical SHAC style, the group republished the list online with a note about its origins.
“Their side produced the information,” it said. “We’re just helping spread the propaganda. Now don’t go getting any funny ideas.”
Earlier in the trial, defense attorney Andrew Erba warned jurors that they would read some unpleasant web postings. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “It’s much more punk rock than Beethoven.” His comment was meant as an insult, but he had subtly hit on a deeper truth, critical to any discussion of the radical animal rights and environmental movements: in order to understand them, it helps to know a bit about punk rock.
The mainstream perception of punk is, as Erba suggested, one of insolence. Leather jackets, green mohawks and middle fingers. Lots of middle fingers. It is characterized as either “Fuck the world!” nihilism or “How does my studded belt look?” teenage rebellion. Those things have all had their place in punk subcultures, of course, but there has been much more, just as there was more to hippie culture than peace signs and long hair.
It is undeniable that the punk and hardcore scenes have had a formative, lasting impact on these movements. Rod Coronado became a vegan in 1986 because of the lyrics in a song by Conflict called This Is the A.L.F.; he later formed ALF cells himself. Before he became a spokesperson for the ELF, Craig Rosebraugh’s first exposure to radical politics was through bands like Crass, Subhumans and Citizen Fish. In the 1980s, at a time when animal rights and environmental issues were far from mainstream, they were being militantly defended by many punk bands.
For the next generation of activists, 1990s hardcore was even more influential. The scene was far from homogenous, but bands like Earth Crisis helped ingrain militant animal rights and environmental politics into the culture: “Destroy the machines that kill the forests, that disfigure the earth / Ecotage when efforts to reason fail and no longer have worth.” Peter Young, one of the first activists convicted of animal enterprise terrorism, says this vegan, straight-edge culture inspired him to raid fur farms; others clearly felt the same, quoting hardcore lyrics in communiqués. Few people in the outside world knew what the word vegan meant, or how to pronounce it, but within a large segment of the hardcore scene veganism and support for animal rights was expected.
Although there is a shortage of research into punk’s impact on animal rights and environmental activism, some connections have been made. An investigation by sociologist Elizabeth Cherry, for instance, showed that “punk vegans” had stronger, better-defined and longer-lasting commitments to animal activism than “non-punk vegans.” This is not because of the bands or the fashion, Cherry argues. It is because of the community.
This is not to say there is a direct, causal, Tipper Gore–style link between the music and the movement. Punk records do not turn teens into saboteurs. It might be that the same types of people who are drawn to angry, outcast music are also drawn to angry, outcast activism.
It could also be that the punk scene has a lasting influence on those involved and shapes how they interact with the world. Perhaps the only canon of punk, true across musical styles and subcultures, is that if you want to do something, you should just go out and do it yourself. Don’t wait for permission or approval. Start a band, book a show, design a flier, publish a zine, plan a tour. If there is something that needs to be done, do it.
Five of the six SHAC defendants have ties to the punk and hardcore scenes (Kevin Kjonaas is more of a Justin Timberlake fan) and they all embrace this DIY ethic. However, instead of recording a 7" record, they decided to shut down a multinational corporation.
Self-taught, SHAC activists developed a Wall Street–level knowledge of business that made the anti-apartheid movement appear amateurish. They targeted Marsh Inc., Huntingdon’s insurance provider, because without insurance the lab couldn’t function. They targeted Bank of New York because it held many American depository receipts, which allow U.S. investors to trade on the London stock exchange. They pressured members of the board of directors to resign, and were so successful that Huntingdon appointed someone thought to be unreachable—the seventy-three-year-old owner of a cement and paper business in Pakistan. SHAC told activists to buy international phone cards. He quit in a week.
As Huntingdon’s stock plummeted, it was placed on the OTC Bulletin Board, a trading platform for riskier businesses that cannot meet the financial standards of the world’s major stock exchanges. SHAC didn’t stop there. They researched arcane financial regulations and learned that trading on the bulletin board requires market makers—go-between companies that match buyers with sellers. Without market makers a company’s stock remains dormant. Huntingdon typically used six or eight of them. In one nine-week period, SHAC picked off one market maker a week. Huntingdon’s chief financial officer, Richard Michaelson, testified that the company lost fifty market makers because of animal activists. When its final market maker cut ties, Huntingdon fell from the OTC Bulletin Board to be traded with the riskiest investments on the pink sheets, the currency of the moribund.
With each victory and each new tactic, the industry grew increasingly worried. After Huntingdon, would they move on to another lab? Or would they apply the same tactics to another industry? The closure of Huntingdon was no longer a matter of if but of when. In 1999, SHAC UK had set out to close the lab in three years. It could take a bit longer, but the global campaign was on track. Unless these activists were stopped, they would move on to the next lab, and the next, until they destroyed the animal testing industry.
Corporations fought back with court orders to restrict SHAC’s protest times and locations. Across the country, they filed restraining orders and injunctions. They even tried to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the mob law. Nothing worked. The campaign continued.
Through all these attempts, there was one thing that corporations and the government had not tried. In 1992, Congress passed an obscure law called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. It received little attention except from the meat, dairy, fur and animal experimentation industries that lobbied for it. The law created a new crime of “animal enterprise terrorism” in response to the growing frequency and severity of crimes by groups like the ALF.
Prosecutors applied it only once, in the case of Justin Samuel and Peter Young, two animal rights activists who released mink from fur farms. Other than that, it remained unused. The law was intended for the prosecution of underground activists, but the government cannot prosecute those it cannot catch. With SHAC, the government decided to try something new. Prosecutors reinterpreted the law’s requirement of “physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise” to mean causing the loss of profits; if the anonymous, underground activists could not be caught, they would go after those who vocally supported them.
Meanwhile, there was a bigger strategy unfolding. At the same time multiple government agencies were preparing to use the this law against SHAC, top FBI and Justice Department officials were testifying before Congress that the law needed to be expanded precisely because it could not be applied to SHAC. The FBI’s John Lewis told Congress, “This statute does not cover many of the activities SHAC routinely engages in on its mission to shut down HLS.” Either top law enforcement officials did not know about the largest domestic terrorism investigation in the country, or they were intentionally misleading Congress in order to secure new powers.
The corporations targeted by SHAC were some of the biggest and most powerful in the world, and their executives had connections to other powerful people. Two weeks after the SHAC protest in Little Rock against Stephens Inc., Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas introduced a bill to expand penalties in the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. “[Stephens] was not only on the back of my mind, it was on the forefront,” Hutchinson said. Arkansas Representative Marion Berry also joined the call for expanded terrorism legislation. Both Hutchison and Berry had received thousands of dollars in contributions from the Stephens political action committee and individual executives. The bill was ultimately passed by Congress as part of another bioterrorism bill.
As the government presented its case in the SHAC trial, it was revealed that Huntingdon’s general counsel, Mark Bibi, had built a relationship with FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Farrar and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles McKenna. In about seventy-five emails spanning three years, he offered website postings, news clips, and commentary on how he thought the government should pursue the case. He advised McKenna that Harper and Kjonaas would be lecturing at Long Island University, because he thought the government should monitor their speeches, and he sent an article by Steve Best, a professor of philosophy, with a warning that defense attorneys may argue that the campaign is protected by the First Amendment.
In another email, he attached a news article about the campaign. “Kevin Kjonaas is quoted in this article as saying, ‘the FBI can’t arrest us on anything, they can’t indict us on anything,’” Bibi wrote to McKenna on October 1, 2003. “Charlie, I’m counting on you to prove him wrong.”
After September 11th, President George W. Bush said the terrorists who attacked the Twin Towers did so because they hate our freedom. That, of course, is an incredibly reductionist view of the attacks and of U.S. foreign policy, but a study of First Amendment law adds some authenticity to the president’s assertion. I am not sure about Al Qaeda, but if the average American knew what types of activity the First Amendment has protected, there is a good chance they would hate our freedom, too.
The history of the First Amendment is one of protecting the vulgar, the crass, the wayward and unhinged. It has protected Clarence Brandenburg, a Ku Klux Klan leader, when he called for “revengeance” against the courts, Congress and the president, while Klansmen at the rally shouted, “Bury the niggers.” At a very different kind of rally, Robert Watts told antiwar protesters that he would refuse service if drafted to Vietnam. “If they ever make me carry a rifle,” he said, “the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.”
In segregated Mississippi, an NAACP field organizer named Charles Evers helped organize a boycott of white-owned businesses. “Store-watchers” monitored who shopped there. They printed their names in the newspaper and read them aloud at churches. Violating the boycott had serious repercussions: people had been beaten, others had bullets fired through their windows. It was in this climate that Evers warned, “If we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna break your damn neck.” NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. was strikingly similar to the SHAC case in that it involved political hyperbole, personalized targeting, and a campaign with both legal and illegal elements. The Supreme Court ruled that Evers’s speech was protected by the Constitution.
This is how high the bar has been set in First Amendment law. It does not mean the bar is unreachable. In 2002, a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment did not protect a website called the Nuremberg Files, which posted pictures of doctors who performed abortions, with their names underneath the photos, and crossed off the names of three of them as they were killed. In another case, an appeals court ruled that Paladin Press was not protected in its publication of Hit Man: A Technical Manual. The how-to style book was used in a triple murder, and in a ruling troubling to free speech and journalism organizations, the court decided that the book publisher could be sued for aiding and abetting the crimes. The rulings in these cases remain extremely controversial because they butt against one of the most important tests established by the Supreme Court to separate political hyperbole from unprotected speech. As established in the Brandenburg case, threatening speech is protected up to the point it incites others to “imminent and lawless action.”
At Josh Harper’s speech at the University of Washington in 2001, the ten attendees—including one FBI agent—were not incited. They left calmly. There was a much larger audience at the Little Rock speech, and his rhetoric was more fiery. He told the crowd, “What we’re here to convince you to do is to take the personal initiative to shut this fucking lab down.” People sat and listened, they clapped, and then the next speaker stepped to the podium. There was a riot that weekend, but it was a police riot; when activists refused to enter designated “protest pens,” believing that the First Amendment says nothing of speaking from cages, cops in riot gear used batons and pepper spray.
During the SHAC trial, the government called only one witness who actually committed crimes in the name of the campaign. Jeffrey Dillbone learned about Huntingdon when he was fifteen years old. He read about black faxing on a non-SHAC website and decided to fax Stephens using his parents’ machine and a phone card.
He visited the SHAC website on a daily basis. The group posted calendars of events. Each day of the week had a different way to pressure businesses, including protests, phone calls and emails. On some days, SHAC advertised electronic civil disobedience. Activists could use computer software to overload corporate websites by sending, at one high point, 800,000 requests for Huntingdon’s website in a three-hour period. The SHAC website provided a link to an external website and told activists that if they chose to participate they could click the link at a specified time. The notice came with a warning: “This is not a game. Please read the action justification before starting. Also read the warning of the possible consequences.”
Dillbone testified that he learned about electronic civil disobedience approximately one year before participating, and that SHAC posted notices about the actions weeks in advance. He had ample time to think about his actions. In the words of Hal Haveson, Jake Conroy’s attorney, “imminence” means that speech sets fire to reason. Dillbone read the disclaimer, thought about it, downloaded the program, blocked his phone number, and participated. SHAC, he said, did not set fire to his reason.
Ultimately, prosecutors argued, it does not matter whether SHAC committed the crimes, nor does it matter whether they incited others to do so. The defendants knew that listing individuals on their website made them a target for underground groups, and when crimes were committed SHAC supported them, because they gave the group bargaining power. SHAC intended for those targeted to perceive the website as a true threat, because through fear came power. It is an ambitious legal argument: past crimes, by other individuals, against other targets, can be a true threat to future targets without meeting the incitement standard. A ruling in the government’s favor would be a historic decision on the limits of free speech.
The courts have not made exceptions to the First Amendment lightly or without controversy, believing that the amount of protection afforded to those on the fringes reflects the freedoms of those at the center. In many ways, First Amendment rulings are not really about protecting unsavory speech but about refusing to prohibit it. They are not about the case at hand, but the one that follows: what the government may silence next if the bulwarks at the fringes of free speech are not relentlessly defended.
Because of this, the arc of First Amendment history has bent toward protecting the rights of the Brandenburgs, the Wattses, the Everses and, defense attorneys argue, the SHACs. It is a very long arc, though, for each landmark decision came from higher courts long after the speakers lost at trial.
Lunch breaks gave jurors and defendants about thirty minutes to find some food and rush back to the courtroom. Even if they’d had more time, it probably wouldn’t have helped. For all the things Trenton makes, vegan food is not one of them.
During one break in the trial, I visit the Trenton Federal Courthouse “cafeteria” with some of the defendants. They know the routine, and so does the woman behind the counter. The “animal rights terrorists” have a special menu not listed alongside the other items on the rectangular white board with black block-letter stickers.
“Soy hot dog?,” she asks, smiling. She snaps on a pair of latex gloves, pulls limp, flesh-colored tofu wieners from their clear plastic wrapper, briefly microwaves them on paper plates, and plops them on bleached white bread. We each pay about $4.
“I already feel like I’m in prison,” someone says. There probably won’t be tofu hot dogs in prison.
There isn’t much talking during lunch. The tactic, I believe, is to finish the Tofu Pup and leave the crinkling linoleum, folding chairs and discolored wall paneling behind as quickly as possible. We head out the door and toward the elevators that lead back to the courtroom. As we pass the metal detectors, a group of attorneys stops us. One of them asks: “Are you all law students?”
What else could they be? Andy Stepanian wears spotless suits, often with a bright pink shimmering tie. Jake Conroy looks like who he is: a clean-cut kid from Connecticut more comfortable in cargo pants and a hoodie than court clothes. Darius Fullmer works as a paramedic in New Jersey. Josh Harper wears his thick glasses and carries a stack of skateboard magazines with his court papers. Lauren Gazzola fits the law student image the most, perhaps because she rescheduled the LSAT after cops stormed her house with guns drawn, and she scored in the 97th percentile.
“No,” Gazzola says, smiling, and without hesitation. “We’re on trial for terrorism.”
The security guard scanning briefcases on a six-foot conveyor belt laughs.
Before Harper steps down from the witness stand, he speaks about how he began to rethink some of the flashpoint crimes of the campaign, including the stink bombs at the Bank of America tower in Seattle. He applauded the incident in speeches, until he learned that the intense stench induced nausea and fainting. Even more controversial were the 2003 bombings of two corporations, Chiron and Shaklee, in California. A new group called the Revolutionary Cells claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying, “This is the endgame for the animal killers, and if you choose to stand with them you will be dealt with accordingly.” The Chiron bombings took place while employees were inside, and the pipe bombs used against Shaklee were wrapped in nails. The crimes could have injured someone, Harper says, and actions like that are detrimental to the campaign and contrary to the beliefs of the defendants.
Those were not the only actions published on the website that made him and other activists uncomfortable. One anonymous communiqué targeted Theresa Kushner, a senior veterinarian at Huntingdon. It described Kushner’s panties, which the authors had obtained—Fruit of the Loom, size eight, white with purple flowers, and soiled with her blood. They were advertised for auction on a fetish website, and the communiqué said: “Even if the item gets taken down from bidding, you can be assured, Terry, tonight some pervert will be jacking off to your dirty underwear.” It ominously ended with, “Oh and did we forget to mention that all interested buyers will also receive your address and telephone number and an invitation to come over?”
Outside of the courtroom, Harper and the others will tell me they had backed themselves into a corner with the website. From the beginning, they established a policy of publishing everything sent to them, regardless of whether they felt it was effective or moral. Many animal rights activists passionately believed that SHAC organizers had no right to question underground activists who risked their freedom. The publishing policy was designed to insulate SHAC from any accusations of censorship. The Kushner communiqué, in particular, made them question this decision. Supporting animal liberations and sabotage, Harper says, should never necessitate support for veiled rape threats.
After Harper steps down, the jury hears from other animal rights activists about their activism and why they took part in home demonstrations. They are restricted in what they can say. Judge Anne Thompson prohibits them from speaking about Huntingdon’s animal welfare violations. She had allowed Brian Cass, managing director of Huntingdon, to say the lab’s work saves lives, but she refuses to allow Dr. Ray Greek, one the leading opponents of animal experimentation, to testify. “It would be a confusion,” she says.
Jurors are allowed to hear about Lauren Gazzola’s involvement in a 2002 protest at the home of Rob Harper, a Marsh executive. She chanted “What goes around comes around,” and a group of about ten people responded, “Burn his house to the ground.” The chant was used four times during a ten-second period, while protesters laughed and police watched. Gazzola yelled that the police could not protect Rob Harper at all hours, which is exactly what Charles Evers said of boycott violators. The jury is not allowed to hear that a Massachusetts court dismissed Gazzola’s charges on Constitutional grounds.
A trial that was expected to last three months winds down in two weeks. The entire defense team, believing that the government had clearly failed to make its case, takes one day to present its witnesses and evidence.
Defense attorneys are about to rest their case when a final witness unexpectedly speaks.
After Kevin Kjonaas relinquished his position as president of SHAC, Pam Ferdin took the helm. As a child, Ferdin appeared in many sixties and seventies television programs and was the voice of Lucy on Charlie Brown cartoons. Later she stepped into a different spotlight. Her husband, Dr. Jerry Vlasak, has made international news for his advocacy of physical violence against animal experimenters. Just a few months before trial, a Senate committee held a hearing titled “Eco-Terrorism Specifically Examining Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty.” The committee invited Vlasak to testify. The defendants and SHAC supporters argued that nothing positive could come from it. The hearing was a transparent effort to smear the defendants as terrorists as they awaited trial. Vlasak went forward with the testimony, speaking about SHAC and the campaign to close Huntingdon and then, in the next breath, saying that murder would be “morally justifiable.” “The animal rights movement,” he said, “has been notoriously nonviolent up to this point.”
It is Ferdin’s right as SHAC president to take the stand. She feels the trial has been unfair since jury selection, when the judge dismissed a juror for being vegetarian but allowed jurors with ties to companies SHAC targeted. Ferdin says she wants to counter the misleading statements of witnesses and prosecutors.
The other defendants have pleaded against this. With Ferdin comes too much baggage. Throughout the trial the defense has attempted to make clear that, despite all the support of property destruction, SHAC always stopped short of supporting physical violence. Prosecutors tried to align the group with David Blenkinsop, a man who beat Huntingdon’s Brian Cass in England, but witnesses made clear that SHAC condemned the crime. Ferdin’s comments in support of violence will undoubtedly be brought into the trial, the defendants believe, and they will only help the government’s case. They feel it is not a decision that Ferdin, who faces no prison time, has the right to make.
Ferdin testifies anyway, and, as expected, prosecutors question her about media interviews where she said it was only a matter of time before animal rights activists resort to physical violence. She was quoted by Salon as saying that she loves legal battles like the SHAC trial because they are a public education opportunity. If the SHAC defendants are convicted, “People, I think, are going to get hurt,” she said. “There’s going to be a lot of violence.”
The defendants face a double-edged sword as attorneys present their closing arguments and the jurors begin deliberations. If they lose, they will go to prison and be labeled “terrorists” for the rest of their lives. If they win, it could become the foundation of an even harsher political crackdown, as corporations continue lobbying for expanded terrorism legislation to stop the campaign.
On March 2, 2006, after three days of deliberation, the jury returns a verdict, for all defendants and on all counts: guilty.
Days later, industry groups signal what is to come. David Martosko of the Center for Consumer Freedom, a mouthpiece for the restaurant industry, says the government should build on the victory against SHAC and take aggressive action against mainstream organizations like PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. He calls these national organizations “farm teams for the eco-terror problem.”
“This,” he says, “is just the starting gun.”