Animal Rights Demonstrations - Part Two - Groningen, 08.05.2009

Before getting into the actual demonstration at Groningen, a quick backstory is needed. A couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail to the Respect voor dieren branch at Groningen because of a circus protest that was happening there. I was wondering if it would be worth the trip (which is about 2 1/2 hours from Amsterdam one way) for me to travel all that distance for only one hour of protest. Basically, the answer was no - not really. But my contact suggested that I would rather come on Friday, May 8th, when the Anti-Dierproeven Coalitie would be having a long protest against the new animal experimentation laboratory at the Groningen University (RUG). This sounded like a swell idea.

On the ADC website (www.stopdierproeven.org) they mentioned a protest on their agenda for that specific day, but didn't give any information on where and when. I knew it was in Groningen, thanks to my friend, but I needed more specific info. The ADC website only said, in Dutch of course, that if you wanted more info you should e-mail them. So I did. This was their response:

"Sorry to say this, but we are a closed group as we had issues in the past, therefore we cannot just allow people at our demo's."

Immediately I thought that perhaps they were planning a direct action - which might border on the illegal - but according to my earlier contact, this was an action that was completely legal and licensed from the authorities. I got in touch with my contact again, who was good enough to trust me (even though I'd never met the guy) and gave the specifics of the demo. He seemed a little surprised at the reaction of the ADC. Why would they not want people at the protest? For a direct action group such as the ALF, I would understand the secrecy, but according to my sources this was a group that had left their hardcore roots behind and was aiming at a more mellow way of getting attention. This is the only time (so far) that I have received distrust from the local activists - in other cases, they usually take me quite openly. However, I had heard that the Dutch authorities had been trying to tighten the grip on animal activism, so perhaps it is understandable that they were not ready to trust me. But what were these "issues" in the past? Were they with the police, authorities, journalists? Or possibly the strange group of neo-nazi animal rights advocates? I had no idea. I had heard of animal groups getting into trouble for letting outsiders in (i.e. a journalist), but those were groups involved with direct action (i.e. invading mink farms and liberating the animals).

Anyhow, I went, I showed up, and I even met the guy who had sent me the e-mail. It turned out to be the group leader, who apologized to me for being so rude, and admired my stubbornness. He never gave me an exact reason why they needed all this secrecy (obviously it was an authorized protest, as the police surrounded and paid close surveillance on every corner), apart from the fact that this was a new campaign and they just couldn't spare any time or energy to deal with any possible outsiders, but would rather focus on their own people. Their protest that day was split in three parts. The first took place outside the newly established experimentation laboratory. During this I had not yet met the group, so I stayed on the outside, filming what was going on. The second took place outside the main University building. By this time I had already met most of the group, so I filmed a little bit and then joined the demonstration. The third and final event was in front of the schoolmaster's official building. Here I did not film anything, but took an active part instead by holding banners and chanting slogans in my badly accented Dutch.

The actual protest was against all experiments on animals in general, but this specific campaign was focused on cats, supposedly in order to make it easier for the public to relate, by using a common pet instead of i.e. rats or mice, even though they are being experimented on inside the labs as well. The set-up of the protest was a group of people holding banners and posters and chanting slogans. Certain "spokespeople" also took turns with a loud megaphone, reciting monologues about the use of animals in experiments at the RUG (Rijks Universiteit Groningen). In addition to this, there was a small performance at the forefront of the demo, involving three people in costumes. Two were dressed as vivisectionists in lab coats, sporting laboratory equipment, and one was dressed as a cat, lying on a table, being experimented on. (All of this can be seen in the video below.)

The tradition of wearing animal costumes to get attention is an old one, at least in the United Kingdom, dating back to protests before WWI. Understandably, many people do not like this tradition and it defers many protesters from taking part (i.e. the activists from the vegan picnic in Utrecht). Reasons are generally that it seems silly, stupid and irrelevant to the cause. However, it does attract attention - that can not be denied - and especially from children and families, who are often pulled towards the demo because of the animal costumes. Indeed, watching children pass by the protest was an interesting experience, as they certainly seemed to respond to the event in a way that they might not have done with a regular information stand. I remember watching a father with two young children stopping by the demo, the older kid (a young girl, maybe five years of age) seemingly shocked at what the people were doing to this cat. With a horrified look on her face she asked her father, presumably something like: "What are they doing to the cat?" The father knelt down and explained it to his kids, pointing to the protesters while he spoke. Whatever he said, I do not know, but I am sure that if I was a kid who saw a demo like that in the street, the images would stick with me for a while. For sure. Furthermore, in the video below there is a quick shot of a mother crossing the street with two children, who are both watching the demo. As they pass by on their bicycles, the mother sends the protesters a thumbs-up.

Watching the people's reactions was one of the most interesting aspects of the demo. Most faces began with surprise, even shock. Occasionally people would send thumbs up, or honk their horns (although it is uncertain if that was a positive or negative thing). Every now and then someone would give out derisive laughter. Some were obviously meant to mock the protest, but in many cases the laughter seemed to be a way of coping with the imagery - sort of like the shock reflex one encounters in cinema audiences confronted with quick and extreme violent images, which bursts out in forced laughs. I did not go to speak with anyone from the public to ask about their views on the event, but I did go up to a couple of people who were working for the University news team. They had been speaking to people around, so I thought I'd eliminate the work of actually approaching the Dutch public and make a short-cut by simply asking the news people what they had found out. Generally, it seems, the reception was pretty negative. All in all most people thought the demo was too aggressive (an interesting fact, seeing that this is an organization that other activists accuse of going mellow...), too loud and too much in-your-face. Most people thought that this sort of action would accomplish nothing - certainly, the people doing the vivisection, the doctors and pharmaceutical students inside the laboratory, would not really change their ways because of this. So what is the way to go? Discussion on an academic or socially constructive level - not shouting in the streets. Basically, people prefer that you work from within the system, not outside it, which taps into the eternal question that activists are faced with: which way to go? All the way, attack the roots and settle for nothing less than total abolition? Or meet the public half-way, work from within the system, and try to bring about slow change by increasing awareness and send letters to politicians? It seems that the ACD organization has found itself in a strange situation - too weak for the grassroots, too loud for the public.

A couple of weeks before I came to Groningen I had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, when I noticed that the cook was wearing an "Animal Liberation" t-shirt. I went up to him, introduced myself and had a short chat with him about the Dutch animal rights scene. Now, at the Groningen protest, we met again. He had traveled from Amsterdam to attend this demo. This was my first experience of the inter-connectedness between all these groups - the first of many familiar faces I would encounter. I spoke with a couple of the other protesters, mostly to get their view on the demo and try to hear if they had any particular reasons or stories on why they got involved with the cause. The most interesting one was probably from a girl who simply said that she stopped eating meat when she moved into a place on her own and didn't have much money to spend on food. Meat being the most expensive product she was buying, she saved money by purchasing less and less, until one day she discovered that she hadn't eaten meat for over a week and she was surviving quite well. She had always liked animals, so she made a conscious decision to drop meat altogether, which gradually led to her involvement in the animal rights cause. Furthermore, she said that she wasn't as active as she'd like to be with the demonstrations, but every time she got the chance to go out and contribute, she tried her best. Being vegetarian at home just isn't enough.

The following video shows the protest in good detail and should give a pretty honest view of how it was performed. One image I am sad to have missed with my camera was that of a large dog walking past the cat-suit performance, stopping to sniff and look at this odd creature lying on the table. It was a wonderfully vivid image - the animal experiment protesters and the animal taking in the view. In the video, the protesters can be heard shouting in Dutch. Most of the slogans revolve around the same thing: RUG and the experimentation lab. They chant lines like "RUG is Hell for Cats", "Shame on You and your Bloody Hands", "Stop Vivisection" and "All Animals [or in some cases All Cats] Free!"