Start in an area where you feel comfortable, get your friends doing it, and then put what you learn to use in the dead of night.Īccompany this with a culture of institutional privacy – encryption for casual conversation, proxy web surfing, releasing ourselves from the need to share every move we make on social media. Jaywalk, shoplift, trespass, whatever – get acquainted with ignoring the rules as a way of life. However, we certainly can build a “culture of crime,” whereby we encourage not only disrespect (easy and functionally irrelevant) but disregard for the law. We cannot explicitly speak about, and thus cannot socially reinforce, a culture of underground activity. If you are a self-identified ‘radical’ who spends their life going to work and watching movies with friends, the only thing currently separating you from the average American is ideas. Perhaps, as a community, it is time for us to start changing our lifestyles through a new collective paradigm. It takes no specialized skill, only common sense and courage. For those who truly believe, it will be no sacrifice to change roles and take risks in order to keep alive this thing they hold so dear. And you will be able to look a creature in the eyes and save her life. You will be able to make a true and direct impact in the midst of a cold and vast system.
When you are old and your tattoos have faded, these memories will still be clear. And you will not be able to speak about your nighttime activities, so you will miss out on scene points.īut you will be able to relish accomplishments far more meaningful than anything you could ever do on Instagram or at a show. You will no longer be able to hold on to the comfortable fiction that it ever mattered in the first place. If you are able-bodied and you have built an entire social identity around ‘supporting’ sabotage and liberation, you are now required to go out and do those things. Take off your t-shirts – here is the wake up call. So, since it no longer serves its purpose, it is kindly but firmly requested that you abandon your support.
ALF support, at one point a recruiting mechanism subservient to the action that it helped empower, has now become the main event. They are ever proliferating.īut, sadly, while all of this reaches new heights in the frenzy of the internet, the underground is largely at a standstill in the real world. Thousands of them share their support every day on Facebook and Tumblr. The supporters are legion in their black t-shirts – tapping away at laptops, surfing crowds at shows, bussing tables at the local vegan eatery, distributing zines. It has far, far too many, and the madness has to stop somewhere. The Animal Liberation Front is in desperate need of fewer supporters. Instead, I read it as a call for a redirection of “support” – specifically, less cultivation of the image of militancy for social gain, and more actual action.ĭO NOT SUPPORT THE ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT I did not take that from this article at all. Unfortunately many will misread this critique of “support” as including support of ALF prisoners. The ALF doesn’t need “support” – it needs participation. The message of this article is long overdue: There is no such thing as “supporting the ALF”. This takes many forms, from ALF t-shirt-wearing by those who have never lifted a finger to help animals to “militant” blogs written by those who leave their computers only to go to restaurants or anarchist meetings. Specifically, a subculture of keyboard gangsters who build a social identity around ‘supporting’ the ALF – motivated only by the image it builds and the social benefits of appearing “radical”. This article calls out a particular type of person: those who exploit the risk and sacrifices of the ALF (and others) to increase their social status. However there is a tenor to this article that is hard to fake. There is no way to verify the authenticity of the author as being a “liberator” or ever having carried out an Animal Liberation Front action. This week I received an anonymous article, which I am posting below. Message to ALF supporters from “an anonymous liberator”.