Animal-rights soirees usually go off without a hitch, like the Great American Meatout on Capitol Hill, where vegan activists try to convince congressional staffers that Fib Rib veggie sticks really are delicious. Sometimes Animal Rights people (call them AR for short) are nakedly aggressive, as when PETA’s stitchless nymphs crash the catwalks of Karl Lagerfeld and other fur-accented couturiers.
What AR usually doesn’t get is a fight. Nobody wants to be seen as an abuser or exploiter of animals, and this reticence often provides the activists with a platform from which they can move beyond the advocacy of animal welfare into a war against scientific animal research — the same research that 97 percent of the medical community (according to an American Medical Association poll) says is essential to human health.
As usual, the five-day Animal Awareness Week in Washington in June was wall- to-wall denunciations of the “bioresearch/pharmaceutical industrial complex,” along with the inevitable comparisons of vivisectionists to Nazis. But this time, the often bullied biomedical research community fired back — specifically, the Foundation for Biomedical Research. Holding press conferences and arming dilettante reporters with acres of peer-reviewed data, the Foundation combated the stock swipes of the AR community: that animal research is painful and unnecessary, and that human testing, computer models, and tissue cultures could achieve the same breakthroughs scientists have achieved by using animals. Nonsense, the Foundation says; nearly every Nobel prize for medicine since the turn of the century required animal testing. It has been instrumental in everything from the polio vaccine to insulin for diabetics to organtransplant techniques to antibiotics.
Though AR activists try to make us feel sorry for dogs and cats and monkeys, the Foundation explained that mice and rodents make up 85-90 percent of all research animals; only 1 percent are dogs or cats, and 0.3 percent are primates. The Agriculture Department has determined that 54 percent of animals used in medical experiments suffer no pain, 35 percent had pain relieved by anesthesia, and only 11 percent suffered at all — and in their case only because alleviation of that pain would have compromised the data.
Still, the Foundation knows that all the statistics in the world won’t stifle some of the most skilled and voguish guerrilla tacticians in the activist business. Which is why the industry brought along an unlikely ringer in the person of Steve Michael, head of the Washington chapter of ACT-UP As the AR groups, led by the National Alliance for Animals and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, scurried from press conference to protest to marches to celebrity galas, Michael and his cronies stuck to them like tartar.
ACT-UP, which usually engages in pseudo-terrorist acts against scientists and politicians who do not spend day and night worrying about AIDS, is not commonly aligned with the medical establishment. “I’m not sleeping with the enemy,” Michael insisted to me; “it’s more like I’m under the sheets with one shoe off.” Michael, who has AIDS, is one of the most obnoxious activists in the business — his most famous act was pouring a bottle of Rolling Rock beer over the head of Rep. Steve Gunderson because Gunderson was both a Republican and (at the time) in the closet. Michael remains miffed about the incident: ” I’m still waiting for my free case of Rolling Rock. I got those people a lot of press.”
The AR movement contends that animal testing in AIDS research is ineffectual, and thus has found itself on Michael’s hit list. This conflict puts celebrity types in a real bind. Maybe they would rather go naked than wear fur, but they also like to wear a red ribbon. Maybe nobody wants to be crosswise of the animal-rights movement, but even fewer want to be on the wrong side of AIDS. PETA tried to outflank ACT-UP by staging a press conference at the Mayflower Hotel featuring AIDS activist James Brown and his chocolate lab, Daisy. She looked adoringly at her master as he told a near- empty room, “Gays have always been friendly to animals. They’re an incredibly compassionate group of people.”
Plenty of mini-skirmishes followed. In the lobby of the National Press Club, a doe-eyed Lisa Lange from PETA yelled at Michael, “You don’t represent ACT- UP, you don’t represent the AIDS community, and you know that. You’re hysterical!” Michael exacted revenge a few nights later at the celebrity gala at the Renaissance Hotel; as attendees skirted around him, averting his withering gaze, he chanted “Your shoes don’t match your views.”
I spotted a few inconsistencies myself at the animal-rights march down Constitution Avenue a few days later. Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the Pretenders, was sporting her snakeskin shoes; they may have been faux, but they nevertheless objectified the snake. And the poor reptile, one conference speaker had already said, suffered from “speciesist” prejudice, with expressions like “snake in the grass.” Additionally, I tagged Rue McClanahan, late of The Golden Girls, for her Chanel leather purse. “I found it easy to give up meat,” McClanahan said. “nd I found it easy to give up cheese. Unfortunately, this is the last thing to go.”
As in any war, blatant propaganda was passed off as gospel. Example: The National Alliance of Animals claimed that Linda Blair, who played the possessed girl in The Exorcist, “remains as popular today as she was twenty years ago when she erupted on to our movie screens.” And there was intrigue abounding. AR activists claimed that ACT-UP Golden Gate, a group out of San Francisco that was in alliance with Michael, was in town as the guest of Americans for Medical Progress. That group, they said, is a front for U.S. Surgical Corp., which is accused of selling medical staples to hospitals by demonstrating their effectiveness on live dogs that are later put to sleep. In response, ACT-UP Golden Gate claimed that ACT-UP San Francisco, a PETA ally, wasn’t a legitimate ACT-UP chapter.
The big throw-down came at the U.S. Air Arena in Landover, Md., on the first day of what was billed as the “Animal Congress.” Both sides showed up in their battle gear. The AR activists looked imposing: gaunt gents with George Clooney-cuts in retro-rayon shirts, escorting indignant lasses in sativa smocks with barrettes and backpacks stuck with pins that read “Eat Beans, Not Beings.” Michael led his troops in the traditional West Village Construction Worker Get-Up: Doc Martens and denim cut-offs with handcuff accoutrements and the occasional Andy Gibb silver bicepchoker.
Reporters stood by waiting for bloodshed or witty ripostes. Finally Michael’s set sounded the battle cry, recorded on a chant list so no one forgot the rhyme scheme: “People with AIDS, Under Attack, What do We do, ACT- UP, Fight Back!” and “We die, You lie!” The gay animal activists seemed to falter. There were only nine people in Michael’s crew, but they swarmed and yelled over each other, making them seem at least three times their number.
This made it impossible to talk issues, though Bill Dollinger of Friends of Animals tried: “What’s your stand on fur, hunting, pigeon shoots?” Michael stayed focused on his singular objective: “What about the people with AIDS you’ve murdered by supporting the Animal Liberation Front, that evil organization that burns down labs and destroys human lives?”
Steve Simmons, a gay PETA activist, tried conciliation: “The common enemy is the AIDS profiteers who profit from our plight in order to carry on needless animal experiments.” Michael redrew the divide: “You are Operation Rescue! You’re the same people that kill abortion doctors! You’re just as vile and evil as everything else on America’s extreme!”
Dollinger was ready with a counterstrike: “I’ve seen you attack a person with AIDS; I’ve seen you call him a wimpy faggot and hit him!” Michael was unbowed: “You are a wimpy faggot yourself, selling out to a heterosexual organization that marginalizes the lives of people with AIDS!”
The animal activists slowly beat a retreat, as Michael’s crew prepared for a photo-op arrest. To stay adrenalized, they lashed out at anything that moved, like the Maryland park policewoman who fitted herself with latex gloves to prevent any inadvertent fluid-swapping. Yelled one ACT-UPper: “Your gloves don’t match your shoes, you’ll see it on the news.” As any old hand knows, in a successful protest you don’t let up until you’re carted away.
I learned many lessons from Michael in street-theater aesthetics and technique. For example, when engaging in civil disobedience, take your Crixivan and replenish those fluids, because, as Michael explained, “We don’t want a bunch of AIDS patients dying of sunstroke.” Make your placards out of foamcore instead of cardboard because “it’s lighter and makes a better sound if you hit it like a drum.” When you’re getting arrested, keep your hands behind your back, even if you’re not cuffed — it’s a better visual. Ask the cops, “IS it air conditioned?” before they put you in the paddy wagon, so you can remove unnecessary clothing. Give the TV crews their lapel mikes back so they don’t lose your audio.
And most important, don’t skimp on plastic combat boots. “They’re not as comfortable, they don’t breathe, and they’re sweaty,” he says. “Remember, there’s nothing like real leather. It’s a great fashion accessory for summer or winter.”
By Matt Labash
