Animal Liberation Front: Complete Diary of Actions, the First 30 Years

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Whether you agree or disagree with their actions, or have never heard of the ALF, here’s what you need to know about the Animal Liberation Front.

In July 2002, activists released smoke bombs in two Seattle high-rises that housed Marsh offices, forcing hundreds of office workers into the streets. Animal rights advocates believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them; [2] see, for example, the work of Tom Regan. Utilitarian liberationists, on the other hand, do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds — utilitarianism in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number — that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy. To exclude animals from that consideration, they argue, is a form of discrimination that they call speciesism; see, for example, the work of Peter Singer. [3]Singer also advances a kind of debunking argument against meat-eating, offering various psychological and cultural reasons to help explain why speciesism is so entrenched. The updated chapter on “Man’s Dominion” vividly exposes such forces. Opposition to the animal rights movement comes primarily from corporate and state actors. Mass media, agribusiness, and biomedicine industries often portray activists in a negative light, characterizing the movement as misanthropic, sensationalist, and dangerous to scientific endeavors and human well-being because of activists' high levels of expressed empathy for nonhuman animals. Mass media also frequently portray nonhuman animals as objects. Major pharmaceutical companies have taken legal measures to disallow protestors from targeting their companies. [5] [20] [40] Despite these differences, the terms "animal liberation" and "animal rights" are generally used interchangeably. Throughout the 1980s, the Animal Liberation Front remained active on both sides of the Atlantic, but as the decade progressed, the ALF’s firm grip on non-violent action started to slip, and not all its activists seemed to adhere to its guiding principle. The first assembled timeline of the Animal Liberation Front's 40+ year history - from broken windows to lab raids. The Animal Liberation Front ("the radical fringe of the animal rights movement") is a clandestine movement of animal liberation activists who step in to illegally rescue animals in the dead of night when legal campaigns have failed. Organized by year, "Animal Liberation Front: Complete Diary of Actions" chronicles every reported U.S. Animal Liberation Front (A.L.F.) action from the first documented animal liberation in 1977 until the present.

In its early years, where they limited their activity to removing animals, damaging property and exposing cruelty, the Animal Liberation Front had garnered sympathy and support from the public, largely due to their non-violent stance. But as their actions became more militant and individual members started to choose more violent ways to achieve its objectives, the ALF started to become more isolated. Brigham Young University (BYU), July 2004: Fires burned two tractors and more than 3,000 pounds of cardboard at Ellsworth Farm, an animal husbandry building on the BYU campus in Provo, Utah. In March 2005, Jason Hall was charged with a misdemeanor for his alleged role in setting the fires. Two other men, Harrison David Burrows and Joshua Demmitt, were already serving sentences of 2 1/2 years for their part in the fires, which they admitted setting on behalf of ALF. The pigs’ suffering was not an aberration; it is what countless pigs around the world commonly endure before being turned into ham and bacon. Such media exposés reveal how far we have – and have not – come since Australian philosopher Peter Singer published the seminal book Animal Liberation nearly 50 years ago. Cornell University, October 1997: Members of Band of Mercy, an earlier incarnation of ALF, destroyed files, ruined blood samples, confiscated paperwork and release six cows from their stalls at the university's Animal Teaching and Research Unit in Ithaca, NY. It was a 1965 article by novelist Brigid Brophy in The Sunday Times which was pivotal in helping to spark the movement. Brophy wrote:a b c d Groves, Julian McAllister (28 June 2008). "Learning to Feel: The Neglected Sociology of Social Movements". The Sociological Review. 43 (3): 435–461. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-954x.1995.tb00610.x. S2CID 143882550. This is a complete record of every known illegal action for animals carried out since the dawn of the U.S. animal liberation movement. The book covers not only the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, but all groups working outside the law to save animals ranging from The Animal Rights Militia to the Paint Panthers. The book includes: Other books regarded as important include philosopher Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights (1983); Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism by James Rachels (1990); Animals, Property, and the Law (1995) by legal scholar Gary Francione, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals by another legal scholar Steven M. Wise (2000); and Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy by Julian H. Franklin (2005). [17] Gender, class, and other factors [ edit ]