Terrorism, violent, criminal, extremist, radical, illegal, those are the kinds of words attached
to the animal liberation front, a global anarchist movement fighting for animal liberation.
If you listen to media outlets or governmental institutions like the FBI, the message is
clear, animal liberation front activists are scary, keep your distance from that dangerous
crowd.
In order to counteract this dominant narrative, the North American Animal Liberation Press
Office was formed in 1994 and to this day the press office takes a proactive stance
to communicate the actions, strategies and philosophy of the animal liberation movement
to the public.
To discuss this public relations battle, I have with me Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a press officer,
an animal rights activist and board certified trauma surgeon by profession.
Jerry welcome to the show, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me, I look forward to it.
As an icebreaker question, let me ask you directly, should we be afraid of the animal
liberation front?
What is so scary about their activism?
The only thing scary about the animal liberation front and other clandestine organizations
that work to help animals is what they can do to animal profiteers.
Nobody in the animal liberation front has ever harmed another human being and is unlikely
to ever do so.
So there's no need to be afraid.
The people that should be afraid are those who exploit animals for profit and who can
see those profits directly impacted by actions of the animal liberation front who exercise
tactics such as economic sabotage and direct liberation of animals to attack these industries
that survive off the abuse of animals.
Something you mentioned and might sound surprising for most people is that the animal liberation
front is a non-violent movement.
So how come there's all of those strong words attached to a non-violent movement?
It's all part of the extreme level of brainwashing that occurs amongst our civilization in that
it's not considered violence to murder billions of innocent animals every year for trivial
reasons such as appetite preferences and style preferences.
And yet anyone who threatens to interfere with that very, very violent trade is deemed
themselves to be violent as a way to denigrate them and to try to stop them from harming
their economic profits.
So if we want to talk about violence, let's talk about the people who abuse animals, who
murder millions of animals just so they can skin them and use their fur for fashionable
coats.
Let's talk about the violence that allows the killing of billions of animals so that
they can satisfy their taste for animal flesh when it's completely unnecessary and in fact
harmful to human health.
These are the violent ones.
And to turn around and label people who are trying to help animals as violent is simply
a public relations ploy.
Do you believe that our governmental institutions have been captured by the agriculture industry?
Well, absolutely.
Not only the huge amount of subsidies that are delivered by the government to animal
agriculture, heavily subsidized industries such as the meat and dairy industries as one
example make it very clear that the government is in collusion with the animal agriculture
industry.
And to no surprise, these are the wealthy corporations that deliver suitcases full of
cash to our government people every year.
So of course they're going to get what they want, which is the subsidization of their
industry.
And of course, people in government are just like everybody else.
They're a newer to the violence.
They're used to and brainwashed by these industries into thinking that animal abuse is completely
acceptable, normal, and the usual way of doing business.
And of course, none of that is true.
Yeah.
And that gives the feeling that the game is rigged.
And most certainly after what's happening right now in Canada with the ag-gag laws at
the federal level and how many obstacles we're putting in the way of vegan activists.
It feels like the goal post is moving and that we're playing against such strong forces.
So yes, civil disobedience is one answer against this issue.
And I think that's the part that makes people anxious.
It's breaking the law.
What would you say about that?
First of all, point of clarification, at least here in the States, we use civil disobedience
in a different way.
Civil disobedience to the best of my knowledge, at least as applied here, implies breaking
the law, but doing so openly and accepting the consequences.
So for instance, if you were to chain yourself in front of a first or something as a statement
and obviously break the law, but fully expect to be arrested and accept those consequences,
we would call that civil disobedience.
What the underground animal liberation movement is doing, such as the ALF, is by our definition
not really civil disobedience.
These are people that are breaking the law and getting away with it for the most part
so that they can be out there to do it again.
And breaking the law to help animals is certainly justifiable, it's certainly commendable.
We support it 100%.
We have supported it for more than 20 years.
So yeah, that just is a matter of difference in terminology, though we don't use that term
civil disobedience for what the ALF and other organizations are doing.
And I'm sorry, your original question again?
Yes, I just wanted you to comment on that part of breaking the law.
And I guess this is what people are anxious about.
If you look at every single struggle for liberation, both historically and concurrently in any
movement, whether it was against apartheid in South Africa, whether it was against, whether
it was for civil rights here in North America, various anti-colonialist efforts in places
like Algeria and other places, all of those struggles for liberation included an underground
component.
And it's necessary in all of these struggles because power is not going to give up their
dominance just when you ask them nicely to do so.
They have to be persuaded by a variety of different means and not just illegal means,
but a variety of different means, but including illegal direct action, what we call direct
action.
And so I don't think the struggle for animal liberation is any different than these other
struggles.
Unless you're a speciesist and you think that animals don't count nearly as much as humans,
which we don't believe.
We believe that animals are just as important as humans.
And so the animal liberation struggle is just like all these other animals, all these other
liberation struggles throughout time.
And it will require a component that involves breaking the law.
Each of those other struggles has mostly included the use of real violence on, one could argue
in self-defense, again, perfectly justifiable in my mind, in our minds, certainly justifiable
to use violence to protect yourself if someone's trying to kill you.
You have a right to defend yourself.
And animals are being murdered by the millions every day and they have a right to defend
themselves.
And if they can't defend them, then we have the right to defend them.
Just like if your child is being abused, you have a right to defend your child.
Well, we have a right to defend animals when they're being abused.
And even though that particular strategy hasn't been widely used in the struggle for animal
liberation, it would certainly be justifiable if it was ever used.
Yeah, it is true that most social justice movements have had a component of breaking
the law.
And I think this story is not told as much as the part of peaceful protest and such.
I was listening to one of your interviews and you mentioned how Nelson Mandela was part
of something like animal liberation front.
He was bombing places, he was breaking the law in many ways before being imprisoned and
becoming the Nelson Mandela we know, who we love.
But there was this part of it and people don't know about it.
We don't inform people about this history.
Yes, not just in Mandela in South Africa, but basically any struggle.
People like to quote people who are more peaceful like Martin Luther King and so forth in civil
rights struggles.
But there were also people that were breaking the law to make Martin Luther King's name
a lot more reasonable.
And people were a lot more reasonable and willing to talk to Martin Luther King about
making some changes compared to say Malcolm X or the Black Panthers and some of the other
groups that were more radical.
But if you look at every single struggle, it's always been that way.
Gandhi, Gandhi's always held up as this peaceful person who has somehow achieved liberation
from the British without raising a finger.
And yet there were plenty of armed struggle groups going on in India that just made Gandhi
look like somebody that they could deal with.
And so every struggle has involved these kinds of things.
There's always some component of those willing to break the law to stop a horrendous type
of oppression against the oppressed.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's human nature.
It's the normal current of things.
There's nothing shocking about it.
Because of this illegal component, I guess it makes your work on covering the actions
of the animal liberation front more sensitive because you really have to protect your sources
and be careful of what you report on.
So what kind of measures do you take to do the work you do?
Well, we are not members of the underground.
We're not members of the ALF.
What typically happens is that we receive anonymous communiques from the people who
are breaking the law.
And we take those communiques and transform them into press releases and other forms of
social media posts and websites information.
And we broadcast that to the general public and to the mainstream media.
We've done hundreds of interviews with mainstream media from Fox News to 60 Minutes to a lot
of other TV shows.
And we basically talk about why people are breaking the law to help animals, what their
ideology is.
These are not just people out having a good time breaking the law, becoming vandals and
that sort of thing.
So we explain all that.
And most people are interested and most people are sympathetic.
I think when you show people, just the general public, I'm talking about non-vegans, much
less activists, but even non-vegans, if you show them the horrendous amount of animal
abuse that's going on behind the scenes and then you explain, well, these people are going
in there and trying to stop that by a direct maneuver.
In addition to all the people that are trying to change the laws and educate the public
and do all those other things, then most people are pretty sympathetic about it.
You'd be surprised at how many people are accepting of these types of tactics just within
the general public.
And so that's basically the way we carry on.
Most of the communiques we receive are received by email nowadays.
I mean, there was a time when we used to get phone calls and letters in the mail and things
like that.
But most of the time we receive these anonymous communiques and we don't want to know who
those people are.
We have no idea who it is that's out there helping animals by breaking the law.
We don't want to know who they are.
It would be dangerous for them.
It would be dangerous for us.
So yeah, we don't know who that is.
So basically that's what we do.
We advertise that actions that are going on.
We let people know what they're doing and why they're doing it.
We talk directly to the media.
We talk to other activists and let them know.
And we try to inspire other activists to get out there and do the same thing.
We want more people doing this type of action.
We think it's an important part of the struggle for animal liberation.
It's not the only part.
It's not like we want everybody to do this and do nothing else.
But there aren't that many people doing it.
And so we would like to see more people do it.
We'd like to let people know that they can do it, how to do it if they want to, and then
how to report back to us when they do do it so that we can tell more people about it.
You're based in the US, I believe.
And in the US you have the First Amendment freedom of expression.
How important is freedom of expression in order to do the work you're doing?
We do enjoy more right to free speech here in the US than other places.
At least for now.
This may all change, of course, at any moment.
But for instance, if I was in the United Kingdom where the ALF got its start and where there
was been historically a lot more activity involving breaking the law, it's against the
law to advocate for what I'm doing or to tell people that we think you should be out there
breaking the law.
They wouldn't allow that kind of speech.
There used to be a group called the ALF Support Group that published a magazine that talked
all about the actions that were going on underground and how you could get involved if you wanted
to and that sort of thing.
And the government shut that down and made that illegal to talk about.
Many of the animal rights activists that have been arrested on other charges for doing perfectly
legal things like protesting have been given orders that they're not allowed to communicate
in the animal rights realm at all anymore.
They're not allowed to post things on the internet or talk about them in the media or
even have contact with people like me or you, there are other animal rights activists.
So it's much more oppressive in places like the UK.
On the other hand, the actions are still going on.
There's other people that are like us that are willing to talk about it.
And we do.
We post things from the UK on our website and social media as well.
So yeah, but yeah, we do enjoy a privilege here that allows me to talk to you about what
I'm talking to you about today and to actually not only talk about the things that are happening,
but also encourage other people to get out there and do more of it.
I think it's important to think about your actions and even your existence as something
pro-democratic in a sense.
And you were describing how what you're doing is not civil disobedience, not in the definition
that we know of.
But I like to think about it as civil disobedience, whether it is covert or not.
And there is a long tradition of breaking the law in the name of your convictions in
the US.
And I'm thinking right now of Toro, Henry David Toro, who stopped paying his poll tax
because he believed his tax money was funding the American-Mexican War and also the expansion
of slavery in the Southwest.
And he was imprisoned for that.
And that was back in the 1840s.
So there's a long democratic tradition of the people breaking the law in the name of
their convictions.
Do you see yourself as being part of that long tradition?
I think so.
I think starting with the Boston Tea Party and the founding of this very country through
Henry David Toro and lots of other famous people that have been willing to go to jail
for what they believed in.
I think that we consider ourselves part of, as a movement, we consider ourselves as part
of that tradition.
Breaking laws that are wrong, that are oppressive, that are harmful and violent and standing
up against those laws.
Absolutely.
And I think we're seeing a lot of that today, but I think we're certainly part of that movement.
So talking about prison, there is a section in your website listing activists who have
been imprisoned for their actions.
And I want you to tell us more about them and the high stakes and the high price they
had to pay for their activism.
Well, first of all, there have been literally thousands of actions that have been committed
by ALF and other underground warriors in the United States in the last 30 or 40 years.
And a very small handful of people have ever been caught and even fewer have ever been
sent to prison.
So it's actually a very, very, very small percentage of people who ever go to prison
for breaking the law to help animals.
That said, there are a few people and we try to support those people.
We do our best we can to support people that do go to prison for helping animals.
Currently there are a handful of prisoners that are currently in prison for animal rights
activities and we do everything we can to support them.
If you go to our website, we list their addresses, we tell you how you can write letters to them
and support them and send them money and that sort of thing.
So let them know they're not forgotten, that we hold them in great esteem and that we'll
do everything we can to help them.
So yeah, there are, you know, especially with the passage of the Animal Enterprise Protection
Act, which was originally passed and then upgraded a few years later to the Animal Enterprise
Terrorism Act with very inappropriate labeled law for sure.
That does involve primarily sentence enhancements, which, sentencing enhancements, which means
you can get longer prison terms if you're convicted for the same crimes, if they are
able to apply that law under certain circumstances.
And it has been applied a very few handful of times, but it hasn't stopped anybody and
it won't stop anybody.
People that are willing to break the law and help animals are not going to be stopped by
threatening them with longer prison terms.
And especially since, you know, it's very unlikely that anybody gets caught when they
do this sort of thing.
So we're not particularly worried about that.
I mean, there was a little bit of backlash after the 9-11 2001 actions that happened
here in the United States.
Everybody kind of ran for cover for a little while, but it wasn't long and it wasn't much
and people are as active now as I think they've ever been.
And I don't think for the most part people are, I mean, there are people are willing
to risk their freedom.
Obviously, these are very courageous and strong people who are willing to risk their free,
their own freedom to help animals.
And so that shouldn't be minimized.
That said, it's not that difficult to avoid, avoid capture and imprisonment.
And I don't think we listed the actions that the animal liberation front takes.
So can you make a list of the concrete actions that the movement takes?
Well, the actions fall under basically two broad categories.
And one is economic sabotage, where you try to affect the profits of those who are hurting
animals for a living.
And the other is actually liberating animals and putting them into the returning them to
the wild or taking them to the sanctuaries or good homes where they can live out their
lives.
Now, that depends on whether the animals are wild and capable of surviving in the wild
and they could be just returned to the wild.
But domesticated animals, for instance, those have to find homes with people or sanctuaries
where they can live out their lives.
So basically, liberations and sabotage are the two main categories.
There also could be a third category such as intimidation, where people are threatened
with various things, including violence, if they don't stop abusing animals.
That's probably that's used a lot less often than the other two.
As far as concrete actions, there's a concerted campaign here in North America, at least against
the fur industry.
And the form of actions that most typically takes is going to fur farms, of which there's
only a few dozen left in North America, and going on to those fur farms at night, which
are relatively poorly guarded and have relatively little security and releasing wild animals,
typically sometimes foxes and coyotes and other animals, and releasing those animals
into the wild habitat where they're perfectly capable of surviving.
There have been lots of studies that have proven that these animals can survive on their
own.
They're not domesticated, even like house cats or dogs.
They still retain genetically wild genomes and are able to survive in the wild.
And so by releasing the animals into the wild, number one, the animals themselves get the
chance at freedom, where 100% of them will be murdered when it comes around November,
December, about this time of year, every year.
100% of them are murdered so they can be skinned and their skin sold.
But it also significantly impacts the economic practices of those who raise these animals
in tiny cages for their entire lives.
So that basically has the effect of doing both things.
It has a certain effect.
It's a form of economic sabotage, and it's also offering a chance at freedom to the animals
who are all going to be 100% killed if left to the fur farmer.
So this is a typical example of what the ALF can do here in the United States.
And again, by concentrating against one industry, it's been very effective.
So that dozens of fur farms have closed after they were attacked by the animal liberation
front or other groups.
So it's an effective form of activism.
We've seen the number of fur farms decrease dramatically.
We've seen the number of animals killed for their fur decrease dramatically.
It was in the 4 to 10 million a year range back in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Now it's down to just barely a million in a year, still way too many, of course.
But there have been huge strides made against the fur industry here in North America.
And one of the reasons is because what these people are doing, it's not the only reason,
but it's definitely part of it.
Of course, there's also legislation that people have pushed or the sale of fur and the raising
of animals for fur is illegal in the entire state of California now.
It's illegal in many other towns and cities and jurisdictions.
So yeah, there's other things that have been involved.
But part of that struggle has been with the ALF and other groups that have fought against
the fur farms.
They've also been active against the section.
The press office was formed in reaction to a raid on the University of Iowa where 401
animals were liberated and a large amount of economic sabotage was inflicted on a laboratory
there.
And there was nobody like us speaking out to the media, to the general public about
why people were doing that sort of thing.
And so we, Dr. Stephen Best, who's a professor at the University of Texas and I, who had
known each other for a while, got together and formed the current iteration of the press
office and have been operating to do that ever since.
Something I want to mention is that other animal rights organizations are quite supportive
of the animal liberation front.
They don't adhere to the narrative put out there by most mainstream media and governmental
institutions.
One example of that is PETA, I think is a good ally of the animal liberation front.
So yeah, you enjoy quite a good reputation in the animal rights community.
The animal liberation front is not considered marginal.
Do you think it helps your work?
I actually might take issue with that to some degree.
PETA has always been a supporter of underground direct action.
In fact, they often serve as a sort of de facto press office for the animal liberation front.
Back during the 1990s when Operation Bite Back was going on, it was a concerted campaign
against the fur industry here in North America.
Frequently PETA were the people who were speaking out about it and who were showing videotapes
back in those days because that's how they recorded it, recorded video footage of these
fur farms.
And so PETA was very involved and yes, Ingrid Newkirk in particular has always been a supporter
of underground direct action.
Other groups, not so much though, for instance, some of the really even bigger groups like
Humane Society of the United States, for instance, are very much opposed to illegal direct action.
In fact, they won't even allow the press office to distribute information at their conferences
that they hold because they're 100% against illegal direct action.
And part of that, I think, or at least most of it, I think, stems from the fact that they
don't want their donors refusing to send them money because they're advocating for illegal
action and some people are like that.
I was involved with Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for a number of years.
In fact, I was on their board of directors.
I was one of their officers.
I was on their ships on a number of different occasions.
And after going up to the ice floes of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and confronting sealers
and not just taking pictures of them clubbing the seals, but actually standing between them
and the seals and refusing to let them kill the seals, there were altercations and we
created a disturbance and we were arrested.
And as a consequence, I was actually asked to step down from Sea Shepherd because they
had at least one or two of their major donors told them, we're going to quit giving you
money if you don't disassociate yourself from this guy who was actually standing there and
confronting the sealers and having physical altercations with them.
So I think some organizations are more supportive than others.
And I think a lot of grassroots activists, people such as yourself, they're out there
pushing the general message of animal rights and how we can be better and more effective
activists, I think, are at least willing to talk about what we talk about and are at least
willing to say this is part of the struggle.
It's not the only part of the struggle.
It may or may not even be the most important part of the struggle, but it is a part of
the struggle, just like it's a part of any struggle for liberation.
And I think that's the most common narrative.
But there are people when money's at stake that will say what they feel like they need
to say in order to keep that money rolling in.
It's interesting.
I did not know about it.
It's a bit of a sensitive question.
Don't answer if you don't want to.
But how do you get your funding for the press office?
And I guess the actions that the Animal Liberation Front takes don't require enormous funding.
But in terms of those who find themselves in prison and such, are there any initiatives
to pay for their legal fees and things like that?
Well, kind of a couple part question.
As far as funding for the press office, that's just done from local activists, volunteers,
people that share our website or our social media and decide to send us money.
It's very minimal.
We don't get a lot of money.
We have a very small budget.
At times, I've stepped up and funded it when it needed funding.
None of us take a salary.
None of us are paid.
We don't have expansive offices anywhere.
We don't own any buildings or anything like that.
So we're all volunteers.
A lot of times, we do a lot of traveling to different animal rights conferences that do
allow us to either speak at the conference or distribute materials at the conference.
And so most of that is funded out of our own pockets.
So yeah, we have a pretty small budget that is supported.
We do have some supporters out there.
We have a mailing list with several thousand people on it.
Some of those people send us money.
So that's how we get our funding.
As far as those that are out there doing it, we don't send that money, by the way, to the
underground, the ALF.
We don't know who they are.
So we wouldn't know where to send the money.
And it would be illegal to do that.
I mean, it would be like sending money to Hamas or something.
I mean, we can't actually send those people money.
Where do they get their money?
I don't know.
I think a lot of them just dig it out of their own pockets or borrow it from friends or relatives
or something.
I can't really speak to that.
But again, it doesn't take a lot.
I mean, it doesn't take much to drive to a fur farm and climb through the woods for a
little ways and use a pair of bolt cutters to open up some fences and let animals free.
It doesn't take a lot to throw a brick through a first door window or other forms of economic
sabotage like that.
So I don't think there's a whole lot of funding that's necessarily out there for those kind
of guys.
And what was the last part of the question?
Something about...
The legal fees of activists that are...
Legal education.
Again, there are so few people that actually go through the legal system, but we've always
been there to help people if we can.
We certainly help people with initial legal expenses.
We can't always cover all of their legal expenses for everything they do.
But there are other lawyers in the movement that are animal rights people themselves who
oftentimes step forward.
There's a group in Portland called the Civil Liberties Defense Committee that's a group
of lawyers out there that are pro animal rights and will also often help people at no expense.
So there are lawyers in the movement that are available to help people.
And you mentioned how you were like Hamas, but there are some major differences.
First of all, you're nonviolent.
Also you're not centralized.
There's no leadership for the animal liberation front.
The animal liberation front is decentralized and is nonviolent.
You're not killing people.
So it's sad to see that the animal liberation front is marginalized and perceived even legally
as much of a threat for domestic security as a terrorist group like Hamas.
Yeah, but that's the way the world works.
The African National Congress was considered a terrorist group.
There's been lots of other organizations out there that have been considered terrorist
groups just because whoever is oppressing the people that they're fighting for or oppressing
the animals in this case, it threatens the status quo.
And so that term is thrown around a lot.
But you're right.
The animal liberation front is pointedly nonviolent.
They're pointedly anti-violence.
They're trying to stop violence.
They don't promote violence in any form or way.
They're anti-violent.
But again, as far as the federal government's concerned, I testified at a Senate hearing
back in 2005, I believe, and one of the head FBI people stood up and said that the animal
rights organizations were the number one domestic terror threat here in the United States.
And that's despite things like the killing all those people at Waco and all the other
right-wing militias that are out there that are actually harming people.
And yet they decide to frame the animal rights movement as the number one domestic terrorist
threat.
And again, it's a threat to those profits.
It's a threat to big agriculture.
It's a threat to big businesses that then filters down to the FBI, who then has to step
up and say, OK, well, we'll make them the number one terrorist threat.
That way we can try to stop them.
But despite all that, they haven't had much effect.
And as you mentioned before, the ALF in particular is a decentralized organization.
There's no central leadership.
There's no card that you carry or a secret handshake or dues that you have to pay every
month or anything like that.
It's a group of people that get together and decide they're going to act.
And they don't know who the other group next door is.
And they don't know who anybody else is.
And therefore, it makes it very, very difficult for law enforcement to infiltrate them.
And that's why they've been able to function for 30 or 40 years in this country with, like
I said, very, very, very few people ever going to prison.
And I read some of the transcripts of back in 2005 of those FBI agents talking about
the threat that the animal liberation front poses.
And it's hilarious.
It is truly, you know, you read the language they use and you think that this is like an
existential threat.
It's like we're living in two different realities.
And yeah, it's weird.
It's strange.
We are.
We're an existential threat to their profit.
And that's all they care about.
We are a threat to their property.
If people quit drinking milk and people quit eating animal flesh, people quit wearing fur,
then yeah, their profits are going to go down and they don't like that.
Don't mess with the money.
So we were talking about funding and you also have an online e-commerce shop where you sell
the book, many books and different interesting items.
But in particular, the ALF strikes again collected writings of the animal liberation front in
North America, which is like I said, a book on the many actions that were taken by the
animal liberation front.
I have not read the book yet.
I have ordered the book and I'm waiting for it.
I'm excited about it because, you know, it has 700 pages and I'm very curious about the
different stories that I'm about to read about.
So can you maybe highlight some of the stories that are present in the book?
First of all, the book is a book that was edited and compiled by someone named Peter
Young who is one of the few people who ever did go to prison.
He liberated tens of thousands of captive mink and destroyed a lot of materials that
were integral in their exploitation and eventually went to prison and served a couple of years,
I believe, in prison.
But once he got out, then he started speaking about what he had done and why he had done
it and was able to inspire a lot of people, still inspires a lot of people.
He's also written a number of books that talk about what he's done and what other people
have done.
And this is sort of the latest compilation that he's come up with.
And it's a lovely compilation of stories about people that have been involved in the underground
and some of the things that they've done.
There's great stories about how Rod Coronado sunk half of the Icelandic whaling fleet in
the harbor.
He basically crawled onto their whaling ships in the middle of the night and opened up these
valves that let the seawater flow into the ships.
And there's great pictures of the ships sitting there underwater in the harbor and unable
to go out and kill whales any longer.
There's a really poignant story about a raid at a hospital called Harbor UCLA Medical Center
in Southern California.
And it's interesting, it was December of 1983 when somebody, a very early ALF cell, broke
into that facility and liberated 12 dogs that were being experimented on and eventually
would have been killed.
And the reason that it's particularly interesting to me is that was December of 1983.
In 1984, I started my surgical residency at that exact same hospital.
And so six months earlier from my stepping into the door of the hospital, the Animal
Liberation Front had liberated 12 dogs from that facility.
Now, I wasn't even vegan then.
I had not come to the animal rights struggle at all.
So it wasn't me.
I didn't have anything to do with it.
But no, it was just a great story and one of the earlier stories of the underground.
There's too many stories to talk about, but it's a great read and I've enjoyed reading
it and I'm sure you're going to enjoy it a lot when you get it.
And the other good thing about the book is it has a lot of how-to information.
So it has a lot of information in there about how to do research and how to come up with
a plan and how to execute a plan if you're interested in helping animals directly by
either liberating them or stopping people from abusing them that are abusing them.
So it's really a great resource and I think everybody should read it if they get the chance.
You don't have to buy it from us.
You can get it on Amazon or anywhere else.
Yeah.
Amazing, you know, we're recording this just before Christmas and this is my Christmas
gift that I'm offering to myself.
So you mentioned a bit about your life story, Jerry.
So I'm really curious how you found yourself.
You mentioned how you were not vegan.
So you were born in a normal American family like most vegans who ate meat at the dinner
table and was not so much interested in the animal rights movement.
For my family, this is just very alien to them.
So how did you find yourself from that to becoming vegan to then becoming an officer
for the press office of one of the most radical, and I'm using the word radical in a good
way, a radical journalistic outlet for one of the most radical animal rights organization
out there, movement out there.
Yeah, like you said, I grew up in a very normal household, grew up in Texas, ate animal flesh
my whole life, never really gave it any thought, was brainwashed like everybody else.
In addition, I also went to college and then medical school in Texas.
And the issue never really came up.
Even in medical school, there was nothing on nutrition or any thoughts given to animal
agriculture or animal experimentation.
We didn't do any animal experimentation in medical school.
There was a single lab where it was optional and you could go there and watch them kill
a dog by injecting it with different drugs and see the effects on its physiology.
But that was it.
It wasn't like we were dissecting animals or doing anything like that at all.
And then when I got into my surgical residency, that was at Harbor UCLA that I mentioned earlier,
there was animal experimentation going on and I knew about it and I participated in
it because I was told to and I thought, okay, well, they tell me to do it, I'll do it.
And I wrote a lot of papers about what I did and I really burnished my academic career.
And it just never occurred to me.
I was just completely brainwashed.
It never occurred to me that anything was wrong.
Although I did notice that despite all the research on animals that was going on, it
wasn't making any difference for helping people.
Everything I discovered or wrote about or looked at in the lab ever made things better
for any human being.
So there was already this kind of a crack in the facade, like why are we killing these
animals when we could be using all this money and time and effort to be helping people.
And the reason I became a surgeon is I'm a very practical person.
I want to fix something.
If I see something broken, I want to fix it.
I'm not somebody that wants to treat diabetes for 20 or 30 years and see people gradually
succumb to the disease or maybe get better.
I like to fix things right away.
So if you have an appendix that's ruptured, I want to go in there and take out your appendix
and you'll be fine as frogs here in another few days.
And lately, the last 20 years of my career, I spent as a trauma surgeon.
So you come to me with a gunshot wound to your abdomen or a stab wound or you're in
a terrible car accident or something.
I fix it.
That's what I did.
So I look at what works and I apply what works and try to make things better.
Well, I sort of applied that same idea to animal rights.
Once I did get involved in animal rights and I got involved when I read a couple of books.
One was by a philosopher named Tom Reagan called The Struggle for Animal Rights.
And the other one was a book called The Diet for a New America, which was written by John
Robbins, who was the heir to the Baskin and Robbins ice cream fortune.
And he wrote a book about each form of animal exploitation and animal agriculture and how
the animals suffered, but also how it was bad for human health and also how it was bad
for the environment.
And when I read all that, why didn't I know all this?
I mean, it was all well researched and documented and referenced.
It wasn't just some guy's opinion.
I mean, it was factual.
And being a factual person, I looked at all that information and I said, why didn't anybody
ever tell me about this?
How could I live for 30 years and not known about this information?
And so I immediately said, I don't want any part of that.
And so not only did I become vegan right away in a few days, I also started talking to my
patients about it.
I was in practice in surgery at the time and I started showing my patients.
I go, you know, here's the facts.
And I gave them information that came from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,
for instance, an organization based in Washington, D.C., which is great about talking about human
health issues and a meat based diet.
And I said, you know, you can do whatever you want when you go home.
But while you're in the hospital and while you're in your my care, I don't want you smoking
cigarettes, you know, don't want you to heroin.
OK.
And I don't want eating animal flesh because it's not good for you.
And so you go home, you do whatever you want when you go home.
But while you're here in the hospital and in my care, this is what I would like you
to do.
And most people were receptive, but I would give them information to read about it.
And I don't know if anybody ever went home and became vegan or not.
I don't know, because I didn't really see them for very long after that.
Usually once I get them fixed up and they're on their way and I never see them again.
So but that was kind of how I got started.
And as I learn more about the struggle for animal liberation, I was exposed to everything
from, you know, handing out pamphlets on how to go vegan to doing even demonstrations with
PETA and things like that.
And at some point I became exposed to the animal liberation front and people that were
working illegally to help animals.
And when I looked at everything, I thought, well, what's the most effective?
What what pound for pound?
What gets you the best results?
And I thought illegal direct access did.
And on top of that, nobody else was talking about it.
And very few people were doing it.
So I thought, well, maybe this is my niche.
And so I thought there's not much nobody else is talking about it.
Nobody.
And I had some credibility coming from the medical field.
So I said, you know what, maybe I'll use my credibility and step up and start talking
about this and maybe people take it seriously.
And maybe we can get this to gain wider acceptance.
And that's pretty much what I've been doing ever since.
That's amazing.
That's truly an inspiring journey.
And have you been inspired by the progress of the animal rights movement and the vegan
cause throughout those past decades?
Oh, tricky question.
I think I think, yes, we have done some good things and we have made some progress.
And I think there are more vegans around today than there were then.
And I think that we have laws now against animal abuses that we didn't have then.
So yeah, we have made some progress.
And animal rights is something that's more widely talked about now.
And most people know about it.
If they're not vegan, they at least know about it.
If they haven't become vegan, it's not so much that they don't know about it.
But with online media now, there's almost no reason that somebody would not know about
animal abuses.
And when I was becoming vegan, I mean, it was basically you read books or pamphlets.
You didn't really have Instagram or TikTok or anything like that, where you could watch
these videos of animals and what they go through in the factory farming arena and so forth.
So I think we have made a lot of progress in that regard.
On the other hand, and we are killing fewer animals for fur, for instance.
Circuses are banned in a lot of cities and even states now.
So I think we have made some progress.
On the other hand, more animals are dying every year than they were when I got started,
because there's more people and there's more animals being killed mainly for food than
there were then.
So other times I'm not as optimistic and I don't know how this is all going to end.
I personally think that we're on sort of a trajectory that human populations will eventually
decrease significantly, whether it's from another pandemic or whether it's from something
else, environmental destruction and so forth.
And I think this is a pretty pessimistic viewpoint, but I don't think we're going to see the complete
abolishing of animal exploitation until there's a lot fewer human beings on the planet.
And the good news is that may not be that much longer.
The bad news is I don't know that we're ever going to see this vegan world where we still
have 10 billion people walking around the planet and everybody's vegan.
I just don't think that's going to happen.
So I hate to be a pessimist, but I just don't think that's going to happen.
On the other hand, we've all got the opportunity and we all have the duty, I think, to keep
doing what we can to minimize or decrease the amount of animal exploitation, animal
suffering and animal torture and killing that's going on.
So that keeps me getting out of bed every morning.
So you don't believe in the revolution of lab-grown meat?
Well, I think all those things will happen.
I think it'll be much more widely accepted.
I think that we will be immense amount of progress in the future, but I don't think
we're going to ever get rid of certainly factory farming and animal exploitation for food.
I think that other factories will come together before we ever get there and have an effect
on human overpopulation.
That's a controversial stance even within the animal rights movement, I think.
But I've never been shy about saying what I think.
Well, I'm curious about something.
I've had discussions with various vegans and animal rights activists, and sometimes
I get a feeling from them of misentropy.
And it's understandable, they see humans being so cruel to animals on a daily basis.
But you're a doctor, you like people, you don't hate them.
But what do you say about that feeling arising in people?
Because I feel like just from the basis of mental health, it's not very helpful for
your own happiness to think this way.
But what are your thoughts?
Well, I don't think it's a coincidence that we're seeing an increasing amount of psychiatric
illness in our culture, people suffering from depression and all these other mental health
disorders.
And I think a lot of that is the brainwashing that we go through as a result of living in
a capitalist dominated society where the people with all the money decide what messages we
hear and how we act and what we eat and what we do.
And I think we get that from a very early age.
And I think it does go against the human grain at some point.
I mean, most people accept the brainwashing and do okay with it.
I've always said that, you know, 80% of people, you can tell them what's going on, you can
show them what's going on on factory farms, you can show them what's going on in the fur
trade.
They just don't care because they've been so brainwashed that they it's not because
they're human, it's because they're a brainwashed human.
I don't think there's anything specifically about being a human being that makes you that
way.
I think it's the fact that you're brainwashed from the time you're two years old to believe
that it's normal to abuse animals, whether it's to eat them or to see them in circuses
and rodeos and everywhere else.
And so the other 20% of people have been brainwashed, but they're able to break out of that like
I was and like you were and like so many people that we both know are.
And that's why I think when we do outreach, if we do a cube or if we hand out white vegans
or we do that thing, I think, you know, eight out of 10 people aren't going to care, they're
going to throw the pamphlet away or they're going to walk right by the TV screens.
But 20% of people will at least think about it.
And they may not change right then and there, but they'll think about it.
And they have the potential for change like you and I did and like so many other people
have.
So that's that's kind of, again, what keeps us going is that we think there are those
20% of people.
And if we could get 20% of the of the country or the world to be vegan, then you're right.
It would be a it'd be a tidal wave and it would push along a lot of those other 80%.
And in theory, it could happen.
It could happen.
I just don't I just don't know.
Like I said, I've been doing this for 30 years now and I just haven't seen it yet.
And maybe it's coming in the next 30 years.
I hope so.
Well, what worries me is countries like China, where, you know, the the governments are not
at all democratic.
And there's this growing middle class and demand for meat.
And I feel like there's almost no actions around, you know, in the field of animal rights
and veganism in those countries and regions.
That's where you have most people and the greatest demand for animal products.
Absolutely.
The only the only the only light in that in that scenario is that historically, places
like that have looked to the West for inspiration.
And so, for instance, if we could get fur banned in the United States, we get fur banned
in Western Europe.
Well, yeah, they wear a lot of fur in China, but they wear fur because we've a con and
Dior and all these other and Fendi's are pushing for and if those companies are no longer pushing
for, they're not going to go out and start wearing fur anyway.
They look to the West to see what people in the West are doing.
So if we were to ban fur in North America and Western Europe, then the fur for animals
killed for their fur in China would also go way down if not go away altogether.
And you could look at the same way in the animal agriculture.
We we find ways to get around the current system of animal agriculture, like you said,
with cultured lab cultured meat and things like that.
If people in China and India and these other highly populated areas see what we're doing,
then they're going to want to emulate that, just like they're emulating us for the way
we kill pigs and eat them.
They emulate that.
The reason they're doing that when they when they have the ability to is because we've
shown them by TV commercials that that's the thing to do.
So there is a way to change it.
You're right.
They're not going to be a bunch of activists locking themselves to the fur stores in China
because they'll throw you in jail and throw away the key.
Right.
I mean, they're they don't they don't care.
They've got no rights over there.
So that's not going to happen.
But on the other side of the coin is they may look to us and see what we're doing and
want to emulate that.
And we could make progress in that respect.
So a question I had was what you know, you mentioned how the press office is active on
various social media.
I enjoy your posts on Instagram and listeners will find links in the description below.
What should we be on the lookout for 2024 in in different communicates that the press
office will will put out?
And you mentioned that there is this campaign around for are we going to see some consequential
actions in the future?
We're certainly hoping so.
I mean, there there is a resurgence of activism against the fur trade.
There's an organization called the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, CAFT.USA, that is
sort of pushing this sort of regional, if not global, effort to all of us pull together
to to ban the fur trade.
And one of the reasons they chose fur and one of the reasons that fur is so important
is that you have to pick the battles that you can win first.
And then once you get that, then you move on to the next one.
So Fog Raw, for instance, is another one that's in the wings and another campaign that a lot
of people are working on, because that's that's an easy one.
We can win that.
We can win the fur campaign.
We can win the Fog Raw campaign.
So we pick the just to go up and say, oh, well, we're going to shut down McDonald's
or something like that.
I mean, you're not you're not going to do that.
OK, that's not going to happen.
But you can find these low hanging fruits, if you will, and campaign against them.
So and often where there's an above ground campaign, such as the Coalition to Abolish
the Fur Trade, which is an above ground campaign targeting certain companies, they've already
seen more than a dozen companies agree to stop selling fur after they've been targeted
in above ground protests and other actions.
But oftentimes the the underground, the ALF and other underground groups, when they see
an above ground campaign going on like this, they'll step up and add to that campaign.
We saw that explicitly in the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty campaign back in the late 90s,
early thousands, where there was a campaign against Huntington Life Sciences, which was
an animal testing company that was killing 500 animals a day, testing things like oven
cleaner and shampoo and drugs and all kind of things on animals.
There was an above ground campaign that focused on putting that lab out of business.
But the underground also stepped up and and and found ways to get involved as well.
So we we were expecting to see that kind of action going forward in 2024.
Perhaps people from the underground stepping up to join the campaign to abolish the fur
trade.
Yeah, so stay tuned, people.
And what as a parting question, what would be your message for vegans who might be tempted
to take action or are hesitating?
What could you say to encourage them to take action and do more than just be vegan?
Absolutely.
I think if you're of the persuasion that illegal direct action is a good strategy, that it's
an effective strategy, as we do, as we believe, then I would encourage you to get involved.
And that might mean things like not being involved in above ground animal rights.
It might mean not showing up at protests and maybe not doing things because you want to
stand on the radar.
But it's not don't do it for glorification because you can't tell people that you're
doing it or you'll get caught.
It has to be something that you do because you believe in it and because you think the
animals deserve it.
If I was an animal in a cage and I was going to be killed, I personally would want somebody
that was trying to do something about that right away, not somebody that was, you know,
trying to pass legislation or something else.
I mean, so if you're of that persuasion, then educate yourself.
There's lots of resources on our website, animal liberation and press office dot org.
And of course, there's lots of ways to find more information about that by the book that
you were talking about from our website or from Amazon.
Lots of ways to learn more.
There's a there's a book called The Blueprint also available on Amazon or our website that
talks about the fur trade.
It has a listing of all the North American fur farms in the entire country.
It has their addresses and their phone numbers and where to find them.
And it also has hints on on how to raid them.
So lots of ways to educate yourself out there.
Go out there and get involved and then shoot us an anonymous email and let us know about
it.
Amazing.
So, Jerry, thank you so much for having answered my question.
Did you have something to add before we stop the recording?
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
I appreciate your enthusiasm and your willingness to get this information out there.
And I hope I was of some use to you.
Thanks.
Of course.
This was an amazing, interesting, truly fascinating conversation.
So thank you so much, Jerry, for having accepted my invitation and for having answered my questions.
Thank you, everyone, for listening.
Before you go, there is a question I wish I had thought to ask Jerry during our conversation.
The question is, why do you think animal rights and the vegan cause are not more appealing
to a conservative audience?
Would you attribute it to a failure of activists to advocate for animal rights in conservative
circles?
I had the chance to ask him this very question by email and his response will surprise you.
I invite you to read his answer in the description below.
Also, if you have your own opinion on the topic, I invite you to share it with me.
Once again, thank you so much for being a friend of this show.
Take care and see you next week.