Social justice groups gear
up for inaugural demonstrations
By Kathy Gambrell
Washington, DC, Dec. 31— Organizers of
inauguration day protests are calling the day President-elect
George W. Bush takes his oath of office “J20,” and are hoping
to draw hundreds of thousands of demonstrators from around the
country to trek to Washington for a mass demonstration.
“There is an enormous amount of spontaneous organizing
going on all over,” said Brian Becker, co-director of New York-based
International Action Center. Becker said that while large organizations
like his are selling tickets for seats on buses headed for Washington,
many individuals plan to pack up the car and travel into town
with friends.
Becker’s group is one among many mobilizing to
demonstrate against what they consider a stolen election in
the wake of the contentious election battle between President-elect
George W. Bush and the Vice President Al Gore, and the disenfranchisement
of minority voters.
Starting January 13th, the Justice Action Movement
(JAM), a coalition of social justice organizations, vows to
converge on Washington for a week of teach-ins, seminars, civil
disobedience training, a bar and coffeehouse crawl, and even
lessons on how to walk on stilts, culminating in what they term
will be peaceful protests along the parade route on “J20,” or
Inauguration Day.
During an organizing meeting last week for the
JAM in northwest Washington, about 40 representatives of various
groups and coalitions gathered to plan activities and plot strategy
for dealing with the police.
Law enforcement officials have said they are
keeping a close watch on the groups and plan to bring in officers
from Maryland and Virginia to work in tandem with the US Secret
Service, US Park Police, US Capital Police and the Metropolitan
Police Department to maintain control.
JAM says it plans to disperse among supporters
of President-elect George W. Bush on Inauguration Day. There,
they expect to voice displeasure over what they consider a stolen
election, as well as a laundry list of other social issues including
lack of affordable housing, poverty, genetically engineered
foods and the pending execution of Philadelphia journalist and
convicted murderer Mumia Abu Jamal.
“It will be similar to what was brought out in
Seattle,” said Adam Eidinger, an organizer for JAM.
Eidinger said he was upset over DC Executive Assistant
Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer’s comment in a Dec. 28 Washington
Post article calling potential protesters “hooligans.” In the
story, Gainer accused protest groups of using “counterintelligence”
after organizers reported they discovered an undercover officer
at one of their meetings, at which point he asked “What nefarious
things are they up to that they need to keep tabs on police?”
“The police are preparing the media and the public
for violence,” Eidinger said, adding that JAM simply wants a
“legal, peaceful, nonviolent” protest. Becker sent a message
to police officials a little more than a week ago, saying protesters
would not be corralled away from Bush supporters and Inauguration
attendees.
Eidenger and Becker said what they do fear are
mass arrests of protesters before the inauguration and hence
they plan not to meet in any one place in large groups before
Inauguration Day.
“What they want is a sanitized inauguration,”
Eidinger said Friday. Becker said he is unsure how many people
plan to attend the march from the New York area, but said ticket
sales for seats on buses have been brisk.
Efforts to bring demonstrators to Washington have
kicked into high gear across the country. Mobilization Coordinator
Saul Kanowitz in IAC’s San Francisco office said his group is
planning a demonstration at the local civic center, but that
protesters from California and Oregon are also expected to travel
to Washington. IAC offices in Athens, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston,
and a half-dozen other cities across the country are planning
bus and car caravans to Washington.
In separate demonstrations planned for the day,
the Black Alliance against the Bush Agenda, a coalition which
includes the New Black Panther Party and about 40 churches nationwide,
has scheduled a march from the Adams Morgan section of Washington
to a park in the downtown area. Malik Shabaz, an organizer for
the group, said the US Park Service verbally approved a permit
for their march. So far, it is the only group that has said
police have approved a permit for demonstrations. The US Park
Police spokesman was unavailable to confirm the group had a
permit for the march.
A newly formed loose-knit group of Palestinian
students said they are also planning to join Eidinger’s group
to voice their displeasure over the United States’ policies
toward Palestine in wake of ongoing violence in the Middle East.
Rev. Jesse Jackson, head of Chicago-based Rainbow
PUSH Coalition is planning a week of voter registration drives
starting January 15, and on Jan. 20 will hold “voter integrity”
rallies and prayer vigils on the steps of local federal buildings,
as will Rev. Al Sharpton, who is planning a counter-inauguration.
And the National Organization for Women in Washington issued
a call on their Web site for supporters to demonstrate during
the inauguration.
Police army braces for inaugural security
Thousands of law enforcement officers from across
the region are preparing intensive security for Inauguration
Day, and their leaders say they will be prepared in case any
of the expected droves of protesters turn disruptive. The closest
presidential race in history has produced deep tensions, and
the US Secret Service says its agents will work with an army
of local and federal law enforcement officers to ensure that
the swearing-in of the next president, the parade and other
inaugural events are not tainted by them.
This is one of the most significant events from
a security aspect because of the attention it will get, not
only domestically but around the world,” said Secret Service
spokesman Jim Mackin. Secret Service agents have been checking
manholes and staking out rooftops for their sharpshooters. US
Park Police are readying their helicopters and horses, and US
Capitol Police have begun keeping people away from the Capitol’s
west steps, which are being set up for the swearing-in. The
FBI has put members of its swift-response hostage rescue team
on alert, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
is readying bomb-sniffing dogs.
By Jan. 20, about 1,500 DC police officers will
have taken a refresher course on crowd control. Information
gathering is also in full swing: DC police have been quietly
attending organizational meetings of groups they worry might
try to disrupt things. DC Executive Assistant Police Chief Gainer
said plainclothes officers have gone to the meetings without
identifying themselves, but he would not discuss the operation
further.
DC police, along with other local law enforcement
agencies, will perform a host of functions, including manning
10 checkpoints to screen anyone entering the parade area, Gainer
said. One officer will be stationed every 10 feet along the
16-block parade route, Gainer said. All mailboxes, trash cans,
newspaper boxes and light posts along the route will be removed,
said Peter G. LaPorte, director of the DC Emergency Management
Agency. About 1,400 officers from surrounding jurisdictions
will be deputized to join a large portion of the 3,600-member
District force, said DC Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. Officers
also will monitor traffic into the District, and 163 members
of the DC National Guard will ride with police in squad cars,
Gainer said.
Uniformed officers with the Secret Service will
be out in full force, and many of the service’s agents will
be scattered around — either on rooftops with binoculars or
among the crowd. The Secret Service, the lead agency for operations
and security planning for the inauguration, will have most of
its force activated, although spokesmen will not say how many
of the 2,800 agents or 1,100 uniformed officers will be part
of the day’s effort. Several agencies will provide heads of
state with protection and keep them moving from place to place.
Counter-sniper teams — trained to spot would-be
assassins and shoot them if necessary — will be on selected
rooftops, and a host of other specialized teams will monitor
the area, the Secret Service’s Mackin said. Capitol Police created
a task force about four months ago to plan for the event, including
security screening for guests at the swearing-in, said spokesman
Dan Nichols. The full 1,200-member force will be on duty, he
said.
Sources: United Press International, Washington
Post
Eleven reasons to protest at
Bush’s inauguration on Jan. 20
1.) Bush will become President only due to massive
racist disenfranchisement and voting fraud. Not only in Florida,
but across the country, African American votes were disproportionately
thrown out. Afraid to be accused of rocking the boat, the pro-system
Democratic Party leadership refused to raise the issue of racism
during the recount process.
2.) Gov. Death is moving to Washington. As governor
of Texas, Bush presided over more executions — 152 — than took
place in the other 49 states combined during that time. The
death penalty is racist and anti-poor — it must be abolished.
On Jan. 20, we will call for freedom for death row activist,
author and prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, Native American leader
Leonard Peltier, and all political prisoners.
3.) We must mobilize now to defend women’s right
to choose. The new Bush administration is anti-women and anti-choice.
Women’s right to abortion and birth control, was won in the
streets and it must be defended in the streets.
4.) We need funding for universal healthcare,
free education, affordable housing, heat and light, childcare
and union jobs; not for the Pentagon. In the richest economy
that has ever existed, the basic needs of the entire population
could easily be met. Instead of going to meet human needs, however,
hundreds of billions of dollars annually are spent on destructive
and wasteful militarism.
5.) The genocidal sanctions on Iraq must be ended.
New Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his first speech, talked
of “re-energizing the sanctions on Iraq.” The sanctions/blockade
has already taken more than 1.5 million Iraqi lives, half of
them children under the age of five.
6.) Stop US intervention in Colombia and all of
Latin America. The incoming Bush national security team wants
to escalate US intervention in Colombia beyond even Clinton’s
Plan Colombia. And it’s not just Colombia — there is also the
threat of wider intervention in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia,
Peru, Mexico, and Argentina, where people are rising up against
the domination of the IMF, World Bank and US corporations. We
must act now to stop a new Vietnam War in Latin America.
7.) The incoming Bush administration is filled
with viciously homophobic bigots who want to turn back the clock
on gains won by lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered
people. Bush is allied with the bigoted religious and non-religious
extreme right who want to deny equal rights to lesbians and
gay men, and force them back into the closet.
8.) The Forty Years War against Cuba must end.
Bush, like the nine presidents before him, wants to turn Cuba
back into a colony of the US as it was before the 1959 revolution.
It is time to end the blockade and aggression against a small
neighboring country and let Cuba live in peace.
9.) The Bush administration wants to speed up
environmental destruction for the sake of corporate profits.
Under Gov. Bush, Texas ranked 50th among states in air quality
and 1st in toxic polluters, toxic releases, carcinogens in the
air and 13 other polluting categories. Bush put polluting industry
representatives in charge of the state’s Natural Resources Conservation
Council (Texas’ version of the EPA).
10.) Support an independent homeland for the Palestinian
people. The US has given Israel hundreds of billions of dollars
in aid over the past 50 years, aid used to repress the Palestinians.
There will be no peace in the Middle East until there is justice
for the Palestinian people.
11.) End US colonialism in Puerto Rico — US Navy
out of Vieques! Now is the time to support the Puerto Rican
people in their struggle to get the Pentagon out.
Source: International Action Center: iacenter@iacenter.org
Now it’s unofficial: Gore did
win Florida
By Ed Vulliamy
New York, New York, Dec. 24— As George
W. Bush handed further key government posts to hardline Republican
right-wingers, an unofficial recount of votes in Florida appeared
to confirm that Bush lost the US presidential election. Despite
the decision by the US Supreme Court to halt the Florida recount
in the contested counties, American media organizations, including
Knight Ridder - owner of the Miami Herald - have commissioned
their own counts, gaining access to the ballots under Freedom
of Information legislation. The result so far, with the recounting
of so-called ‘undervotes’ in only one county completed by Friday
night, indicates that Al Gore is ahead by 140 votes.
Florida’s 25 electoral college votes won Bush
the presidency by two seats last Monday after the Supreme Court
refused to allow the counting of 45,000 discarded votes. But
as the media recount was suspended for Christmas, the votes
so far tallied in Lake and Broward counties have Gore ahead
in the race for the pivotal state, and hence the White House.
Gore’s lead is expected to soar when counting
resumes in the New Year and Miami votes are counted. In a separate
exercise, the Miami Herald commissioned a team of political
analysts and pollsters to make a statistical calculation based
on projections of votes by county, concluding that Gore won
the state by 23,000.
The media initiative is likely to bedevil Bush
in the weeks to come, thickening the pall of illegitimacy that
will hang over his inauguration on January 20.
It has already led to a face-off between almost
all the news media organizations in the state and Bush’s presidential
team. In the most extreme example of the Bush camp’s desperation
to avoid a recount, the new director of the Environment Protection
Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, has proposed that the Florida
ballots be sealed for 10 years.
Bush’s spokesman Tucker Eskew dismissed the recount
as “mischief-making” and “inflaming public passions” while his
brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, accused the papers of “trying
to rewrite history.”
Meanwhile, Bush made his boldest ideological statement
yet with the appointment of John Ashcroft as Attorney General.
The appointment is especially significant, because
as head of the Justice Department Ashcroft would be the man
to bring any felony charges against President Bill Clinton over
the Lewinsky affair. During the scandal, Ashcroft was among
the loudest and shrillest voices for impeachment.
There have been many calls to President-elect
Bush to pardon his predecessor as a sign of peace, but he has
made a point of rejecting them.
Ashcroft lost his Missouri Senate seat to the
widow of the state’s popular Democrat governor, Mel Carnahan.
From the family of a Pentacostal minister, he is an outspoken
social conservative and an ally of the extremist Pat Robertson.
Ashcroft represents a host of militant committees
and activist groups, of which the Christian Coalition is most
prominent. He is an opponent not only of abortion but even -
as he said in one speech - of dancing.
Source: The Guardian Observer (UK)
Nazi skinhead leader convicted
in activists’ murders
By Shawn Gaynor
Las Vegas, Jan. 2— John Edward Butler,
leader of the Las Vegas Independent Nazi Skin Heads, was convicted
of murder in the first degree for the 1998 killing of Lin Newborn
and Daniel Shersty, both anti-racist skinheads.
Shersty and Newborn were shot to death in a remote
desert location outside of Las Vegas, at Powerline Road and
Centennial Parkway, where they had been lured under pretense
of a date by Butler’s girl friend, Melissa Hack, and another
unidentified woman on the night of July 4, 1998.
The jury took three days to deliberate the charges
against Butler before finding him guilty. They will return Wednesday
for the sentencing hearing in a case where the prosecution is
seeking the death penalty.
Shersty, a 21-year-old Nellis Air Force Base airman
and Newborn, 28, who was working at Tribal Body Piercing, weere
both active against the Las Vegas white supremacist movement.
Prosecutors presented compelling evidence against
Butler, including witnesses that placed Butler at the murder
scene and others who claimed Butler confessed about the murder
to them.
Forensic evidence showed that at least two shooters
were involved in the murder. Ross Hack, brother of Melissa Hack
and member of the Hammer Skins, is the second suspect in the
case.
Shersty died directly in front of his car from
shotgun and handgun wounds. Newborn’s body was found about 400
feet away, with wounds from a shotgun and a handgun of a different
caliber than the gun used to shoot Shersty. Video tape from
a convenience store where they stopped to buy beer show Shersty,
Newborn, and Hack at around midnight on July 4.
An eye witness also identified Melissa Hack with
Newborn around midnight.
Another key prosecution witness testified he saw
Butler, Hack and Joseph Justin at the murder scene at 8am the
next morning.
Joseph Justin, the key witness for the prosecution,
confessed to police that he helped Butler and Hack retrieve
evidence from the crime scene the morning after the murder that
included shotgun shells and a beer bottle with Hack’s fingerprints
on it.
Justin said he became involved in cleaning the
crime scene at the request of Butler. He was not a member of
the Independent Nazi Skins and said that his involvement in
covering up the crime was an initiation test.
“This would prove to him (Butler) that he had
trust to put me in his crew,” said Justin.
According to Justin, Butler claimed he shot Shersty
with the shotgun while Ross Hack wounded Newborn as he fled
into the desert.
“That’s when he (Butler) chased him into the desert
and finished him off,” said Justin.
Justin’s testimony was corroborated by a cell
mate of Butler’s, Richard Fishburn. According to Fishburn, Butler
had bragged about how he “offed” two anti-racist activists.
Fishburn testified that Butler confessed to the murders the
first time they met and filled in the story over the following
weeks.
Fishburn said Butler told him he was worried that
police had been able to match his .32-caliber handgun to the
murders. When Fishburn told Butler how stupid he was for having
kept the gun, Fishburn said Butler told him, “It was his favorite
gun. He wrote poems about this gun.”
The caliber of the murder weapon was not released
by authorities before the trail.
When Butler was arrested on July 14 after attempting
to flee police, a handgun used in the murder was found in his
path of escape.
Defense lawyers tried to construct an alibi for
Butler, but defense witnesses contradicted each other on Butler’s
whereabouts at the time of the murder.
Butler’s prior criminal history is stocked with
convictions such as exhibiting a deadly weapon, rioting, carrying
a concealed weapon, petite larceny and trespass. Also, he has
a prior felony conviction for burglary.
Melissa Hack did not testify in the case, invoking
her Fifth Amendment rights.
Prosecutors from the Las Vegas district attorney’s
office were slow to prosecute the case despite holding the key
evidence necessary to try the case only a week after the murders.
It was not until after a 500 person Anti-Racist Action protest
in the fall of 1998 in John Butler’s neighborhood, and a similar
protest in 1999, where activists marched down the Vegas strip
distributing information on the case to tourists and demanding
the case be prosecuted, that the district attorney acted.
Allegedly, Butler had received money in the past
from the Las Vegas police department as a police informant.
Ross Hack, who fled to Europe when he was identified
as a suspect two years ago, has never been charged for his involvement
in the murder. According to the defense attorney, Ross Hack
has been on a “two-year vacation in Europe,” courtesy of his
rich father.
Prosecutors say they have no plans to pursue
charges against Ross Hack. Melissa Hack also remains uncharged
in the case.
Lionel Newborn said his son had told him that
he was involved in various organizations that opposed racism.
After the slayings, the father learned with some
pride that his son played a leading role in this effort.
"I had no idea that he was involved to the
extent that he was,” Lionel Newborn said. “I probably wouldn’t
have been able to sleep at night.”
Activists celebrate New Year’s
at Trident Submarine Base
By Clare Hanrahan
Kings Bay, Georgia, Dec. 31-- At midnight,
thirty people stood in a tight circle in the sub-freezing temperature
just outside the gates of the east coast homeport of the Trident
nuclear submarine. Activists from the southeastern US have come
to Kings Bay for this alternative new year’s eve gathering for
nearly a decade, both to nurture community and to continue the
history of resistance to this first-strike weapons system.
St. Augustine activist Peg McIntyre was the eldest
in the interfaith circle. This 90-year old matriarch of the
resistance movement in the south is a familiar presence from
Cape Canaveral, Fl., to Ft. Benning, to Kings Bay, Ga. and other
places where people gather to cry out against militarism and
its weapons of mass and indiscriminate destruction.
“I made some of my best friendships in jail,”
she said with a twinkle before we set out on the three mile
candle-lit walk to the gate.
The cyclone fence enclosed compound located near
the Crooked River state park in Camden County, Ga., has recently
added a massive replica of a nuclear submarine at the main entrance
gate with the prow of its deadly hulk emerging from the red
clay soil. As we passed by we attached photos of children to
the fence in keeping with the theme of the gathering, “Militarism
is Stealing our Children’s Future.”
In previous years, protests at the gates have
drawn many hundreds of activists, including some who have crossed
over the boundary line and onto the 16,000 acre navy base facing
arrest by military officials. This year there was no confrontation,
just a quiet, prayerful presence beneath a stand of live oaks
draped in Spanish moss.
What has made this annual gathering so special
and has sustained the movement for so long is the care given
to building community, said Martina Linnehan of Jacksonville,
Florida.
“We used to be agenda driven,” said Linnehan.
“We had a long list of tasks to accomplish in the next year,
strategies to plan. We always had work to do.”
The first item on the program this year was a
time for introductions and reflections. People shared stories
from their work with groups such as Pax Christi Florida, Veterans
for Peace, the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, the
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, the
National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, the War
Resisters League, the Florida Greens, and the Vine and Fig Tree,
an intentional community in Alabama whose recent efforts are
focused on the abolition of the death penalty.
There are over 9,000 workers at the Kings Bay
naval base. Lockheed Martin Space Systems has 243 employees,
members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace
Workers. Lockheed builds the first stage of the Trident missile
in Sunnyvale, Ca., explained war tax resister Robert Randall
of Brunswick, Ga.
The Kings Bay employees put the stages together
and get the missile ready for deployment. There are ten nuclear
submarines in the east coast Trident II fleet. Each can carry
24 multiple warhead D-5 missiles.
“The original opposition to the base was in the
1970’s and came from environmentalists based in Fernandina Beach
who opposed the environmental impact,” said Randall, who has
joined the resistance gatherings at Kings Bay for many years.
Ironically, the base gets awards all the time
for being environmentally friendly and sensitive.
“The Navy makes sure its people are actively
involved in every aspect of the community,” Randall said. “Every
school has a Trident submarine crew as one of its partners in
education.”
Gainesville, Florida resident Bruce Gagnon, of
the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
comes each year to the gathering at Kings Bay. He talked about
the connections between Trident submarines and his work.
“All warfare is coordinated through space now,”
said Gagnon. “If you control space you have the ability to direct
war. The issues of the Trident submarine and weapons in space
fit together absolutely. It is not a separate issue.
“The Trident is coordinated by the global positioning
satellite whose job is to look at the ground and pick targets,”
said Gagnon. “The GPS directs Trident to its target. Its what
they call full-spectrum dominance. It allows the control of
the entire range of military operations.”
In a strategy session during the weekend gathering,
Robert Randall suggested a shift of focus toward the “new reality”
of space weapons.
“Trident is an old, passé issue,” said Randall.
“The cutting edge is the work against military expansion out
into space, literally the American colonization of everything.
“Even if they do the conversions on the Trident
they have a limited lifetime,” said Randall. “But what will
take their place will be much worse if we don’t work against
it now.”
The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power
in Space, the War Resisters League, and the North Alabama chapter
of Vets for Peace will sponsor the National Space Organizing
Conference & Protest on March 16-18 in Huntsville, Alabama.
For more information: 353-337-9274 or globalnet@mindspring.com
Puerto Rican Governor-Elect
to challenge Bush over Vieques
By Eileen McNamara
San Juan, Puerto Rico, Dec. 27— George
W. Bush will face battles in Puerto Rico, where the new governor
intends to step up a push for the end of Navy training on Vieques,
a dispute that has fueled nationalism in the Caribbean territory.
Governor-elect Sila Maria Calderon has vowed to
fight the incoming Bush administration in her efforts to immediately
evict the US Navy from its prized bombing range on Vieques,
a small inhabited island off Puerto Rico.
Her plans would go against an agreement between
the White House and Puerto Rican government that would delay
any withdrawal by the Navy to 2003. Navy Secretary Richard Danzig
warned her this week that if she does not follow the agreement,
the US federal government will not be obliged to keep its side
of the bargain, including returning some 8,000 acres of Navy
land on Vieques.
Bush has said he would honor the Vieques agreement.
“When one believes in something and in a principle
— in this case the people of Vieques’ democratic rights and
rights to security of life and health — we cannot act with fear,”
Calderon said Dec. 14.
She spoke after the Navy announced it’s plans
for an official referendum on Nov. 6, 2001 that would give the
more than 9,000 residents of Vieques the choice of voting for
the Navy to leave by May 2003 or allowing it to stay and resume
live bombing.
Calderon plans a local referendum that would allow
Vieques islanders to vote to eject the Navy immediately, and
she plans to withdraw local police guarding the range against
protesters as required in the agreement.
Years of resentment over the Navy bombings exploded
in anger after an April 1999 bombing accident killed a civilian
Puerto Rican guard on the range. Protesters invaded the range
and thwarted exercises for a year until US marshals ejected
them in May.
After that, the Navy resumed exercises, using
only non-explosive bombs, and reduced the number of training
exercises, as had been agreed.
Calderon’s opposition could provide the impetus
for renewed demonstrations and might allow protesters to regain
access to an unguarded range and block exercises.
Her election is seen as a rejection of an eight-year
drive toward US statehood by Gov. Pedro Rossello’s New Progressive
Party. Calderon supports the current commonwealth status but
wants more autonomy, including more control of some $13 billion
that the federal government gives Puerto Rico each year.
The 4 million residents of the Spanish-speaking
island are US citizens who can serve in the armed forces, but
they do not pay federal taxes and cannot vote for president.
Source: Washington Post
ELF torches 4 homes on Long
Island
Mount Sinai-Long Island, NewYork, Dec. 31—
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) has officially claimed responsibility
for burning down four new luxury homes at Island Estates in
Mount Sinai, Long Island on December 29, 2000. Damages estimates
have soared to $2 million.
A communique sent by the ELF stated, “This hopefully
provided a firm message that we will not tolerate the destruction
of our island.”
The ELF is an international underground organization
that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to
stop the systematic exploitation and destruction of the natural
environment. This is the tenth major ELF action to occur on
Long Island in recent months.
The communique continued, “Recently, hundreds
of houses have been built over much of Mount Sinai’s picturesque
landscape and developers now plan to build a further 189 luxury
houses over the farms and forests adjacent to Island Estates.”
Since 1997 in the United States alone, the ELF
have caused well over $36 million in damages to entities profiting
off the destruction of the natural environment.
This latest communique issued by the ELF includes
a question and answer “ELF FAQ” section which provides more
insight into the ideology of the organization.
The communique finished by stating, “The earth
isn’t dying, it’s being killed, and those who are killing it
have names and addresses. What are YOU doing for the earth tonight?
No Compromise In Defense of Our Earth! Stop Urban Sprawl OR
We Will.”
Source: Animal Liberation Frontline Information
Service: www.animal-liberation.net
Tres Chic Furriers attacked
by ALF
Hewlett-Long Island, New York, Dec. 29—
During the early morning hours of December 29th members of the
Animal Liberation Front (ALF) descended upon Hewlett furrier
Tres Chic Furs, located on Broadway causing massive property
damage.
The activists smashed all windows of the store
front, spray painted anti-fur slogans and destroyed over 10
coats with red paint.
“As fur sales appear to be rising this winter,
it is our duty to minimize the profit of the death trade by
way of direct action. In the New Year we seekers of justice
and our sisters and brothers around the world must make a resolution;
to resist injustice and oppression by attacking its roots and
not just its symptoms.”, states the ALF in it’s anonymous communique
to the above ground Animal Defense League (ADL).
The Animal Defense League (ADL) are outspoken
supporters of the nonviolent actions of the ALF. In their statement
to the ADL, the ALF states, “Be our actions legally sanctioned
or not, we will not accept murder of humans and non-human animals,
of our environment or our culture for the profit and vanity
of the elite. ‘By any means necessary’ - Malcolm X.”
Source: Animal Liberation Frontline Information
Service: http://www.animal-liberation.net
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