#HLS #SHAC
Update on the fate not only of HLS, but the corporation that bought them: $35 million FINE for animal abuse and Clean Water Act violations, 3,775 beagles rescued and going or gone to good homes, and a permanent injunction against any further dog breeding for vivisection.
Two years ago, they were defeated in W Va, their license to operate there revoked, and we thought it was over.
https://www.wkbn.com/news/national-world/w-va-beagle-breeder-to-pay-historic-animal-welfare-fine/
Apparently they tried to get out of the trap, trying to set back up in Virginia to return to breeding beagles for laboratory horrors. It didn't work: now they owe more in fines to Virginia than they once owned to the investors we hit so hard.
https://www.animals24-7.org/2024/06/04/lab-beagle-breeder-envigo-cops-35-million-plea-shareholder-suits-ahead/
Envigo was an agglomeration of five different animal torturing vivisectors and related companies.
One was Huntingdon "Life" Sciences or HLS, also known to some as Huntingdon DEATH Sciences for all the animals they tortured to death.
Now Envigo is toast, though some of their worst scumbags escaped and are trying to start a monkey "facility" in Georgia. They should expect nothing but trouble.
I am a veteran myself of the victorious but long, hard, and brutally expensive campaign to close HLS. I was nearly killed one night in a chase that nearly went over a 35 foot cliff after a home demo blew up on us on Dec 19, 2008. Our patrol of maybe 15 protesters/direct actionistas was ambushed by over 75 cops, this was a week after a nasty street confrontation with a DC City Councilmember who lived in the same neighborhood as one of the HLS investor execs.
I stayed in the fight. Now the victory that seemed apparent a year ago has been confirmed. This campaign was such a long battle of attrition is reminded me of the political equivalent of trench warfare. It lasted longer than the fighting in Donbass and WWI combined.
Every fucking week it seemed we were back at the same targets, slugging away and under constant threat. We faced injunctions and spurious legal charges. We had to ensure HLS lost their co-conspirators faster than we lost fighters. It was all about the relative rates of attrition. This sort of thing is extremely hard on morale-but for BOTH sides.
Some folded quickly, almost all folded eventually, in the end we won.
SHAC had to give up the fight in 2014 after too many UK activists were imprisoned, but they had done their job. At the time, I compared HLS to a shot-up battleship that sank every opponent only to get so shot up the first storm on the way home would send them to the bottom too.
https://shacjustice.com/about-shac/
The price of victory was many good activists jailed in two countries, and it almost cost me my life. Would have been worth it even if I had gone over that cliff. Yet I am still here and HLS is not. Don't try to tell me protest and direct action don't work, because they DO.
To those who are tiring today of protesting for Palestine, consider this: this stage in the war has been going on less than 11 months. It took over 20 years to kill Huntingdon Life Sciences, and it took 160 years to throw the Crusaders out of Jerusalem last time around.
I have been in protests for Palestine since before the First Intifada, and will be for however long it takes. I will fight police brutality until police departments are abolished. If Christian nationalists launch a war of extermination against the LGBTQ community, I am willing to do whatever it takes to fight them. I have been fighting Christian fundamentalists for over 40 years and won't stop until my friends are safe.
Every issue I fight for, I am in this for keeps. I am in for the duration and always have been.
La Casa de la Bomba 💣
OGEL & TDM Law Journals
ochodoscuatro ediciones
LukefromDC
Cerremos Vivotecnia
Terrestres
Street Scientist
