By Walter Bond
5-12-2011

Consumerism truly has affected our ethics and the ways in which we behave. Even many that think themselves progressive, liberal or fire-breathing anarchists. We are taught by advertisers to think in terms of profitability instead of principle. For instance, when it comes to Veganism many people I have met like to debate its validity of effectiveness as a tactic. And no doubt I understand the validity of many of those critiques. As I have written more than once, “For every one of us that go vegan, 100,000 kids get weaned into flesh as food.” That being said, Veganism is still an important first step and moral imperative. From a theoretical standpoint, if everyone did adhere to Veganism all these disgusting and evil animal enterprises wouldn’t even exist. This is what Bertrand Russell calls a “universal truth” in his book, “Why I am not a Christian.” He says, “If you can take a behavior and extend it infinitely [in a social context] and it is still good for all, then that behavior is a universal truth.” From a fundamental standpoint, it is morally wrong to use the dead bodies and by-products of the slavery of any being that has an interest in freedom or desire to live free of pain and suffering. The circumstances under which you use them do not matter.

Using Animals’ dead bodies or secretions is morally outrageous whether off a store shelf or out of a dumpster. Would you eat the dead and broken bodies of child laborers left in the trash? If not, why not? They’re just going to waste otherwise. Besides, you didn’t purchase them thereby perpetuating their exploitation. You would not eat them because it’s wrong to participate in their use under any pretext short of starvation. Just as slavery and racism are wrong to engage in whether or not your participation is perpetuating the problem. Or whether your non-participation is stopping the problem. Speciesism takes many passive forms and first world “freeganism” is one of them. We are Vegan because the problem is not in how we use animals. The problem is that we use Animals. Once you open the door of interspecies objectification, it is a Pandora’s Box from there on out. Continue reading →

by Walter Bond
4-20-2011

On more than one occasion, activists or Vegans have asked me what they can do to be more effective against Animal exploitation. In this article, I am going to discuss our first responsibility to our Animal relations. No matter who we are or where we may find ourselves, this responsibility never leaves us. That responsibility is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. I know it sounds simple and elementary and usually when I say that to one of my Vegan sisters or brothers I get that look like I am being semantic or too basic with my advisement. But it is not such a simple task and it’s vastly important that we as individuals and groups of individuals master this elusive skill. Continue reading →

” Animals need warriors for their defense not another subjective school of thought. ”

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 – opening night of the Animal Liberation Forum 2011 at CSU Long Beach – Walter Bond’s recorded address was presented to an eager audience. The following is his transcribed essay:

Welcome comrades to the 2011 Animal Liberation Forum. I hope today finds you well and in good spirits. This weekend you will no doubt network with many good people, attend some great workshops and learn many tactics and various aspects of the movement for the total liberation of our animal sisters and brothers. As you participate in the weekend’s events I want you to keep a few things in mind. First, security culture – had I more strictly adhered to those principles and never spoke of an action after it was done I would still be busy ruining animal exploiters’ days and saving actual animals from a life of pain, death for no reason. Instead of spending time in a federal prison writing about what I wish I was still doing. But you will hear plenty about security culture this weekend. So you don’t need a lecture from me as well. I only mention it to caution you to take it seriously.

More importantly, I would ask you to reject “paranoia culture”. Paranoia, fear for no good reason, this does the cops and feds’ work more thoroughly than any breech of security. Because without ever having to infiltrate any group of us, clandestine or above-ground, there is cop working full time in everyone of our minds. That paranoia dooms animals to death by keeping us frozen in our tracks and inactive in the most effective ways. The hour is late. This year more animals will be slaughtered at the hands of humans for the most trivial reasons than ever before in world history! And next year that number will rise again. The Earth is suffering at the hands of Western Civilization! Crying out in pain at the avarice of technocratic wickedness! There is no way to save all this and our asses at the same time. We need to embrace and demand a spirit of self sacrifice, bravery and teamwork no matter what our level of involvement. When we review other liberation struggles be it the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, Suffragettes, Zapatistas, or the rioters at Stonewall, we will see at once that self sacrifice, courage and ferocity are unavoidable if your concern is success. It is better to act on your own terms than to react to the security forces of animal exploitation. When we choose the battlefield, the advantage is ours. When we play their game, we cannot see the road ahead and inevitable wreck that is waiting for us.

I don’t know about you but I got sick of playing games in the name of liberation awhile ago. Animals need warriors for their defense not another subjective school of thought. Which brings me to my next point. Philosophy. Over the course of this weekend you will no doubt meet and talk to various people. We don’t all see eye to eye on many issues and that’s fine. Please make animal liberation and a love of this planet which we all inhabit the glue that sticks us together. We vegans have a personal opinion about everything. Which is understandable because we are thinking people but perfect adherence to philosophical denominations is not needed to become incredibly effective. That’s because things like loving and fighting are intuitive and can even become hindered by excessive definition. Whether you are at a rally, home demonstration, or part of an underground cell, the vegan fighting by your side in the trenches is your sister or brother until actions prove otherwise. My wish for every single one of you is that this movement lives in your heart and guides your every action because once it does no can take it from you. And no one can validate it for you either. Demand more of yourself than you do of anyone else. And don’t just be yourself but let others be themselves, for that is the true nature of leaderless resistance. Let your activity be your voice, words are cheap and easy. The only reason my words have weight is because of the actions that back them.

When I have seen or heard of activists turning against each other or being divisive over politics, religion or philosophy I find it incredibly disheartening. Not because of confrontation, that is just a reality of life. But because at that point a movement dissolves into a school of thought. A rhetorical theorem. And while we contemplate the origins of patriarchy and matriarchy, a million animals get stabbed in the throat, broken by the yoke, beaten for not performing for a crowd, murdered in toxicity tests for Tide and Bleach, forced inhalation by Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds. While we debate about topics of human interest, the last of the forest falls and the water turns to excrement and the world bleeds to death! A movement must move! Not spend 98% of its time in stasis, planning and posturing and 2% of the time putting its back into its beliefs.

And lastly, a few words about levels of involvement! There are many ways you can help animals, but make no mistake direct action is the most powerful. By direct action I mean anything that helps animals, now. I once knew a young woman who would travel the countryside of Colorado and go to places of animal abuse like ranches, turkey and chicken farms and just act cute and repetitively ask for an animal over and over, persistently, pretty please with sugar on top. She ended up with so many critters she had to purchase 30 acres to house everyone comfortably. That simple and legal action had has more profound of an effect than a million vegans at potlucks competing with each other about who feels the animals’ pain the most. Or a hundred activists that write me to tell me they wish they could do what I have done. Saving actual animals’ lives, costing animal abusers money, stopping the exploitation by any means necessary, educating people about the total abstinence from animal products: this is where our most successful efforts lay. Direct activism, legal or illegal, is morally justified and it works. It saves life today instead of planting seeds or waiting for ripple effects in a hopeful future.

In closing, have fun this weekend, learn what is needful and let this be the moment where you resolve yourself to make a difference in this world and the lives of suffering, innocent animals that desperately need your actions and cannot even see your posturing. Remember its not what you think or feel, but your actions that make you either part of the solution or part of the problem.

Animal Liberation, whatever it may take!

NIO: In many indigenous cultures, face tattoos are a rite of passage when boys enter manhood. When did you get your tattoo and what is its significance for you?

I got my face tattoo about two years ago and it has a lot of personal significance and many layers of meaning. So, let’s see… where should I begin?

Well, much like most indigenous cultures, my face tattoo represents a very real rite of passage in my life — that passage was into warriorhood! It marked the exact moment when I put fear away like so many other childish pursuits. That’s not to say that I don’t feel fear. But I can honestly say that since the face tat, I have not made one fear-based decision, so that’s liberating.

At the time in my life that I began really becoming enamored with the idea of the face tat, I was frequenting the tattoo shop quite often — about once every two or three weeks. Like many thirty-somethings, I had a decent job and a modest flat in the Capitol Hill area of Denver. But, unlike many, I was suffering from a profound restlessness. Almost every single day, I would wake up and be disappointed that I had not joined the underground for the total liberation of our animal sisters and brothers. The only thing worse than not knowing your purpose in this life is to know that purpose but not be able to summon the courage to walk the walk. So I was unhappy.

Everyday at my regular-guy job at Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage, I was more involved in my ALF daydream than my work. The epiphany that finally hit me was that, as long as I had this status-quo life, I would not follow my path. So my face tattoo also marked an acute change in lifestyle. Within a few weeks of getting it, I quit my job. I got sick of paying rent so I stopped that too. If I was out at night and a window offended me, that window received a rock! I very quickly began to understand that life is meant to be lived. Life is meant to be free. It’s not something you plan to live in the future. -WB Continue reading →

by Walter Bond
3-15-2011

Many of us that take a militant or hard stance on the issue of Animal Liberation have been approached at one time or another and asked by other so-called activists why we don’t spend more time people-pleasing and politicking. The general idea is that if you appeal to people’s conscience instead of their outrage, you will win more people over to “the cause.” Perhaps you can attract more flies with sugar than vinegar. However, like most welfarist ideology, there is a lot of oversimplification and faulty logic to contend with. Continue reading →

by Walter Bond
3-11-2011

There is a war. Every second 321 farmed Animals are slaughtered. Every year nearly 200 billion pounds of milk are produced by the rape of “dairy” cows. Nine billion chickens are murdered annually so that flesh eating bastards can dine on gore and filth. All too often we hear these numbers and they fly right over our heads.

Did you know that you don’t even reach a billion seconds of age until nearly 35 years old? Are you aware that right now an Animal is being tortured to death by demons in lab coats, for entertainment, food, clothing, vivisection and any other trivial and redundant reason you can imagine? Animals suffer and die worse deaths than we can even wrap our minds around. And what do we do? We posture and pose. We debate the validity of tactics like arson because there may be a field mouse in the wall. How many bugs, snakes and nocturnal critters have you killed with your metal monster, I mean, car? Continue reading →

Denver, Colorado, February 11, 2011

Animal liberationists Walter Bond received the minimum sentence allowed by a Colorado court, 5 years prison and 3 years probation, after pleading guilty to burning the Sheepskin Factory in Glendale.  Hon. Christine Arguello, while stern with him, noted that she read all 50 letters to her from Mr. Bond’s supporters and every essay he had written on his support site.  The judge commented that she realizes Walter is very intelligent by his writing, and urged him to focus in the future towards his essays on Animal Liberation and to move away from arson in his life.

The following is Walters Final Statement to the Court that he read at his Sentencing.

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I’m here today because I burnt down the Sheepskin Factory in Glendale, CO, a business that sells pelts, furs and other dead Animal skins. I know many people think I should feel remorse for what I’ve done. I guess this is the customary time where I’m suppose to grovel and beg for mercy. I assure you if that’s how I felt I would. But, I am not sorry for anything I have done. Nor am I frightened by this court’s authority. Because any system of law that values the rights of the oppressor over the down trodden is an unjust system. And though this court has real and actual power, I question its morality. I doubt the court is interested in the precautions that I took to not harm any person or by-stander and even less concerned with the miserable lives that sheep, cows and mink had to endure, unto death, so that a Colorado business could profit from their confinement, enslavement, and murder. Continue reading →