**August 8th Action Alert** & AR Coalition with the Peace Movement

[Guest guest]

**AUGUST 8TH: PROTEST, TABLING, AND COALITION BUILDING**

**PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY**

 

Hi everyone,

 

This is Matthew Liebman from the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund at

Stanford Law School.

 

On behalf of a group I work for, Tri-Valley CAREs, I wanted to extend an

opportunity to strengthen coalitional ties between the animal rights

movement and the peace movement in the bay area.

 

TRI-VALLEY CARES

The group I work for is called Tri-Valley CAREs, a non-profit grassroots

peace, environment, and anti-nuclear organization

(www.trivalleycares.org). Tri-Valley CAREs is the watchdog group for the

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the East Bay. The Livermore Lab

is one of the three federal government nuclear weapon design labs whose

mission is to maintain and modernize the US nuclear weapons arsenal. LLNL

is owned by the Department of Energy, and is operated by the University of

California.

 

RELEVANCE TO THE AR MOVEMENT

The military is one of the worst violators of the rights of animals. The

web links at the end of this email go into detail on the historical and

contemporary exploitation of animals for war. In short, every type of

heinous trauma experienced by humans in war has been forced on animals by

the military through vivisection. These experiments include burning,

radiation exposure, infectious disease exposure, chemical weapon exposure,

and a host of other traumatic forms of torture. Over 320,000 animals die

each year for military research. While Tri-Valley CAREs focuses primarily

on the Department of Energy’s work at LLNL, we are also committed to

fighting militarism as a whole, including the vivisection work done by the

Department of Defense. Marylia Kelley, the founder and executive director

of Tri-Valley CAREs, has expressed to me her desire to reach out to the

animal rights movement to combat all the terror inflicted against human

and nonhumans in the name of war.

 

ANIMAL TORTURE IN THE EAST BAY

In our neck of the woods, the Livermore Lab has announced it will begin

building a level-three biowarfare agent facility (“BSL-3”). Ostensibly,

this lab will be for “defensive” bioweapons work, yet there is little

difference between offensive and defensive research in this field. The

completion of this lab will mean a certain, gruesome death for thousands

of animals. The Department of Energy’s environmental assessment of the

proposed lab explains the animal research that will be conducted:

“Activities planned for the proposed action include aerosol-studies using

rodents (mice, rats, and possibly guinea pigs)... The rodent would be

challenged with the aerosol...” (EA for the Proposed Construction and

Operation of a Biosafety Level 3 Facility at LLNL, p. 44). In plain

English, this means that these animals will be infected with some of the

most painful and heinous diseases known to humankind, including anthrax,

tularaemia, plague, Q fever, botulism, brucellosis, rickettsia,

tuberculosis, staphylococcus, salmonella, HIV, herpes, hantavirus,

influenza, and hepatitis. And as research progresses, we can only expect

more animal experimentation and more severe diseases.

 

In addition to the animal research planned for the BSL-3, activities at

the Livermore Lab severely threaten several species of wild animals

protected by the Endangered Species Act. Specifically, lab activities

endanger the California red-legged frog (Rana aurora draytonii), the

California tiger salamander (Ambystoma californiense), the alameda

whipsnake (Masticophis lateralis euryxanthus), the San Joaquin kit fox

(Vulpes macrotis mutica), and 24 species of birds that are Federal species

of concern or State species of special concern.

 

CALL TO ACTION: RALLY, PROTEST, AND TABLING

Tri-Valley CAREs is coordinating a day of action against the Livermore

Lab, and would love the support of members of the animal rights movement.

On August 8th, bay area residents will meet at Jackson Elementary School

in Livermore for a rally against militarism, and to commemorate the 59th

anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The rally will

feature tables from a variety of peace, environmental, and justice causes.

This would be an excellent opportunity to advocate our message of

compassion for all sentient beings. The peace movement is an ideal

audience for the animal rights movement, and vice versa. If your group is

interested in tabling for animal rights at the rally, contact me at

mliebman or Tri-Valley CAREs’ outreach director Tara Dorabji

at tara. The rally will be followed by a march to the

Lab to protest the expansion of nuclear and biological weapons programs in

the bay area. The following morning, August 9th, activists will perform

nonviolent direct action at the Lab. For more details on the August 8th

and 9th events, please see www.trivalleycares.org/Aug8-2004.asp. Please

take advantage of this opportunity to build coalitional ties with the

peace movement, in the name of human and animal liberation.

 

Peace,

Matthew Liebman

Legal Intern

Tri-Valley CAREs

www.trivalleycares.org

 

MORE INFORMATION ON ANIMALS IN THE MILITARY

*www.peta.org/feat/military/

*www.peta.org/feat/memorialday/

*www.idausa.org/facts/military.html

*www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/510/

*www.navs.org/news/story_display.cfm?newsid=56 & sectionid=News

*www.earthfirstjournal.org/efj/feature.cfm?ID=202 & issue=v23n5

*http://gseweb.harvard.edu/~t656_web/peace/Articles_Spring_2004/

Plourde_Shawn_Animals_in_warfare.htm