Why Does the FBI Treat Videotaping Corporate Animal Abuse As Terrorism?

By Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Activists who expose animal abuses on factory farms face the risk of being prosecuted as domestic terrorists.

 

Using the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), which was signed into law by President George W. Bush in November 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has kept files on animal rights activists who have recorded incidents of cruelty towards animals on large farming operations.  Now, though, a bureau task force has even recommended trying these individuals as terrorism suspects.

 

Activist Ryan Shapiro, who used the Freedom of Information Act to discover what the FBI was up to, told the Los Angeles Times that “it’s simply outrageous to consider civil disobedience as terrorism.”

 

“Civil disobedience” he added, “has a long and proud place in our nation’s history, from Martin Luther King to Occupy Wall Street, and the AETA takes that kind of advocacy that we celebrate from the civil rights movement and turns it into a terrorist event.”

 

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a lawsuit challenging the AETA as unconstitutional, claiming the law is too vague and is discouraging political activism.

Occupy Wall Street is Back

New York - For those who don't know, Zuccotti Park has been liberated again, once more falling into the hands of Occupy Wall Street.  Thanks to the lawyers at the New York Civil Liberties Union. the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the National Lawyers Guild’s New York City chapter, barricades meant to keep the protestors out were found to be unconstitutional as well a violation of zoning laws.  Here is the letter responsible for it.

Unfortunately erecting a tent is not allowed but thankfully the charges against two dozen of them were dropped.