Memories of Freedom is a zine chronicling the activities of the Western Wildlife Unit of the Animal Liberation Front (which I believe has been pronounced as a terrorist organization by the US Government). Animal rights / freedom / advocacy is a mystery to most Americans. We’d just as soon not know where our food comes from or cosmetics or clothing & how many animals were captured / confined / tortured / killed in the process. I’ve always been dismayed by the mindset I would call speciesism – the notion that human beings have the right to dominate the lives and deaths of other living creatures, and eradicate all other life on the planet if we so choose. I guess humans feel that we have biblical permission to do whatever we want “and God gave man dominion over animals so that he could prosper”.
As an integral part of the fabric of nature, we are the only species that acts in ways that could destroy whole ecosystems. Memories of Freedom is a thorough, 75 page account of the Western Wildlife Unit’s activities in the early 1990’s. You may or may not agree with their philosophies and actions, yet this zine presents “the other side” that we don’t hear about when we hear there has been a raid on a mink farm or that coyotes have been released from a lab somewhere. In the United States, it is a felony to free animals from laboratories, fur farms, factory farms, zoos and rodeos, punishable up to ten years in prison and a $100,000 fine. Why? Corporate profit.
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