STRATEGIES FOR ACTIVISTS FROM THE CAMPAIGN FILES OF HENRY SPIRA

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

“This handbook is a project of Animal Rights International, POB 214, Planetarium Station, New York, NY 10024, and is not for sale.”

If you’re serious about
activism, meaning serious about
getting results, not just venting
spleen, drop Henry Spira a note
requesting Strategies for Activists.
Asking for some of the same information
is more-or-less how I got to
know Spira, 16 years ago, as a frustrated
Quebec newspaper muckrake.
I’d exposed fraudulent
manipulation of animal tests to
defend corporate and governmental
entities against liability in connection
with reckless toxic chemical
use, but even though I’d caught
bureaucrats reversing the course of
major rivers, on paper, to deny evident
pollution, I hadn’t been able to
convert exposure to reform.

REVIEWS: Blue Rage

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Blue Rage
Video by Peter Brown, starring Laird Hamilton, Gerry
Lopez, Craig Kelly, and Captain Paul Watson.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society,
(POB 628, Venice, CA 90294), 1996. 56 minutes.
$28.25 including shipping. Californians add $1.81 sales tax.

“This video answers the
burning question, what do snowboarders,
surfers, and high seas ecological
crusaders have in common?”
says Captain Paul Watson. “We produced
it as educational outreach––a
call to arms to all young people
––especially dudes.”

Winter flooding hits northwest

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

SACRAMENTO––For
the second time in three years, winter
flooding put the Emergency
Animal Rescue Service division of
United Animal Nations to the test
within commuting distance of the
UAN headquarters.
A harbinger came with a
November 19 coastal storm featuring
70-mile-an-hour winds and a
record 6.7 inches of rainfall in 24
hours, that hit at least two Oregon
no-kill sanctuaries hard. The Red
Bear Animal & Plant Sanctuary near
Bandon, Oregon, suffered roof
damage, said founder Anne Barnes.
The newly founded Ark
Refuge, alongside the Tillamook
River, was overwhelmed even
before securing nonprofit status, by
the arrival of animals from flooded
neighbors, claimed Ark founder
Eddie White, who also runs a riding
stable and has apparently come
under critical scrutiny from the
Oregon Humane Society.

COURT CALENDAR

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Defenders of Wildlife on February 5 dropped a lawsuit against
the U.S. Air Force, a month after the Air Force quit low-level flights,
bombing, strafing, and rocketing at the South Tactical Air Command Range
in the Sonoran desert––a critical habitat for the endangered Sonoran pronghorn.
The Air Force also agreed to check for pronghorns before rocketing or
bombing another nearby range. Only about 100 Sonoran pronghorns remain
in the U.S. Small herds also roam an adjacent Mexican biosphere reserve.
Also in the region, but not the immediate vicinity, are the Sonora tiger salamander,
the Canelo Hills ladies tresses orchid, and the Huachuca water
umbel, a floating plant, all added to the Endangered Species List on
January 6. The resolution of Defenders v. Air Force may have implications
for Navy bombing of Farallon de Medinilla (see page 17).

Insurer settles in FoA vs. U.S. Surgical

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

NEW YORK––Federal judge Stephen
Eginton on January 23 dismissed a U.S. Surgical
Corporation lawsuit pending against Friends of Animals
since 1990.
“FoA will now appeal the 1993 dismissal of
its own claims,” said FoA attorney Herman Kaufman,
“which arose from the alleged wiretapping of the FoA
office in 1988-1989, and from the use of [fringe
activist] Fran Trutt to stage a so-called ‘assassination’
attempt against [U.S. Surgical president] Leon Hirsch.”
Trutt was arrested in November 1988 while
placing a pipe bomb in the U.S. Surgical parking lot.
She was given the money to buy the bomb and driven to
the site by Marc Mead, an employee of Perceptions
International, a security firm hired by U.S. Surgical.
Trutt and Mead were introduced by another Perceptions
operative, Mary Lou Sappone, who met and befriended
Trutt in April 1988. Earlier, Sappone tried to interest at
least two other people in bombing Hirsch and/or U.S.
Surgical, but was rebuffed and not taken seriously.

Charities flunk NCIB standards

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

NEW YORK––The National
Charities Information Bureau has
issued negative reports on
Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra
Club, and Project Cure, which
advertises itself as a cancer research
foundation that does not fund animal
experiments.
Defenders, the NCIB said,
“does not meet the standard calling
for the organization to spend at
least 60% of annual expenses for
program activities, nor the standard
calling for the organization to
insure that fundraising expenses, in
relation to fundraising results, are
reasonable over time.”

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION NEWS

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Greenpeace International and Greenpeace France
on January 8 sued anonymous author “Olivier Vermont” and
publisher Albin Michel for issuing purported “defamatory
statements, untruths, distortions of the facts and absurd allegations”
in a volume entitled The Hidden Face of Greenpeace:
Infiltration into the Heart of the International Ecology
Movement. According to “Vermont,” who claims to have
worked within both Greenpeace International and Greenpeace
France, only 6% of the funds the Greenpeace organizations
raise is actually spent on environmental protection. He also
asserts that Greenpeace has “secret dealings with certain states
such as China and Russia,” not surprising for an organization
engaged in international environmental diplomacy.

Activists & Organizations

Money & power

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

George Frampton Jr., Assistant Secretary of the
Interior for National Parks and Wildlife Refuges since 1993,
is to step down on February 14. Frampton, formerly president
of The Wilderness Society, has had an adversarial relationship
with Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska), chair of the
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, since
his days as a trial lawyer trying to stop old growth logging in
the Tongass National Forest. Murkowski held a major interest
in the Ketchikan Pulp Company, now closed, whose logs
came primarily from the Tongass National Forest.
Data from 1,012 foundations published in the current
edition of the Foundation Center’s annual Foundation
Grants Index shows that of the top 14 types of grant recipient,
animal protection and wildlife conservation ranked 13th in
both percentage of grants allocated, at 0.9%, and dollars
received, at $46 million, 0.7% of the funding disbursed. The
pattern closely parallels patterns of individual donations.

Activists & Organizations

HSUS told to give back Canadian funds

March 1, 1997 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Ontario Court of Justice judge Bruce C.
Hawkins on January 7 issued an interim order that the
Humane Society of the United States must repay $740,000
to the Humane Society of Canada, in advance of the yet-tobe-scheduled
trial of a lawsuit in which HSC and the
Canadian incorporation of Humane Society International
charge that HSUS improperly seized $1,012,663 in funds
HSC raised within Canada. Wrote Hawkins of the February
1996 seizure, “I cannot imagine a more glaring conflict of
interest or a more egregious breach of fiduciary duty.

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