Your Mommy Kills Animals

Your Mommy Kills Animals is a 2007 documentary film about animal rights activists, then declared “the number one domestic terrorist threat to the United States”. It consists almost entirely of interviews. It was interesting to hear a discussion of modern-sounding protest and, well, terror tactics in a context that has lost its emotional resonance. (Is this part of the gone 1990s environmentalism?)

There were several refrains:

1. “You can’t just do crime. You have to have an above-ground mouthpiece.”
2. The government declaring a group “a threat” and “terrorists” gives it street cred and attracts people.
3. It is critical to groups like the Animal Liberation Front that their cells be decentralized.

Companies respond to activism by taking their business offshore. An Animal Liberation Front spokesperson expressed hope that the ALF may follow companies to Ghana and China, or at least get from delisted from the NYSE, but she was visibly unsure.