F A Q ‘s

Frequently Asked Questions About the North American Animal Liberation Press Office

1. Why was the North American Animal Liberation Press Office formed?
2. Are Press Officers members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) or other underground groups?
3. Can the Press Office help me contact someone in the ALF?
4. How does someone join the ALF?
5. What is the mandate/mission of the ALF?
6. Why does the ALF resort to illegal actions like property destruction?
7. Does the ALF primarily rely upon arson as a tactic? What tactics does the ALF use? Isn’t arson violent? Is the ALF violent?
8. Isn’t the ALF a “terrorist” group?
9. What is the relationship between the ALF and the Animal Rights movement as a whole? Isn’t the ALF harmful to the movement and don’t they alienate public support?
10. What gains has the ALF brought about?
11. What is the relationship between the ALF and the ELF?
12. Do animal liberationists support violence?
13. Who are the Revolutionary Cells?

30 commonly asked questions are made available on video by R9 Media

For more information please see the Background section or contact the Press Office.

Disclaimer: The Animal Liberation Press Officers do not engage in illegal activities, nor do they know any individuals who do. Neither does this website or the Press Office indend to encourage illegal actions. Rather, the Press Office receives and posts communiqués from anonymous parties and provides comment to the media. more….

1. Why was the North American Animal Liberation Press Office formed?
The North American Animal Liberation Press Office (NAALPO) was formed in 1994 to respond to the mainstream media’s uncritical reporting on animal liberation activities. The Press Office takes a proactive stance to communicate the actions, strategies, and philosophy of the animal liberation movement to the media and the public. Many of these actions are illegal under a current societal structure that fails to recognize the rights of non-human animals to live free of suffering, but validates and promotes the “right” of industries to do whatever they want to animals for profit or research. Within these conditions, those in the underground working for animal liberation often cannot speak out directly. Nevertheless, their actions and message is urgent and deserve to be heard and understood. No one else was performing this function in North America.

2. Are Press Officers members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) or other underground groups?Nope. If the Press Office had any direct dealings with the underground, knew who the members of underground groups were, or were members ourselves, law enforcement would not hesitate to charge and imprison us. The Press Office frequently receives communiques anonymously from these underground groups, and passes them along to the media, but has no personal knowledge of who sends them or from where they are sent.

3. Can the Press Office help me contact someone in the ALF? Since Press Officers don’t know who or where they are, we cannot help anyone contact, find or join the ALF or any other underground organization.

4. How does someone join the ALF? Historically, those wishing to participate in direct action have gotten together with others they could trust of like mind and just started doing actions. ALF cells operate independently, and typically are begun locally by like-minded individuals who get together and decide to take action against animal abusers. To begin learning about direct action, start here and follow the links where they may take you. Only you can decide what action to take, when to get started, and how much longer the animals must wait for liberation.

5. What is the mandate/mission of the ALF?The ALF is one of the most active animal liberation groups in existence, and has historically operated under certain specified guidelines, which many other groups do not. These guidelines were developed long ago and are widely known and published, though they have changed in the past and may do so again:

• To liberate animals from places of abuse, i.e., laboratories, factory farms, fur farms, etc., and place them in good homes where they may live out their natural lives, free from suffering.
• To inflict economic damage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals.
• To reveal the horror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors, by performing direct actions and liberations.
• To take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human.
• Any group of people who are vegetarians or vegans and who carry out actions according to these guidelines have the right to regard themselves as part of the Animal Liberation Front.

6. Why does the ALF resort to illegal actions like property destruction? Although many other groups and individuals fight animal oppression in legal ways, the stark fact is that every year, more animals are exploited, oppressed tortured and killed than the year before. Members of the ALF and other underground organizations feel that in order to truly liberate animals, the unjust laws that allow their expolitation must be broken. The ALF and other direct-action groups have a history of effectiveness, closing many businesses that exploited animals, hurting many more economically, and freeing tens of thousands of animals, who could spend the remainder of their lives free of torture and suffering.

7. Does the ALF primarily rely upon arson as a tactic? What tactics does the ALF use? Isn’t arson violent? Is the ALF violent?Arson is one of many tactics utilized by the ALF, one that hurts the animal oppressor financially, and prevents him/her from continuing to do business as usual, profiting off the suffering on non-human animals.Violence against property, as opposed to animals, human or non-human, is viewed by many as justifiable in light of the atrocities being committed against innocent animals. The ALF has historically been opposed to violence against any living being, though other groups and activists do not observe this limitation.

8. Isn’t the ALF a “terrorist” group? Those who terrorize animals by imprisoning them, torturing them in laboratories, displaying them as objects in zoos and circuses, force them to fight each other, and murder them for their flesh and skins are the ones inducing terror, not compassionate activists who seek only to stop the suffering of animals.

9. What is the relationship between the ALF and the Animal Rights movement as a whole? Isn’t the ALF harmful to the movement and don’t they alienate public support? Some members of the animal rights community support the ALF, and others do not. Many believe a wide variety of tactics are necessary to win animal liberation, as so many other struggles for liberation have demonstrated. The ALF seem to care not about what other activists or the public think about them, but what the animals would and do think, as they are liberated from their prisons of torture, suffering and certain death. Think about it: If you were locked in a cage your whole life, taken out only to be injected with poison or to be skinned for your fur, what would you want people to be doing about it? Working on legislation for years, writing kind letters to their congressman, or getting you the hell out of that prison?

10. What gains has the ALF brought about? From dozens of raided mink farms that never re-opened, to the Oregon horse slaughterhouse that burned to the ground and then went out of business, to the vivisectors whose laboratories were shut down after their heinous experiments were exposed, the ALF has a long history of success. Hundreds of other businesses have incurred increased costs for security and insurance, making it that much more expensive to abuse animals, and making them perhaps use fewer animals and look for other, cheaper ways to do business. In the words of those who abuse animals:

• Susan Paris, president of vivisection front group Americans For Medical Progress (AMP), admits the Animal Liberation Front has had a large impact on vivisectionists. She writes, “Because of terrorist acts by animal activists like Coronado, crucial research projects have been delayed or scrapped. More and more of the scarce dollars available to research are spent on heightened security and higher insurance rates. Promising young scientists are rejecting careers in research. Top-notch researchers are getting out of the field.”
• The August 1993 Report to Congress on Animal Enterprise Terrorism describes the ALFs effectiveness as, “Where the direct, collateral, and indirect effects of incidents such as this are factored together, ALFs professed tactic of economic sabotage can be considered successful, and its objectives, at least towards the victimized facility, fulfilled.”

11. What is the relationship between the ALF and the ELF? Both groups share a common ideology of taking direct action to stop exploitation and abuse by those who seek to profit from the plunder of the natural environment. Both organizations are organized into cells known only to their members, to prevent infiltration by the abusers and their law enforcement supporters.

12. Do animal liberationists support violence? Those who have compassion for non-human animals categorically abhor violence. They abhor the violence perpetrated against billions of animals every year, abhor the torture and killing, the imprisonment and exploitation carried out against beings condemned only because they belong to a particular species. Increasingly, activists are defending the right of these suffering animals to the use of self-defense in fighting back against those who torture and kill them for profit or fun. If an animal abuser will not stop hurting innocent animals when asked, if she will not stop when the fallacy of their motives is explained to them, that where is the moral wrong in forcing that person to stop the unwarranted violence? The term “extensional self-defense” has recently been coined to refer to humans who stand up for animals and stop their suffering, using in the words of Malcolm X, “any means necessary”.

13. Who are the Revolutionary Cells? The revolutionary cells exists as a front group for militants across the liberationary movement spectrum. They are anarchists, communists, anti-racists, animal liberationists, earth liberationists, luddites, feminists, queer liberationists, and many more things across various other fronts. Where ever there is oppression there are those unwilling to idly stand by and let it occur, and those people make up the nucleus of the revolutionary cells.

• It is an anti-gmo activist destroying a gmo crop
• it is a basque youth driving a car packed with explosives destined for a spanish politician
• it is a queer bashing back
• a rape victim putting a bullet in the rapist
• a corsican nationalist planting a bomb at a french bank
• it is a cincinatti riot in response to police brutality
• an animal liberationist shooting a vivisector dead on his doorstep
• In short it is the spirit of resistance realized. It is moving from politics to praxis.

Anyone who takes part in the war against the oppressive heirarchies in this world can consider themselves a member of the Revolutionary Cells.

Revolutionary Cells Guidelines :

1. To take strategic direct action (be it non-violent or not) against the oppressive institutions that permeate the world.
2. Make every effort to minimize non-target casualties, be they human or non-human.
3. Respect a diversity of tactics, whether they be non-violent or not.
4. Any underground activist fighting for the liberation of the humyn, earth or animal nations may consider themselves a Revolutionary Cells volunteer.”