Will Potter Discusses AR ‘Terrorism’
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Will Potter of Green Is The New Red fame gave this presentation at the University of Washington Law School. He discusses the legal issues facing activists and attorneys.
He makes several excellent points. Two worth highlighting here:
1. We mustn’t divide our own movement. The government is targeting ALL animal rights and animal welfare activists, even infiltrating vegan potlucks. They don’t distinguish between lawful, peaceful activism and unlawful activism. We can debate, sure, but we shouldn’t alienate people within our movement who work for common goals.
2. We should reach out to other types of activism, such as anti-racism, feminism, and other movements of social change because just as animal rights activists are being targeted, so too will other activists be targeted later until there are none.
Interesting! We saw Will Potter about six or eight months ago at a talk given by Peter Young at AU and he strikes me as a very interesting character. I found his openness (he got up at the end of the presentation and gave a short speech) rather disarming, especially since we were 90% sure there were undercover police in the audience at the time. The two points mentioned above are incredibly important and I really wish I could go see him speak.
Disagreement sans alienation is a difficult task though. In the past six weeks I’ve seen that this can be almost impossible to do; disagree with a talking point, and many people simple cease to speak to you, or kick you off their online communities. Did he offer any advice on how to do so?
~ Recent blog post: The recent dog shooting. at http://www.not-quiteright.net/tvg ~