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The Primate Freedom Tour is rolling through the United States, spreading misinformation about medical research involving primates and generating a fair amount of controversy even within the animal rights movement.
The tour travels across the United States stopping at primate research facilities long enough to protest and grab a bit of media attention. In large measure, however, the tour has backfired on its sponsors due to the tactics they have adopted.
Along with the typical animal rights tactics -- one protester locked himself in a cage for three days outside of a Coulston facility -- members of the Primate Freedom Tour have protested outside the homes of researchers working at primate facilities and released the home addresses of their targets in press releases. In several cases police have come close to arresting primate tour members and a University of California of Davis researcher was arrested recently for allegedly assaulting protesters outside his home.
Such tactics have garnered the tour a wave of negative publicity, helped out by press releases form the tour itself that emphasize the group's militant stand and tactics. By July 1, Suzanne Roy and Eric Kleiman, program director and research director respectively at In Defense of Animals, had enough and issued a "Personal statement against certain tactics of Primate Freedom Tour" attacking the militant tactics which, Roy and Kleiman correctly perceive, only work against the animal rights movement.
As Roy and Kleiman write,
A number of years ago, the A[merican] M[edical] A[ssociation] developed an action plan for neutralizing the animal rights movement. Its strategy was to portray animal rights advocates as extremists and terrorists … We believe the Tour is certainly making the jobs of A[mericans for] M[edical] P[rogress] and other similar groups easier. Their attempts to portray all animal advocates as extremist fanatics, engaged in a terroristic 'jihad' that must be constrained by the police … are certainly being facilitated by the Tour's organizers.
Roy and Kleiman are certainly right about the ethics and media effect of home protests, but their own statement itself belies the claim that animal rights activists are being falsely painted as extremists and terrorists by the AMP and AMA. The fact is that most animal rights activists and organizations are extremists as evidenced by the fact that Roy and Kleiman had to release their comments as a "personal statement" and make very explicit that their views don't reflect that of In Defense of Animals, which is one of the sponsors of the Primate Freedom Tour. Since the Tour began, Roy and Kleiman are the only two individuals to my knowledge to issue such a statement and no animal rights organization has come out with any statement containing anything but praise for the Primate Freedom Tour.
This silence is deafening and yet Roy and Kleiman would have us believe that the extremists who would protest at a researchers home represent a small minority of animal rights activists and the rest of the movement is unfairly associated with this tiny fringe of the movement. Please, give it a rest already. This is as believable as the constant refrain that the Animal Liberation Front's acts of destruction don't represent the animal rights movement, even though all but a handful of animal rights groups refuse to condemn such actions and most express their sympathy with the terrorists.