The Chilling Effect on Animal Advocacy
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ist to discourage future activists—the government is effectively silencing the animal advocacy community. Since the AEPA’s passage, a number of grand-jury investigations of ALF and ELF actions have occurred in Oregon, Washington, Colorado, California, and several U.S. cities.85 In the course of some of these investigations, activists have had their homes raided, their computers and phones bugged, and global-positioning-system trackers attached to their cars. Increasingly, activists are learning that certain fellow activists are actually just undercover agents attempting to infiltrate the animal activist movement. Cole and Dempsey write that for protest groups, “[w]ord travels fast that the FBI has been to visit somebody and has asked about the group’s activities, membership, or funding,” such that the government’s attention “inevitably inhibits and reduces the level of political activities in which the group’s members feel free to engage.”86 Once news of the imprisonment of an animal activist hits the airwaves, an immediate chill affects the movement, especially considering that, with the AETA, the charges are federal and the accusation is terrorism. Renowned long-time animal activist Marianne Bessey recalls a couple of different incidents in 2005 that seemed to mark a growing concern about animal activism on the part of law enforcement agencies in Philadelphia. Philadelphia police officers started showing up at animal-related protests and demonstrations with video cameras. They seemed to be making sure to capture every single activist at the protest. According to Bessey, the presence of video cameras at the demonstrations discouraged several activists from returning to future demonstrations. Also during that time period, federal authorities were apparently trying to prepare for the June 2005 BIO Annual International Convention, the “largest biotech meeting to date,” which was being hosted by the City of Philadelphia.87 BIO, or the Biotechnology Industry Organization, is run by James Greenwood, refer-