Off the Cuff: Animal Liberator Peter YoungInterview by DEA GOBLIRSCH
Oberlin Review, Friday, May 2, 2008Peter Young is an animal rights activist and speaker from Mercer Island, WA. In 1998, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of raiding mink farms in the Midwest and releasing the animals into the wild. Evading the law for seven years, he was arrested in California in 2005 and sentenced to two years in prison. Recently, he has been selling merchandise for vegan straight-edge hardcore band Earth Crisis and speaking on animal rights and activism at colleges and universities across the country. The Review sat down to talk with him on Harkness’ lawn during his two-day visit to Oberlin.
How do you qualify the US government’s labeling of animal liberationists as terrorists?
Imagine yourself in law enforcement, at an FBI satellite office or even on the local level. You have Washington, DC — the government, FBI headquarters — looking down on you saying, “What are you doing to fight the war on terrorism?” At that point, you have to create a bogey-man. You don’t have the option of not having a terrorist at that point. If you’re looking around for a terrorist, the only people that are really carrying out illegal actions on a regular basis with selfless motives are the environmental and animal rights activists.
Selflessly motivated crimes are entirely out of the paradigm of people in law enforcement. They have to assign sinister motives to it. In my case, they charged me with extortion. They were trying to say that we were releasing animals not to save the animals but to terrorize the fur farmers, because they simply can’t process someone breaking down the wall without anything being in it for himself.
How is economic and property harm different from harm against humans?
When you damage property [as a political act], it’s an indirect way of saving lives — whether slashing the tires on a truck at a slaughterhouse in hopes that the slaughterhouse will not be able to function for at least one day or doing damage to the car of a vivisector to deter them from doing business with a company like Huntington Life Sciences. Property damage is distinct from harming human life. [It’s] actually quite the opposite. It’s motivated by love and compassion.
There’s been a critique in anarchist circles of people seeking out attention from police as a badge of honor. Do you think that happens in the animal liberation movement, and what do you think of putting people who serve jail time on pedestals?
Any time you create a cult of personality around someone who, say, goes into a place where animals are being abused or takes them out, you’re doing a tremendous disservice to the issue. You build up a mystique and make it something untouchable for the average person. We really need to demystify this stuff. People need to understand that the individuals who carry out these things, they could be clergy, they could be anybody. Viewing this stuff through a Robin Hood frame is terribly destructive.
As far as seeking out arrest, you don’t see that a whole lot anymore. Planning to get arrested on a civil disobedience level is something that happened quite a bit when I was getting involved and I think the movement has moved on.
What do you think about the mainstream animal rights movement right now?
There’s been a tremendous shift towards giving attention to the plight of farmed animals. Literally 98 percent of the animals killed right now are killed in slaughterhouses, factory farms, dairy farms and egg farms. My biggest critique when I was getting involved was asking why [the movement] was giving our attention to peripheral issues. We weren’t prepared to really take on, full steam ahead, the bulk of the problem — animals killed for food.
You also have really terrible things like what the Humane Society of the United States is doing right now — pushing for humane meat and giving humane certifications to non-vegan food. I think it’s absolutely disgraceful. I live in Santa Cruz and the headline on the front page of the free weekly about a month ago was, “Humane Meat: It’s Making Eating Animals Okay Again.” I think that captured so well the mistake that people are making with pushing towards giving animals bigger cages and more humane slaughtering methods.
What’s the best way to support incarcerated activists?
Prisoner support is a lot simpler than people realize. It is simply books, letters, a little bit of money to eat and visits. In the pre-trial phase, the hardest part is simply insuring that people have an adequate defense. I was fortunate that through donations alone we were able to hire a couple of attorneys to fight my case. It can quite literally mean the difference between no prison time and 20 years in prison. I really think one of the reasons to support prisoners is because people are not going to be willing to take risks and follow their hearts if they believe they’re going be abandoned if they get caught. It’s like asking someone to throw himself into the Colorado River without a life raft. Supporting prisoners can also be a really good outreach tool. I got a lot of letters from people who read about my case that said, “I read about what you did and the fact that you went to prison for this, the least I can do is be vegetarian or vegan.”
Your words have inspired many Oberlin College animal rights activists. From where do you draw your strength?
I draw my strength from having looked a lot of animals in the eye that I could not save. My obligation is to them, to do what I can. I draw strength knowing I do have the ability to do something about it. I can’t save all of them but I can definitely do my part and inspire others to do their part.
