In the next decade, members began burning seal
hunters' boats and pharmaceutical labs. Those
activities generated more support, and ALF was
formed in 1976.
The ALF is an easy club to join for those not
averse to damaging property. "If you went to a fur
store on Central and threw a rock through the
window," said Mr. Goodwin, "you could say you were
a member of the ALF. " Mr. Goodwin, 25, came to
Dallas in 1996 after pleading guilty and serving
probation for vandalizing fur stores in Memphis, Tenn.
Now heading a group known as the Coalition
Against the Fur Trade, he receives "communiques" by
phone and mail from ALF guerrillas detailing their
activities.
In the realm of animal rights
activists, ALF is far more extreme than more well
known groups such as the Humane Society and
People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals.
PETA has assisted the Animal
Liberation Front financially -- it paid for Mr.
Coronado's attorney -- but the two groups seem to
be drifting apart. "We are considered a bit fuddy-
duddy now by them," said PETA president Ingrid
Newkirk.
While PETA has organized protests
around appearances of the Oscar Mayer
Wienermobile, ALF has been engaging in such actions
as the burning of the Oregon slaughterhouse. The
horse-rendering plant, in Redmond, was destroyed in
September by a fire started with flammable
jelly.That and other arsons are depicted by the
front as skirmishes in an ethical war. "In this age of
insanity you may be branded a terrorist," says an ALF
guide posted on the Internet, "but you will one day
be remembered as a selfless warrior who dared fight
for what is right. " Richard Huber, director of the
Pacific Coast Tissue Bank in Los Angeles, has a hard
time accepting such declarations. Horse tissue
provided for free by the Oregon slaughterhouse was
being used for regenerative surgery on.
The
slaughterhouse fire left the bank without the tissue it
needed for months.
"I wish they [the
arsonists] had to make the phone calls from their high
moral ground saying, `Sorry, but your deformed child
is not going to be operated on this week or this
month or maybe this year,"' Mr. Huber said.. "The
moral compass of these people is no longer operating.
It's almost a joke - if they weren't doing so much
harm. " Much of what they are doing is cataloged in a
diary on the Internet at a Web site that also gives
explicit instructions for committing arson. The 1997
diary cites more than 200 North American incidents of
varying degrees of severity.
Dozens of fur stores,
several in Dallas among them, were vandalized with
broken windows and glued locks. Arsonists torched a
hunt-supply store in Washington, a slaughterhouse
truck near San Francisco, a fur retailer in Minnesota
and a laboratory at the University of California at
Davis.
In November, ALF members released
500 wild horses and 40 burros from a U.S. Bureau of
Land Management corral in Oregon. Pens and chutes
were burned.
The action came after
newspaper reports that some wild horses rounded up
by the government had been sold for
slaughter.
Afterward, the front released an
Internet proclamation: "Genocide against the horse
nation will not go unchallenged! " This salvation
impulse does not extend only to mammals. In Seattle
last March, nighttime raiders trashed a poultry
plant.
"Three chickens [were] liberated," the
ALF diary notes, "and placed in a loving home. " Fast
food restaurants have been frequent targets as well,
because front members believe they are the
moneymaking operations of mass murderers.
McDonald's was the most popular, with ALF claiming
19 attacks last year. Most incidents involved petty
vandalism, such as stopping up toilets and
painting "McDeath" graffiti.
But the stakes
may be raised. Last fall an ALF-sympathetic magazine
known as Undergound urged its readers to "directly
attack the equipment they use to fry dead animals. "
The magazine ran instructions for disabling, from the
roof, the electrical systems of McDonald's
outlets.
Representatives from McDonald's
corporate headquarters in Illinois did not respond to
three requests by The Dallas Morning News for
comment.
ALF partisans also have stepped up
their raids on fur farms in the last two years, with at
least 15 occurring in 1997. Only two were claimed in
1995.
Typically, the liberators slip onto
ranches after dark and unlatch the cages of minks
and foxes that are being raised for their
pelts.
The releases do not always go as
planned. Domestically bred animals often are not
equipped to survive in the wild.
In May about
8,000 minks were set free from an Oregon farm. The
owner later said several thousand of them died from
starvation or exposure. ALF backers acknowledge
animal deaths in such raids, but add that the minks
were slated to be killed anyway.
"Yes, some
of them could get hit by cars," said Sandra Lewis,
New York director for Friends of Animals. "But you
know what? A few will escape.
`If you were
in a prison camp and you knew you were going to be
tortured, which would you choose? " she
said. "Certain torture and death, or the chance of
escape? " Nearly all of the fur farms struck by ALF
raiders last year were listed -- address included -- in
a directory published by Friends of Animals. The
group is not affiliated with ALF but backs some of its
actions.
"These people obviously are trying
to incite others to do violence," said Marsha Kelly,
spokeswoman for the Fur Commission USA, an
industry association.
Ms. Lewis said Friends
of Animals printed the locations of fur farms "in case
people wanted to take a tour. " Whatever the intent,
the directory and the raids have produced suspicion
and fear among breeders. Most of those contacted
by The News, including the owner of a northeast
Texas chinchilla ranch, refused to talk about
ALF.
An exception was Ryan Holt, co-owner
of a South Jordan, Utah, mink farm. In 1996 four men
jumped the fence at the Holt farm and released 3,000
minks. They also drained the oil from a pickup truck,
Mr. Holt said.
"They were saving the world," he
said. "There goes your groundwater, but, hey ... "
One 21-year-old man has been convicted for his role
in the raid, and another is awaiting trial. Most of the
animals were recovered, but years of breeding
records were destroyed."You work at
something for 35 years," Mr. Holt said, "and a couple
of kids who think they're in the right can come in and
ruin it in a few hours. " ALF backers depict fur farms
as bastions of depravity, with neurotic animals
engaging in self-mutilation. Being in a cage, Mr.
Goodwin said "drives them insane. " Mr. Holt said mink
ranches are "as humane an operation as you'll find in
any animal industry. " Veterinarians help set
treatment standards, a Fur Commission publication
says, and death by carbon monoxide is "without
stress or pain. " Both sides have turned the fight into
a propaganda war. The anti-fur forces produce
videotapes that show mink breeders blithely breaking
the necks of the animals. Pamphlets carry pictures of
anal electrocution devices used on foxes.
The
Fur Commission prints brochures with photos of
farmers gently handling healthy animals. It also links
itself to issues with more appeal than mink coats,
running print ads that put it on the side of "sick
kids. " One shows a drawing of a child in a hospital
bed, flanked by protesters carrying signs .with
slogans such as, "Save the lab rats! " ALF activists
have attacked at least a dozen university labs over
the past 11 years, attempting to free animals and
destroy research.
"It has a big chilling effect
on the research community as a whole," said Mishka
McCowan, spokesman for Americans for Medical
Progress.
The group, partially funded by
pharmaceutical companies, says that experiments on
animals have been . to the development of drugs to
prevent or treat a variety of diseases, including polio
and cancer.
"Animal research is the absolute
bedrock of medical science," Mr. McCowan
said.
ALF supporters say using animals :n labs
for human benefit falsely presumes that man has the
moral right to exploit animals.
"There isn't a
hierarchy of life," Mr. Coronado said, "but one in
which all life is equal. " Now 31, Mr. Coronado is
serving a 7-month federal sentence in Tucson, Ariz.,
for aiding and abetting the burning of a Michigan
State University laboratory.
He said his animal
rights beliefs are consistent with his Yaqui Indian
heritage,"motivated by compassion and love and
respect for life. " But as with many ALF actions, the
acts for which Mr. Coronado was convicted cannot
be easily presented as a case of good vs.
evil. The 1992 fire did destroy some findings that
could have been useful to the fur industry. It also
demolished the work of an assistant professor whose
research could have led to reduced use of animals in
labs.
Moreover, "they could have killed people
here," said Michigan State spokeswoman Sue
Nichols. "There were people in the building when they
set fire to it. " Mr. Coronado may be released from
prison in a year. He renounced ALF at his 1994
sentencing -- "a strategy," he said last month, "to
get as light a sentence as possible. " Now he hopes
to become the group's spokesman.
"If ALF
was to get an above-ground voice, a political lobby,
that is the next challenge," he said.
While the
front contemplates a public face, law enforcement
has accelerated its anti-ALF efforts. "This is
something the FBI and the Department of Justice
know we need to step up, and we need to pay close
attention to," said Ron Van Vranken, an FBI special
agent.
In Utah, police have made a series of
arrests of suspected ALF arsonists linked to
the "Straight Edge" movement, which forbids use of
tobacco, drugs and alcohol.
There, individuals
with suspected ALF connections have been convicted
of setting fire to a McDonald's, of trying to firebomb a
leather store and of burning down a mink breeder's
feed cooperative.
One of ALF's principles has
always been that no human or animal should be
harmed in its actions. But some ALF-watchers believe
the movement could be headed toward increased
radicalization, with violent results.
Seattle-
area investigator Clausen said that he met recently
with FBI agents, and that this concern was shared.
"The radical rhetoric is eventually going to end up
with death," he said. "There's not one person I deal
with who doesn't think this."
