Anthony J. Nocella II
Anarchism is an ideology that has long been (deliberately) misrepresented by the government, the media, educators, and indeed by other “radical” activists. Claiming to be an anarchist or being labeled an “anarchist” carries with it serious stigmatization. Violent, reactionary, deviant, and unruly are some of the many labels used to describe anarchists (see Bowen, 2004; Chomsky, 2005; Day, 2004). For those who look beyond this dominant propaganda, to see what anarchism actually represents, it comes as no surprise that Critical Animal Studies (CAS), together with the animal liberation movement more broadly, are both greatly influenced by anarchist praxis. This influence can be demonstrated in many ways, not least through appreciating the commitment to animal liberation within key areas of the anarchist canon. For example, Torres, a social anarchist, argues that anarchists need to be vegan: “As a needless and unnecessary form of hierarchy, anarchists should reject the consumption, enslavement, and subjugation of [nonhuman] animals for human ends, and identify it as yet another oppressive aspect of the relations of capital and a needless form of domination” (2007, p. 130). Furthermore, Brian Dominick, who coined the term “veganarchist” in his pamphlet “Animal Liberation and Social Revolution: A Vegan Perspective on Anarchism or an Anarchist Perspective on Veganism” (1997), writes that
[l]ikewise, many vegans and animal liberationists are being influenced by anarchist thought and its rich tradition. This is evidenced by growing hostility among some animal lib activists towards the statist, capitalist, sexist, racist and ageist Establishment which has been escalating the intensity of its war not only on nonhuman animals, but also on their human advocates.
…
Besides our far-reaching vision, anarchists and animal liberationists share strategical methodology. … But unlike liberals and progressives, whose objectives are limited to reforms, we are willing to admit that real change will only be brought about if we add destructive force to our creative transformation of oppressive society [para. 2 and 3].
This essay, written from an anarchist criminology perspective, is dedicated to explaining what anarchism is and how it should be related to animal liberation. Having first established a working understanding of the grounds that anarchism is based on, the essay then draws attention to the most well-known anarchist-influenced organization within the animal liberation movement: the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). In particular, the discussion is concerned with examining how the actions of the ALF imply a critique of the concept of property. Following this, the essay suggests why the animal liberation movement, to be consistent with an anarchist perspective, must also oppose the current criminal justice system, which is punitive and fuels the prison industrial complex, and other forms of oppression such as racism and ableism. The essay concludes by proposing some alternative solutions to the current criminal justice system.
“Anarchism” is not easy to define because it is anti-dogmatic but defined by common principles. The theory of anarchism was first introduced and defined by William Godwin, who wrote Political Justice in 1793. Another influential theorist at that time was Johann Schmidt, also known as Max Stirner. Stirner wrote The Ego and His Own (1845), which examined the complex relationship between the individual and society and which argued that individuals are responsible for being active members in their communities and that communities are made of individuals working together. A third key anarchist of the 19th century was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who most notably examined the definition of property and participated in electoral politics and the French Revolution. While these individuals were important in laying the foundation of anarchism, Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), and Emma Goldman (1869–1940) are arguably the most influential of all anarchists in shaping how we understand anarchism today. Mikhail Bakunin (1970) writes about freedom in God and the State, “I cannot claim and feel myself free except in the presence of and with regard to other men. … I am truly free only when all human beings around me, men and women alike are equally free” (Guerin, 2005, p. 151). This quote reinforces and reflects current intersectional multi-issued movements, including Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and Idle No More; hence we can see how these theorists have aided in shaping today’s movements. Oppression is systematic; therefore, it affects everyone in society, not just those who are directly targeted by a particular form of oppression.
While one must be cautious when discussing “anarchism” writ large, most anarchists have two important attributes in common. First, they believe that hierarchical structures of authority do not allow human beings to participate in social and political change via direct democracy. Second, notwithstanding the existence of anarcho-capitalists, anarchists are anti-capitalist because capitalism promotes divisions and hierarchies among peoples in terms of their identities, intellects, and abilities, as well as divides people into classes and class strata based on their relationship to the means of production (see Berkman, 2003; Chomsky, 2005; Guerin, 1970). Anarchists believe that hierarchies, such as the state, are structured to oppress and subvert individual and group rights.
It does not take much imagination to realize why anarchists oppose the existence of the state. States, often in the name of security, freedom, and economic development, have employed mass violence. Moreover, states control their citizens through a top-down hierarchical coercive and punitive justice system, and when citizens dissent, they are quickly repressed. Because of their inherently hierarchical nature, states also sustain traditional power structures, which do not allow their citizens to make decisions. Anarchists argue that all individuals need to have autonomy, freedom, the chance to participate in policy making, and, when necessary, the opportunity to build community through activism (Bowen, 2005; Purkis & Bowen, 2005; Guerin, 1970).
Power, the ability to create change, is a central concept with which anarchists engage (Rabinow, 1984). Power is not necessarily based on the strength or the size of one’s military force, but the ability to influence individuals through information or government propaganda as well as to build collective experience that can build a social movement to resist government control. Roger N. Baldwin, editor of Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings by Peter Kropotkin (2002), explains that control of morality by institutions is also a form of authority. He states, “This natural moral sense [mutual aid] was perverted, Kropotkin says, by the superstitions surrounding law, religion and authority, deliberately cultivated by conquerors, exploiters and priests for their own benefit. Morality has therefore become the instrument of ruling classes to protect their privileges” (Baldwin, 2002, p. 79).
Anarchism is against authoritarianism, domination and hierarchies, and anarchists such as Kropotkin promoted equality (Baldwin, 2002, p. 52). However, more recently, debates in anarchism have been more critical of the concept of equality because it is a socially constructed measurement which, in promoting sameness, often can be seen as promoting a restrictive idea of normalcy (Ben-Moshe, Hill, Nocella, & Templer, 2009). For example, disability anarchism, rooted in anarchism and disability studies, challenges the social construction of equality which promotes normalcy, arguing that respect for difference needs to be the basis on which we challenge hierarchy. People with disabilities have also been historically viewed as property and placed in mental wards where they have been tested and experimented on (Corrigan, 2006). Labels have been used to stigmatize those with disabilities for the purpose of controlling, dominating, oppressing, and repressing (Corrigan, 2006). When critiquing capitalism and promoting an alternative economic system, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, as well as anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1972), argued that cooperation within species promotes survival and security. This critiques individualism, competition and the understanding of evolution in terms of a competitive struggle in which only the fittest will survive. Kropotkin’s research and studies of indigenous peoples in Siberia guided him to the conclusion that not all human societies are based on competition and individualism, but rather on supportive and voluntary cooperation. Kropotkin writes:
ANARCHISM, the no-government system of socialism, has a double origin. It is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economic and the political fields which characterize the nineteenth century, and especially its second part. In common with all socialists, the anarchists hold that private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had its time; that it is condemned to disappear; and that all requisites for production must, and will, become the common property of society, and be managed in common by the producers of wealth [2002, p. 46].
In kind, Proudhon’s 1840 book What Is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government, first coined the phrase “property is theft.” Proudhon writes:
Had I to answer the following question: What is slavery? And answer with a single word—Murder—my reasoning would be grasped immediately. I would not need any protracted discourse to demonstrate that the power to strip a man of his mind, his will, his personality, is a power over life and death, and that making a man a slave is tantamount to murder. So why cannot I answer the other query: What is property? In similar vein—Theft—without being assured that I would not be heeded, even though this second proposition is merely a re-casting of the first?
This argument of Proudhon has been put into action by many subsequent activists, including the famous Vietnam War protestors the Berrigan Brothers, who burned draft cards and military documents from a recruitment office (Lynd & Lynd, 1995). Anarchist-motivated property destruction, has, in my analysis, is motivated by the following: (1) symbolic protest (flag burning), (2) liberation (breaking a lock to remove an imprisoned animal), (3) economic sabotage (burning down a McDonalds, and (4) resistance (gluing locks, destroying computers, or burning documents). These four motivations can be sought simultaneously and are not incongruent (more on property destruction below).
Of course, mention of property destruction leads to consideration of what states have determined counts as crimes. Indeed, anarchists have long been interested in criminology, the study of crime, discipline, and punishment. Early anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin have argued against state law and authority to control and discipline the people. Anarchist criminology emerged in the 1980s and 1990s through the work of Jeff Ferrell, Larry Tifft, Dennis Sullivan, and others who sought to challenge centralized state authority and the binary of criminal and victim. They advocated for community-based, inclusive direct democracy to determine discipline for harms done (Ferrell, 2002). Anarchist criminology was associated with the development of critical criminology that emerged in the 1970s, and which was influenced by critical and Marxist theory (DeKeseredy and Perry, 2006; Lynch, Michalowski, and Grove, 2006; Taylor, Walton, and Young 1974; Michalowski, 1996). The difference between anarchist criminology and critical criminology is similar to the primary difference between anarchism and Marxism: while anarchists do not want centralized authority and state, Marxism supports the idea of authority by suggesting that the means of production and the state should be controlled by the proletariat and collectively owned.
Animal liberation anarchists argue that by seeing humans as the only beings with value to consider when determining how a community should carry out a task or develop rules is speciesist. Speciesism is the oppression of nonhuman animals by the human species, first coined by Richard D. Ryder in the early 1970s.
Animal liberation anarchists view power through authoritarianism and domination carried out by humans in testing poisonous substances on nonhuman animals, in killing nonhuman domesticated animals for food, and/or in exploiting nonhuman animals for human entertainment. David A. Nibert, in Animal Rights Human Rights: Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation (2002), writes that those who relate speciesism to racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, ableism, and other oppressions “are correct when they assert that speciesism and other forms of oppression are comparable” (p. 8). However, the oppressions are related because of authoritarian institutions, individuals, and systems of domination, not because the experiences of oppression are completely parallel. It is for this reason that many argue against directly comparing human slavery, Native American genocide, and the Holocaust to animal (mis)treatment; they are all different experiences and should be treated as distinct and separate. Indeed, one of those components that differentiates human oppression from animal oppression is that the animal liberation movement is populated by those who fight for other species, such as the Animal Liberation Front.
Established in 1976 in Britain, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an international, decentralized, underground, militant organization with open membership to all and no leaders; rather, the identities of those part of the ALF are purposely withheld from the public. The ALF is the most well-known anarchist influenced group in the animal rights movement. Its organizational structure, symbolism, support network, known arrested members, and communiques arise from the history of anarchist activism. And like many anarchists and anarchist organizations that are politically repressed, the ALF has been identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the top domestic terrorist organization in the U.S. despite its clearly defined rules. The Animal Liberation Front guidelines, which serve as the ALF’s foundational doctrine, are as follows:
1. To liberate animals from places of abuse, i.e., laboratories, factory farms, fur farms, etc., and place them in good homes where they may live out their natural lives, free from suffering.
2. To inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals.
3. To reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors, by performing nonviolent direct actions and liberations.
4. To take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and nonhuman [Best & Nocella, 2004].
It is important to note here that since the ALF’s establishment, the organization has engaged in many diverse forms of direct action, yet the group has not harmed one human being.
By destroying property and causing economic sabotage to help free animals in the name of liberation, the ALF provides a compelling critique of corporate capitalist society (Best & Nocella, 2004). The ALF’s critique of capitalism is rooted in anarchist and politically-progressive literature and ideas, which is supported by the field of CAS (Best & Nocella, 2004; Best, Nocella, Kahn, Gigliotti, and Kemmerer, 2007; Best, 2009a; Best, 2009b). The ALF targets companies, corporations, universities, and other institutions that exploit, torture, and kill nonhuman animals (Best & Nocella, 2004). Why, then, is this group at the top of the domestic terror list? Property.
Property has a long and important history, especially if one is concerned with social justice, freedom, and economics. Property is defined as anything that a person or group of people owns. Throughout history, property included, but was not limited to, land, plants, bodies of water, air space, ideas, people in debt, People of Color, women, children, nonhuman animals, concepts, and physical entities such as phones, cars, and domiciles. Ownership is constituted by the legal claim of possession and the political and social acceptance of such a claim. Ownership also includes responsibility for one’s property. For instance, if one’s dog attacks a child, that person would be responsible for the actions of his or her “property.” Politically, relations of ownership have been a way to dominate others by individuals, groups, and systems. The concept of private property has been strongly critiqued by anarchists, for the above reasons, but also because it provides an individual ownership, and thus domination, over something or someone, rather than the community having rights to it. In sum, private property ownership trumps the importance and needs of the community. As Bob Torres writes,
Much as the private property involved in human labor represents the exploitation of humans, the private property involved in human labor represents the exploitation of humans, the private property involved in animal production represents the systematic exploitation of [nonhuman] animals over time [2007, p. 66].
Therefore, the labeling of human and nonhuman animals as private property allows for exploitation for economic, social, religious, and political reasons, including profit. Nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp of The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973), along with the ALF and anarchists, do not see property destruction as violent. Steve Best argues that CAS “challenges not only the property status of animals, but the institution of (corporate controlled) private property itself. Therefore, it is crucial that we continue to develop alternative, broader, alliance-based, bridge-building, anti-capitalist, anti-hierarchical social movements” (2009b, p. 44).
CAS and the ALF argue that nonhuman animals are not property from a moral and socio-political perspective. Gary Francione (1995) argues that animals will be liberated when they are not seen as property in the legal sense:
The normativity of the law as it concerns animals supports structures regulating animal use that focus our attention on notions like “humane” treatment and “unnecessary” suffering and away from the status of animals as property and the primary consequence of that status: that these terms have completely different legal meanings from the ones they have in ordinary language [p. 199].
In contrast, anarchists argue that social change should be based on morality, not law, which can write rights into effect and, more importantly, write them out.
The FBI identifies the animal rights movement as extremist due to its challenge to the numerous multi-billion dollar industrial complexes serving as the foundation of much of Western society, including the agricultural, medical (including universities and pharmaceutical companies), fashion, technological (including the test and use of animal by-products to develop many types of plastics and computer boards), and entertainment (such as theme parks, zoos, and circuses) industries (Best & Nocella 2004; Best & Nocella 2006a; Lovitz 2010). From the ALF’s perspective, maintaining corporate power and the supremacy of capitalism is more important to the U.S. government and intelligence agencies than protecting the lives of nonhuman animals. The ALF resists and challenges these dominative and oppressive roles and systems, and it is for these reasons that they are considered a threat. Let us be very clear on this: their status is not due to directly threatening people, the government, or the democratic process. While they break the law and are criminals under the law, this should not warrant them being the number one top domestic threat in the U.S. (Del Gandio and Nocella 2014).
Capitalism is rooted in competition and values all things as products and has become one of the most individualist and exploitive economic systems in history (Amster, DeLeon, Fernandez, Nocella, & Shannon, 2009; Harvey, 2007; Klein, 2007). Capitalism places emphasis on accumulating wealth, instead of on community interests, collaboration, group-building, team building, or win-win resolutions where no one loses or is exploited (Kriesberg, 2007). Capitalism promotes a win-lose competitive resolution, while anarchism, grounded in direct democracy and mutual aid, promotes, as noted above, a win-win dynamic if attended to with care (Harvey, 2006; Parenti, 1995; Yuen, Burton-Rose, & Katsiaficas, 2004). Supporters of the capitalist system—such as CEOs of banks and corporations—have become so competitive and interested in profit that the economic leaders within capitalism influence the system to put a value on everything, including birds, trees, water, air, people, and land (Best & Nocella, 2004; Best & Nocella, 2006; Bodley, 2005; Kahn, 2010; Kovel, 2002); we have seen this with the privatization of water in South American countries. In effect, if capitalism has its way, everyone and everything has the potential to become the property of someone else. The definition of property is important for the animal liberation movement, specifically because nonhuman animals are legally deemed property, a cultural norm that animal advocates vehemently argue is wrong. Further, as I have already noted, while anarchists view property as theft, proponents of capitalism and other monetized economic systems identify everything as property with economic value. Liat Ben-Moshe, a scholar of disability anarchism, believes that “destroying property is a form of economic boycott” (personal communication, January 20, 2011). Michael Loadenthal has noted the following in defense of radical anarchist and underground activist movements: “even when these movements have used ‘extreme’ tactics such as use of explosives to destroy property, they’ve taken extreme efforts to not target people; to not injure people and to not instill fear in people” (personal communication, February 16, 2011).
The significant difference between anarchists and capitalists is that the former oppose the concept of property, while the latter view everything as property (Amster et al., 2009). Further, capitalism puts a higher value on material goods such as cars, houses, and clothes than it does on living creatures such as redwood trees, endangered owls, and seals. In a personal interview with Dara Lovitz about the tradition of anarchism, she stated, “If you’re just destroying property and no persons are harmed, I don’t think that’s violent” (January 22, 2011). To defend this argument, Colin Salter, in a personal interview, provided the example of Nazi resisters destroying property such as fences, train tracks, and military equipment (January 30, 2011). Colin noted that factories used to support the German war machine were a target of Danish resistance. Sarat Colling gives the example of members of the Underground Railroad in the U.S. destroying property such as chains and living quarters in order to free the enslaved (personal communication, January 22, 2011).
To add to Loadenthal’s comments about not instilling fear, Lovitz stresses, “I don’t want to restrict violence to just when your actions result in physical harm [of a being], but threatening physical harm, I think also could be considered violent” (personal communication, January 22, 2011). She goes on to explain in more detail that
harming could mean the body of a human or nonhuman, so if you’re kicking a dog, you’re causing physical harm to the body of the nonhuman, so that’s violent. But as for the destruction of property—other property because technically your dogs are your property, and when I say property, I’m talking about non-living property—the destruction of non-living property I don’t see as violent, again unless you do it in a way that causes the person to think that you’re going to hurt them next. For example, throwing a vase at somebody’s head and missing—just because you missed, it shouldn’t be called a nonviolent act [personal communication, January 22, 2011].
While Lovitz is a lawyer, her philosophy of nonhuman animals and property is clearly rooted in anarchist ideas. Jenny Grubbs, an anarchist and animal liberationist, believes that the notion of property stems from legal systems and speciesism (personal communication, January 30, 2011). She argues that nonhuman animals should not be considered property, as slaves once were, for the purpose of economic exploitation or domination, such as in the case of “wives to their husbands” or “dogs to their human owners” (personal communication, January 30, 2011).
A contemporary example of a relationship in which one party is identified by the other as property is the prison system. In the U.S. and in other countries, prisoners are the property of corrections departments. Although the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolished slavery as many think of it today, slavery is sanctioned in the U.S. if one has been “duly convicted of a crime.” Consequently, inmates are used as free or cheap labor within prisons, making products for companies as varied as Victoria’s Secret and Microsoft. Prisoners, identified in American history as the property of an owner, live that same dynamic today, but the owner is the state. Prisoners in the U.S., of which there are more than two million, are in the custody of the state (Davis, 2003). This is why the prison industrial complex is one of the largest growing domestic industries in the U.S. and contracts cheap labor to corporations (Davis, 2003; Gilmore, 2007).
Anarchists are against all forms of unjust repression and punitive justice, which would, or should, certainly include prisons and the death penalty. This is important because although the animal rights movement does an excellent job of identifying injustices toward nonhuman animals, it does a poor job of promoting justice among humans. Like many social justice activists, animal rights activists perpetuate injustices by uncritically calling for the punishment and imprisonment of those found responsible for cruel and unlawful treatment of nonhuman animals. To use the current criminal justice system to punish those who abuse other species is to support a punitive system that has historically and currently exploited People of Color and people with disabilities.
With the rise of animal advocacy as an intersectional social justice cause, advocates need to address what should be done with those who illegally abuse nonhuman animals and adopt an anarchist analysis of crime and justice. This question of “punishment” must be critically asked by animal advocates who also fight for racial and disability justice because anyone who opposes racism, slavery, and ableism should also oppose prisons and the current criminal justice system. Why? Because injustice does not exist in a vacuum, and to truly understand how oppression works, one should analyze the many ways in which it is manifested. Therefore, anti-racist animal advocates should not support the conviction, sentencing, and incarceration of those who abuse nonhuman animals. While many individuals and organizations advocate for harsh prison sentences for animal abusers, this viewpoint, in effect, promotes slavery, a social injustice inherently connected to mainstream views of nonhuman animals as products and machinery. With so many organizations and individuals within animal rights supporting the current criminal justice system, it must be asked why they would support the same oppressive, repressive and violent institutional structure that labels animal advocates as “terrorists.”
The answer is that many animal advocates fail to critique the criminal justice system because they do not understand that this system and the oppression of nonhuman animals are interconnected. Just as nonhuman animals are cheap labor and often property of the state, so too are human prisoners. Beyond just providing free labor to corporations, prisoners are also forced to work in slaughterhouses and on dairy farms. Finally, the criminal justice system protects the very corporations that animal advocates contest. Animal advocates’ protests and boycotts, once protected under the 1st Amendment, are now considered illegal and a domestic terrorist threat under laws such as the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) (Del Gandio & Nocella, 2014). Those activists who adopt such once-legal tactics now frequently find themselves arrested, charged, and convicted as criminals and sometimes even as terrorists. As a result, many animal advocates have begun to educate themselves about political repression and unjust laws such as the AETA and ag-gag laws, but many still support the current U.S. justice system via their calls for the imprisonment of people who abuse nonhuman animals.
Michael Vick, an African American football player, has been vilified for running a dog fighting ring by PETA; Native Americans have been critiqued for hunting by the Sea Shepherd Society; and the Chinese are regularly castigated for eating dog meat by PETA. Animal rights campaigns against historically-oppressed racial groups have been launched by both radical grassroots organizations as well as by corporate international nonprofits. To be clear, Sea Shepherd and PETA did not actively develop campaigns targeting People of Color such as African Americans, Native Americans, and the Chinese. However, their subtle rhetoric against an African American accused of animal abuse, their vilification of native people’s hunting traditions, and their emphasis on Chinese food culture is inarguably based on (perhaps unconscious) racist ideologies.
When Michael Vick’s dog fighting ring first hit the news, social media was abuzz with commentary focusing on his wealth and status, as if those two facts remove race from the reason he was targeted. As one might expect, the law and race are inherently connected when considering this case. If we examine illegal animal entertainment in the United States, we find cock fighting culturally associated in popular media with Latino communities and dog fighting with African American communities. Compare these standards to legal animal entertainment such as bull riding, zoos, rodeos, and marine aquariums, which are seen by many as mere family fun and often advertised with the depiction of smiling white parents and their excited white children.
There are two reasons beyond animal protection here that explain the selection of these issues by advocacy groups. First, the animal rights movement is predominantly comprised of white people and emerged from colonial Western countries. (Of course, intersectional animal rights activists of the West should not be forgotten. For example, Frances Power Cobbe was a suffragist from the U.K. who also founded the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in 1898.) Second, targeting the oppressed leads to easily winnable campaigns (a.k.a. the low-hanging fruit). This emphasis on animal rights as Euro-American movement is not to erase the People of Color in the movement, as such a general focus on whiteness might lead one to conclude. In fact, within the last decade, more People of Color have joined the cause, and many of them are challenging racism within the movement from de-colonial perspectives. In this context, focusing on North and Latin America alone, some of these key scholar-activists include Sarat Colling, Breeze Harper, David Pellow, Alma Williams, Kevin Tillman, Lauren Ornelas, Riaz Sayani-Mulji, Nekeisha Alayna Alexis, Federico Alfredo Berghmans, Daniela Romero Waldhorn, Anastasia Yarbrough, Andrea Padilla Villarraga. Veronica Guevara-Lovgren, Rosie Little Thunder, Linda Fisher, and Reyna Crow.
Another example of white domination of the animal rights movement is the treatment of activists arrested or imprisoned for their role in the modern “green scare,” a term used to address the political repression of environmentalists and animal advocates. Not a single radical animal liberation activist has been assassinated, put on Death Row, shot by police, or given a life sentence. While activists have certainly been repressed, most of the animal and eco-activists who have been arrested are privileged, white, able-bodied males with college degrees who are in a position to employ lawyers and successfully use the media and family support to their advantage because they do not have to deal with the stigmas associated with particular racial identities. I suspect that if a group of Black youths bombed a McDonalds for political reasons in the name of the ALF, they would likely receive much harsher penalties than their white peers. Recent racial unrest in the U.S. resulting from police brutality against men of color leads me to this conclusion (for example, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and Oscar Grant).
It is for this reason that many Black liberationists claim all Black individuals in prison are de facto political prisoners because prison is a modern form of slavery. As previously noted, we only need to read the 13th Amendment to prove that slavery in the U.S. exists in prisons (Davis, 2003). Along with the usual targets, these forms of oppression should be challenged by animal activists who acknowledge the interconnected nature of oppression. They should fight against all forms of oppression because they are interconnected; therefore, they should protest unjust laws, police-imposed curfews, surveillance cameras in predominantly poor communities of color, and the daily police sweeps traumatizing marginalized communities. No one should expect anyone to fight for others such as nonhuman animals if those in question are engaged in daily struggles for basic survival.
The “green scare,” concerned as it is with a few select animal and eco-activists, is simply not comparable to the repression that People of Color and people who are poor face on a daily basis. Ida Hammer (2010) cogently explains the dilemma of comparing the oppression of vegans to that of oppressed racial or sexual groups:
As such, I believe it is inappropriate when we use how other groups are the targets of oppression to describe being vegan or to use their struggles against oppression as a metaphor for the vegan movement. I say this for the simple reason that vegans as a group are not ourselves the targets of oppression [para. 1].
Animal advocates may be politically repressed, but we are not ourselves oppressed. Animal rights activists must remember that their activism is voluntary. People choose to join the animal advocacy movement. They are not forced to join to survive; hence, this is not a struggle for them, but a movement for other species. Their children will not grow up to be incarcerated, beaten, or given a second-rate education because their parents are animal advocates.
As anarchism is by nature not exclusionary, focus on the culturally marginalized should be a primary goal of anarchist animal advocates. This brings me to further review ableism in the animal rights and liberation movement. To begin, another reason prisons and punitive justice are not the solution to ending animal abuse is that many of those in prisons and jails have mental disabilities. Nicholas Kristof (2014) writes,
Psychiatric disorders are the only kind of sickness that we as a society regularly respond to not with sympathy but with handcuffs and incarceration. And as more humane and cost-effective ways of treating mental illness have been cut back, we increasingly resort to the law-enforcement toolbox: jails and prisons [para. 3].
In fact, “there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans in prisons and jails than in state psychiatric hospitals” (Lewis, para. 1, 2014). Moreover, “those individuals’ conditions often deteriorate while they are incarcerated” (Lewis para. 1, 2014). Consequently, when they are released from prison, they have more personal struggles and social conflicts, which often lead them in three directions: to homelessness, to suicide, or to re-incarceration. The National Alliance on Mental Illness reports that “in 2006, 1,623 children were incarcerated in Minnesota’s juvenile justice system. Nationally, approximately 70 percent of youth in juvenile justice systems experience mental health disorders, with 20 percent experiencing a severe mental health condition” (p. 1, 2010). For example, James E. Gates (2014) writes:
In Mississippi, the largest mental institution is not the State Hospital at Whitfield. It’s the East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, a national study says. A prison or jail is now de facto the largest mental institution in Mississippi and almost every state, says the study released this week by the Arlington, Va.-based Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association. The survey found that, in 44 states, the largest institution housing people with severe psychiatric disease is a prison or jail. Nationwide, the study reports an estimated 356,000 mentally ill inmates compared with 35,000 public hospital patients [para. 1–3].
Throughout U.S. history, many mental hospitals and prison facilities were interconnected, periodically swapping institutional roles and populations of inmates between them. Both hospitals and prisons functioned as state mechanisms to institutionalize and control the marginalized, such as women, people with disabilities, People of Color, political dissenters, and the homeless.
In conclusion, Liat Ben-Moshe, a leading scholar on disability studies and prison abolition, writes, “I contend that the deinstitutionalization movements in mental health and developmental disabilities could be construed as historical models to guide us through the transition to decarceration and prison abolition” (2013p. 83). Ben-Moshe goes on to write,
Closure of repressive institutions, such as mental hospitals and prisons, can be conceptualized as necessary, but not sufficient action on the road to abolition. The most important element in institutional closure is to ensure that people do not end up re-incarcerated in other formats such as groups homes or other institutional placements [Blatt, et al., 1997, p. 84].
Being a prison abolitionist is not enough, for the whole U.S. criminal justice system that employs punitive justice must be eliminated so that the death penalty, incarceration and other alternative punishments do not take the place of prisons. Social justice activists cannot on one hand demand the end of oppression and repression, while on the other hand demand violence and torture via the prison system. Alternatives to punitive justice do exist and are being embraced by anarchists such as mediation, transformative justice, and conflict transformation (Nocella, 2011). These alternatives are not possible if society does not end its oppressive relationship between ownership and property, which is the essence of capitalism and all forms of domination. Alternatives to punitive justice are possible if we take from ecology the reality that all elements and life are interwoven and interdependent. Thus a new system is needed. This new system should not be in the form of “mock-capitalism,” or “conscientious capitalism” to use the terminology of John Mackey (founder of Whole Foods) and Rajendra Sisodia (2013); however, this is the current direction of most of the animal liberation movement. Nonprofit organizations are teaming up with natural, “humane” food corporations such as Whole Foods Markets and Amy’s Kitchen vegetarian and vegan convenience foods, but they do not advocate for animal liberation. Animal advocates need to put animal liberation back into the conversation when educating people about veganism and not speak about self-interests such as health and looking attractive or sexy. Animal advocacy, like all social movements, is a battle over cultural values. Beyond challenging consumer capitalism (such as shopping at Whole Foods or buying Amy’s Kitchen products), we need to do away with this processed fake-meat mass consumption-based culture, which is based on a capitalist culture of violence and oppression toward other species. This is entirely achievable, but it involves addressing our own oppressive personal behavior as well as wider social systems of domination.
We need to break down our walls of dogma and begin to have truly transformative critical dialogues with those we do not agree with or deem an enemy; however, we should not have these dialogues to control or manipulate, or to generate a media spectacle, but to listen, share, and learn. As a criminologist, I strive to educate and inform law enforcement practitioners and students who want to be involved with the administration of criminal justice about practices and systems that are not punitive, colonial, ableist, racist, classist, ageist, sexist, and anti–LGBTTQIA. We cannot strive to take down a system with no alternatives in place. Police are not machines, and behind this punitive career choice are often working-class people, many of whom want to make their communities safer. The problem is that through the media and school settings, such as in college, and police academies, citizens are taught that the way to make everyone safe is through control, force, weapons, and punitive justice. Consequently, there is no such thing as a non-punitive police officer because this career is based on a punitive model. To use an analogy, if someone knows the way out of a burning building (i.e., the punitive justice system), but does not tell anyone the route, he is to blame if someone perishes in the fire. Some people, because of their identity and status, are forced to engage with police, while others, notably whites most often can avoid police because of their socio-political and economic status. I suggest that those with privilege should consider exploiting their position by educating those in power about racism, domination, and oppressive behaviors and encouraging them to reflect on their own beliefs and practices. Moreover, many anti-racist educators and trainers stress that white people need to speak to white people about racism, as opposed to putting that responsibility on People of Color. Moreover, white people are often more open and honest about their racism when in related company and are more willing to listen and learn from fellow white people, rather than becoming defensive in response to People of Color who promote anti-racist and decolonization education.
Malcolm X once said, “Education is our passport to the future.” It is education—not dogma, lack of communication, and shaming others—that will lead to community among disparate groups. Some people, sometimes understandably, critique me for engaging and working with police departments, the military, and the FBI Academy because I write a lot about the ELF and ALF and am involved in social movements. Of course, people should not speak to anyone at all, not just law enforcement, about anything that could aid in getting someone or a group arrested, investigated, repressed, convicted, framed, murdered, or incarcerated. Everything I know about the ELF and ALF is in books, which law enforcement read, so when I speak to them about conflict transformation and their repressive behaviors, I am not naïve about changing all of their minds, but I am interested in sharing my knowledge with others for three reasons: (1) to learn about their punitive, controlling, and repressive educational practices and pedagogy; (2) in hope that speaking truth to power will at least get one or two current or future law enforcement agents to be more critical; and (3) to speak about alternatives to punitive justice. This is not a reformist agenda. For example, I do not support system reforms such as cameras on police or in neighborhoods or cultural sensitivity training; rather, I talk on behalf of Save the Kids (a fully-volunteer national grass-roots organization dedicated to alternatives and the end of the incarceration of all youth and the school to prison pipeline) and other organizations involved in the Ferguson Movement about how punitive justice is dominating and oppressive to people and communities and can never uplift, heal, or empower people and communities.
A just, transformative, equitable, inclusive and holistic community is possible when we acknowledge, educate, share, take accountability and responsibility, and build critical and holistic dialectical bridges against all systems of domination (including those against other species) in hopes of ending police, prisons, property, and punitive justice. Transformative justice was brought about by Black liberationists, Quaker prison abolitionists, and first people in Canada who co-organized the International Conference on Penal Abolition, which is still going. Transformative justice builds on restorative justice, a justice system developed by Mennonites, but was influenced by aboriginal people in New Zealand. Transformative justice addresses three concerns that restorative justice does not: (1) an elimination of all systems of domination; (2) intersectional identity politics when viewing conflict, crime or harm; and (3) being opposed to any form of policing, imprisonment, or punitive justice. Transformative justice is grounded in a voluntary process of healing and accountability that empowers community, promotes individual respect, challenges the socially constructed binary of victim and offender, builds holistic critical education that fosters safer and supportive spaces, collaborates with others using mutual aid, and encourages principles and values built on direct democracy.
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