The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (http://www.alec.org) published a report last week, titled "Animal & Ecological Terrorism in America," that would make most legitimate non-violent protest illegal and prosecutable as animal or eco-terrorism. The report reviews the history of animal and ecological terrorism worldwide and proposes model legislation to combat this type of terrorism. The report begins by attempting to define the history of two fringe groups -- Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). It then promotes a revised version of their model legislation titled the "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act." ALEC promotes this legislation as a way to combat vandalism and arson, even though all states already have legal structures in place to prosecute individuals who commit these criminal acts. Among the new provisions of the model bill is the inclusion of optional language defining "politically motivated" as "any activity where the principal purpose is to influence a unit of government to take a specific action or to persuade the public to take specific action or to protest the actions of a unit of government, corporation, organization, or the public at large." Simply put, any expression of dissent directed at a company or branch of government fits the "politically motivated" criterion for ecological terrorism under this act. An "animal or ecological terrorist organization" is defined as a group that consists of "two or more persons with the primary or incidental purpose of supporting [politically motivated] activity through intimidation, coercion, force, or fear..." but without defining what would constitute "intimidation, coercion, force, or fear." Furthermore, the model legislation does not distinguish between a member of a terrorist organization and a misguided youth. The report makes sweeping generalizations intended to exploit feelings of vulnerability and fear such as evoking the specter of al-Queda and suggesting that animal terrorists will begin "cutting throats." ALEC also boldly states, without any evidence, that mainstream animal and environmental groups make backdoor contributions to support illegal activities of animal and environmental terrorist groups. At its worst, the report links all environmental organizations together and assumes all are breaking the law. It uses terrorist attacks and ill-supported assumptions to justify legislation that duplicates current law and implicates legitimate expressions of dissent. Some form of the model bill was introduced in six states last year and saw limited success as most did not make it out of committee. In spite of those failures, ALEC persists in its attempts to promote this insidious legislation in legislatures across the country.

Ran 9/22/2003