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Rescued
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20536 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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11 / 1992 |
2,485 Words |
| Author
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Audrey C. Foote
Audrey C. Foote is a book reviewer and translator who teaches
modern European literature. She lives in Washington, D.C. |
FREE THE ANIMALS
The Untold Story of the U.S.
Animal Liberation Front & Its Founder "Valerie"
Ingrid Newkirk
Chicago: Noble Press, 1992
372 pp., $13.95
The handsome cover of this book shows a black-and-white border collie in the arms of a warmly bundled-up person whose bright blue eyes only are visible through a knitted black ski helmet. This could be a farmer and friend starting out on a cold winter morning to check up on their sheep. But the photograph is of nothing so pastoral or routine. The winsome collie has just been taken from a vivisector's laboratory, clandestinely rescued by a member of the ALF, the Animal Liberation Front.
Or stolen by "terrorists," as the current secretary of health and human services indignantly calls members of the ALF. He sometimes applies that term also to less extreme animal rights groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal (PETA), whose national director is the author of this book. In fact, while the activists of the underground ALF have been labeled with epithets ranging from "monster" to "hero," so far nobody knows their real names--not even within the group itself--or how many AFL members there are, though their activities have received the attention of local authorities and the FBI.
Despite such interest, the major sources of information about the ALF, its purposes and projects, as well as what actually goes on in biomedical laboratories (which even the police need search warrants to enter), are the reports, photos, and documents sent by the ALF to PETA. There is never a return address so PETA cannot contact the ALF, but they gladly pass along the often incendiary papers and pictures to certain authorities and to the press. It is on the basis of these materials, and presumably a number of telephone conversations with ALF's founder whose nom de guerre is "Valerie," that Ingrid Newkirk has written a surprisingly effective and affecting history that reads like an adventure novel.
The U.S. ALF was started ten years ago by a young American policewoman who, after getting a close look at the treatment of laboratory animals, quit her job to train with the English ALF. Started by Ronnie Lee in the early 1970s, the ALF's philosophy is essentially that animals also have rights, related to their natural needs: not to vote or drive cars obviously,
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