The Torch of Reason, The Sword of Justice
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      If the medical industrial complex really was as compassionate as it wants to believe it is, it would be out front leading the parade to make essential health care available to everyone! But it's not out front leading the parade; it's not even in the parade. The last thing the medical industrial complex wants is something other than a profit-driven industry!
      And just in case you think I exaggerate — just in case you think the medical industrial complex is the health care industry's version of Mr. GoodWrench — consider that the United States is only one of two so-called "democracies" in the world that does not guarantee necessary health care to each and every citizen — regardless of age, regardless of income, regardless of race; only one of two. The other "democracy, in case you haven't already guessed, is ...South Africa. The evil of apartheid is cut from the same defective moral cloth as vivisection; both represent the pattern of special privilege over fairness, custom over justice, power over respect, greed over compassion, which is why those of us gathered here today are united not only in our opposition to apartheid in South Africa, but also in our opposition to apartheid in medical science and medical research.
      Today we declare war on vivisection, and we will not be satisfied until every animal is out of every cage in every lab!

      Terrorists ... terrorists ... terrorists ...
      That's the new buzz word the medical complex uses to describe animal rights advocates. We're no longer little old ladies in tennis shoes. Today we’re young thugs in face masks, armed with torches and cans of spray paint, out for a Clockwork Orange evening of fun and games.
      You've got to hand it to the vivisection industry's PR people; they certainly know how to work an image to their advantage. The problem is, the image doesn't correspond to reality. The basic philosophy of the animal rights movement is Learn Baby, Learn! not Burn, Baby, Burn!
      Learn the truth about how your tax dollars are spent, learn the truth about the callousness and lack of compassion that characterize so much of the medical industrial complex, learn the truth about how ignorance and greed find a happy home in the medical community, learn the truth about how animals are being treated and what they are doing there to begin with, and why the public health is not being served by this science of death.
      Learn, not burn, is the real philosophy of our movement.
      One part of this learning, an important part, involves the other side of the coin of violence, the side that does not get reported, the side where people in the movement are on the receiving end; people like Jane Tufton, from Pennsylvania, who finds dead animals in her mailbox and on her front steps because of her "queer" views about animal rights;
      people like Judy Barad's husband, in Indiana, whose car windshield was smashed by neighbors who didn't like his ideas about respect for sentient life;
      people like Hope Sawyer Buyuchmichi, who has been told many times by people who disagree with her views about animals, and this a woman in her seventies, "we could touch a match to your place, then what would you do?";
      people like you and I, people like you and I who are not strangers to threatening mail or phone calls at all hours of the day or night.
      Violence is more than a trashed lab. The difference is, our side of the story — the side where we are on the receiving end — doesn't get told.
      It should.
      It would.
      And it will.
      Because responsible people in the media are beginning to understand that something profoundly important is happening, there is a great awakening occurring, the animal rights movement has seized the initiative and is gaining momentum! Our time has come!
      We're declaring war on vivisection! And we will not stop until we have every animal out of every cage in every laboratory!

      This call to arms — this declaration of war — is not a call to violence. It is a call to peace. The use of violence never really changes anything, only the identities of the agents of violence. Morally, violence is indefensible; tactically it is unwise.
      Trash a lab and the story that gets told is, “Some irresponsible vandals trashed a lab.” The story that gets lost is what was going on in that lab in the first place. In other words, the story that gets told is the one that aids the vivisectors, not one that helps the animals.
      No, the means we must use to wage our war are those shaped and proven by Gandhi and Martin Luther King: The weapons of nonviolence, but with a few differences.
      Precisely because those whose interests we represent (the tens of millions of animals in laboratories) are unable to tell us what is being done to them, precisely because the government inspection mechanisms for assuring compliance with the law have been shown time and time again to be inadequate, it has been necessary for some in our movement to enter some labs illegally — there to document the waste and evil of vivisection done in the name of science.
      Just two things should be said here:
      The first is: Thank God for the Animal Liberation Front! Thank God for Last Chance! Thank God for Band of Mercy!
      If it had not been for your courage and your skill, those of us assembled here today would not know what we do. We owe you and we thank you.
      Secondly: Illegally obtained exposes of laboratory atrocities will continue. And they will continue as long as the medical industrial complex refuses to allow unannounced inspections of labs by people from the animal rights movement. Until that day comes, I think it is true — and this is not a threat, this is a fact — every lab in every research facility is in jeopardy of an unannounced inspection, and I don't mean one done by the government!
      Because this is war!
      And we're not going to be satisfied until every animal is out of every cage in every laboratory!

      Some may say that we ask for too much when we ask for an open door policy concerning lab inspections. Certainly it will take a great amount of pressure on the vivisection industry to get them to let some daylight in. But there are some glimmers of hope.
      Edwin Allen. Remember the name.
      Edwin Allen is the Judge who recently heard the case involving a break-in at the University of Oregon. Judge Allen got a crash course in animal abuse when he was judicially obliged to watch such films as Unnecessary Fuss and Britches. He didn't like what he saw.
      "We have had some evidence here," he writes, "as to certain things which have been done which were disturbing to me ... Those activities in the labs should be free and observable to any member of the citizenry ...It would be highly appropriate," Judge Allen writes, "to have these facilities open to the public"!
      Open to the public!
      Right on, Judge Allen! That's what I say! Help us get our message out:
Learn, Baby, Learn! not Burn, Baby, Burn!

      Know this: there's room in our army for more than the Judge Allens. Anyone and everyone can join, including many otherwise good, decent people who currently are in bondage in the medical industrial complex. We welcome you into our ranks, if you will but quit the evil of vivisection.
      In the familiar Christian image, we hate the sin, but love the sinner — or at least we try to. To all you good, decent people currently in the vivisection industry, therefore, we issue this healing call:
      Lay down your weapons, lay down your scalpels and prods, lay down your Pavlovian slings and restraint chairs, lay down your stereotaxic devices and your rodent guillotines, lay down your wires that shock and plates that burn, lay down your tanks that drown and chambers that deprive, lay down your sutures that blind and vices that crush, lay down these weapons of evil and join with us, you scientists who are brave enough and good enough to stand for what is just and true.
      We welcome you into our ranks — ranks that have known the likes of Plutarch and Ovid, Horace and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates, St. Francis and Leonardo da Vinci, the poets Shelley and Browning, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, Collette and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi, C.S. Lewis, Mark Twain — join with us on this historic day when, in concert with thousands and thousands of others throughout the world, we declare war on vivisection!
      We will not rest — we will not rest! — until every animal is out of every cage in every lab! We can do this! We shall do this! The day WILL come when all the cages will be empty, when ALL the animals will be liberated, when all decent, compassionate people can shout with joy, echoing Martin Luther King's famous words: "Free at last! Free at last!
      "FREE AT LAST!"

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