Op-Ed.......Green is the New Red

 by Will Potter

   "ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) has a new model bill, the 'Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,' heavily influenced by the US Sportsmen's Alliance, a pro-hunting group.


    It includes an ambitious, and likely unconstitutional, list of restrictions and punishments...The first is to expand the definition of terrorism to include not only property destructions, but any action intended to 'deter' animal enterprises.

   That includes nonviolent civil disobendience, and witnessing and documenting corporate misconduct.

   The model bill prohibits 'entering an animal facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.'

   Anyone--including journalists--could be labelled a terrorist for exposing activities that industry would rather keep secret. (p. 128)

   "The mere existence of CMU's (Communication Management Units) should be a warning not just to other prisoners but to all Americans, for the power to create and maintain secretive prisons for political prisoners is antithetical to a healthy democracy." (p. 216)

    "According to the indictment, the defendants allegedly chanted loudly at home demonstrations (including 'murderer leave town, terrorist leave town'), and used the Internet to research public information about animal experimenters.

   The also allegedly wore bandannas at protests, which is an increasingly common response to FBI harassment and photography, and wrote slogans on the public sidewalk using children's sidewalk chalk." (p232).

    "Like the Red Scare, with its hysteria against 'godless communists' threatening the American capitalist way of life, this Green Scare is a culture war, a war of values.

   The animal rights and environmental movements are seen not as a competing civilization, but as threats to civilization itself." (p.243)

    "...the eternal fear...that the American way of life is under attack.  If animals rights and environmental activists have their way, the message goes, nobody will be able to eat meat, wear fur, take life-saving medications, enjoy circuses, cut trees, build homes, use electricity or drive cars."  (pp. 243-4)

    "...they challenge fundamental beliefs that have guided humanity for thousands of years, and that have for the most part remained unquestioned by prior social justice movements; that human beings are the center of the universe and our interests are intrinscally superior to those of other species and the natural world." (p. 245)

   "To some, the activists are a threat to the deply held religious belief that humans were created by God to hold dominion over all other species and use them for whatever purposes we choose." (p.246)