Activism

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1996:

Robert E. Kazelak, of Hoffman
Estates, Illinois, was charged on March 22
with misdemeanor reckless conduct for
allegedly twice firing a shotgun just over the
head of Chicago Animal Rights Coaliton member
Mike Durschmid six days earlier. Durschmid,
with CHARC president Steve Hindi and
other activists, was on the far side of Illinois
Highway 173, protesting a cage-reared pheasant
shoot at the Richmond Hunt Club in
McHenry County. According to Hindi,
Kazelak “aimed the weapon directly at the
heads of the activists,” making sure he had
their attention before he fired. The incident
was immediately reported to the McHenry
County sheriff’s department, who turned it
over to the Illinois Department of Natural
Resources, who gave it to the McHenry
County State’s Attorney, Hindi said, without
key evidence. The charges were finally filed
only after the shooting drew heavy publicity.

Hindi was arrested in the wee
hours of the morning on February 19 in
Minnetonka, Minnesota, along with
Minnetonkans Against Animal Cruelty members
Bobbi Rudh, 47, and Mary Cecilia
Constantine, 59, for allegedly being within
100 feet of a deer trap. Hindi, a videotape surveillance
expert, was in Minnetonka at the
invitation of MAAC to videotape a controversial
deer cull, in which 175 to 200 deer are to
be trapped and dispatched with captive bolt
guns. Among many aspects of the arrest suggesting
an ambush were that while the arrest
reports indicate the three were under surveillance
themselves as they retrieved cameras that
had already been set up for hours, they were
not actually apprehended until they were back
in Hindi’s van and had driven some
blocks––which enabled the seizure of Hindi’s
whole array of high-tech equipment, little of it
used in the relatively simple documentation of
deer suffering during the cull. Hindi did get
most of the equipment back a week later, with
a long-distance legal assist from California animal
rights attorney Larry Weiss, who showed
him how to request the necessary judicial
order, but the Minnetonka police initially
refused to return the items on the day set by the
judge, reconsidering when Hindi threatened to
call the media and stage a sit-in. When the
equipment was finally returned, Hindi said, he
found everything had been switched on and left
to run until batteries were drained.
Freeman Wicklund, a traveling
organizer with the Student Organization for
Animal Rights and outspoken advocate of the
Animal Liberation Front, drew 90 days in jail
on March 12 for alleged disorderly conduct
while occupying the office of University of
Minnesota president Nils Hasselmo last year in
protest of addictive drug experiments on animals.
Wicklund remained free pending appeal.
David Callender, 37, identified by
police as a senior officer in the Animal
Liberation Front, on March 6 drew 10 years
in jail in Birmingham, England, for allegedly
plotting a firebombing campaign. Callendar
was arrested in 1994 in possession of 60
kitchen timers similar to those used in a 1991
ALF bombing, plus other materials that police
said were sufficient to make 100 firebombs.
David Francis “Frank” Arnold, of
Victoria, British Columbia, with no apparent
history of animal rights activism, was reportedly
arrested on February 29 in Whitbourne,
Newfoundland, for allegedly plotting to blow
up the local seal processing plant. “He had a
vehicle full of incendiary devices,” the CBC
reported, “and had been asking for directions
to the plant.” A math major at the University
of Victoria, British Columbia, Arnold was
teaching assistant last term for Wendy
Wickyre, whom police sources apparently
erroneously identified as his girlfriend.
Interviewed by ANIMAL PEOPLE c o r r espondent
P.J. Kemp, Wickyre said Arnold was
interested in environmental issues, and according
to Kemp, “she knew he had been imprisoned,
but beyond that was rather surprised by
the whole turn of events. I asked if Arnold was
active on campus in animal rights causes, and
she said no, that apparently no one had ever
heard him talk about such things.”