Liberate

As one of the people involved in organising the protests against ANZCCART, it was with baited breath that I waited for the start of each event and protest, and with a sense of relief when the conference came to an end. Overall, I thought the protests against this year’s ANZCCART went well. This is a general overview of some of what went on and some of what worked and what didn’t.

ANZCCART stands for the Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Testing. Basically, they represent scientists which torture hundreds thousand animals in NZ and Australia every year. They hold a conference every year in Aussie or NZ. This year, the ANZCCART conference was held in Auckland from Sunday afternoon to Tuesday morning. Conferences such as this one provide a useful opportunity to bring people together and focus opposition against a particular industry.

Unlike most protests which I have been part of, we actually made an effort to start organising quite a few months before ANZCCART was due to start. This was important as we were counting on people to travel from around NZ and even from Australia to boost our numbers. We got some announcements out fairly early on which were useful in letting people know what was planned but for a variety of reasons there wasn’t really much co-ordination with other groups around the protests. This was probably one of the biggest weaknesses in our planning and I really hope that the AR movement can get over its differences in the future and that we can work together better. Despite good intentions much of the planning took place in a flurry in the few weeks leading up to the conference which caused problems getting advertising out. Last minute planning also meant we didn’t go into the protests with a clear idea of what we intended to do and how we intended to shut the conference down.

To publicise the conference, it was decided to organise gigs in Auckland on the Friday and Saturday. Both were very successful raising both money and awareness about animal rights with a few hundred people attending. Some of whom attended the protests on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. A respectable public meeting was also held on the Saturday which provided a good balance with many new young people going to the gigs and quite a different group of people going to the public meeting. I think the gigs were a great idea and something which I would recommend if large protests are planned.

Identifying the venue for any major conference is vital, particularly for setting meeting points and organising logistics. The animal abusers are, of course, keen to keep venues secret so as with any event a bit of detective work is vital. At one stage we thought ANZCCART was probably being held at the Ellerslie Race course. After checking out the race course, inside and out a couple of times during the week, we decided protests at the venue would be fairly unsuccessful. Rather than giving up when one potential site looked too hard, we looked around for companies and institutions directly involved in torturing animals and adapted our plans so we could still make the vivisectors feel uncomfortable.

After a while we found out that ANZCCART was actually going to be the Waipuna Conference facility. This site was far better in terms of protesting than the Race Course as a public reserve backed onto the conference rooms, restaurant and hotel. So once again we changed our plans to maximise the amount of noise and disturbance we could cause at the Waipuna. I think the ability to change plans with short notice and to constantly look for weaknesses is one of the major lessons to come out of all of this. Having a large degree of flexibility and the confidence to change things quickly allows us to seize upon weaknesses.

Sunday
The first demo was advertised as a rally and around 50 people attended on a calm Sunday afternoon in east Auckland. I think this probably should have been louder and more confrontational as it was always going to be our largest demo as many people had to go to work on Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, amongst those heading home were many established activists which created a serious experience gap and a shortage of organisers.

Monday
Monday morning opened with 20 demonstrators doing their best to disrupt breakfast as the vivisectors got ready for their day of meetings. After an hour and a half of yelling and banging drums, some people left for work while about 15 of us hopped in our cars to hassle companies and institutions directly involved in vivisection. This was done because with the 40 plus cops surrounding the Waipuna lodge and more inside it was obvious that our chances of openly disrupting the conference were slim. These protests were reasonably successful with loud angry demos held outside NIWA and Novartis amongst others. Driving around we managed to stay ahead of the paddy wagon and several cop cars following us and were able to go inside some of the places. This was I thought quite a good use of our numbers and definietly gave us some of the surprise factor.

The evening demo was timed to disrupt the ANZCCART Gala Dinner and was one of the most successful protests. About 30 people kept up a sustained racket for 2 and a half hours using air horns, whistles and sirens etc. I thought there was a really good feeling to this protest and we heard later that many people had cancelled bookings and left the hotel as a result of it. This kind of demo really hurts venues as lost bookings rack up quickly and I think disruptive tactics can be put to good effect in making venues think twice about having anything to do with those involved in abusing animals.

Tuesday
The morning demo outside the Waipuna once again had around 20 people and lasted for two hours as the vivisectors had their closing remarks and got in minivans to go to the airport. After this, fearing a repeat of the previous day’s demos and fearing that we were heading to the airport several activists were pulled over and had cops quiz us as to where we were going.

Instead of the airport, we headed to Landcare Research – one of NZ’s largest vivisection institutions. Arriving at the building about 10 people went inside and after walking around found themselves stuck inside a yard. Staff blocked the one door out of the yard and tried to stop them from leaving the premises. Everyone had to climb over a fence to get out. After the activists got out, paddy wagons and cars full of cops turned up and quickly fanned out arresting anyone that looked like a protester for “illegally being in an enclosed yard”. This was the most costly mistake we made and was clearly a result of a lack of planning. Also by standing round arguing with staff, we lost momentum and allowed the cops to rally in large enough numbers to make arrests. As always when something goes wrong we need to move quickly and keep our enemy on our toes. Standing around indecisively leaves us at the mercy of the Police.

ANZCCART and any other major industry conference present a good opportunity to bring media attention to issues which are normally ignored. It is however difficult to grab the medias attention and as we were focused on disrupting the conference we probably failed to publicise what we were doing enough. This is another thing which I would recommend sorting out well in advance, leaving this until you are tired from demos isn’t the best idea.

We also stuck mainly to traditional demos and didn’t do late night demos or early morning wakeup demos, both of which are a huge annoyance to venues housing animal or earth abusers. We also didn’t put much effort into getting inside the conference which would really have made the vivisectors present watch their back. A point which I found interesting however was that almost all of the conference took place within the Waipuna, this is because any trip outside of a conference venue provides ample opportunity for activists to cause havoc and disruption.

Overall, I thought the protests went well and but there was a lot we learnt in the process. In particular, it was great to see people travel from across NZ and from Australia to come to the protests. Despite our successes, I think we have a long way to go before we become a real threat to the people involved in murdering and torturing hundreds of thousands of animals in NZ and Australia every year.