The Environmental Impact of Music Festivals - IT'S A DISASTER, KIDS!

Trashed: Music Festivals Are Environmental Disasters

By Katie Bain, July 2013

LA Weekly

"Beyond good vibes and heady memories, a primary export of U.S. music festivals is garbage. At the big events like Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, literally tons of trash are created by fans, vendors and artists. Add the mass energy consumption and weighty carbon footprint of 100,000 people driving to a venue, and these big events can be environmentally problematic.

It probably will get worse before it gets better, as the festival circuit continues its rapid expansion. Events like Coachella and Sasquatch now occupy two weekends each, while the trendiest promoters are taking their parties to sea. (And we all know how filthy cruise ships can be.)

Most festivals don't seem to be making big efforts to be green, as anyone who has seen their refuse bins overflowing with plastic water bottles can attest. The behind-the-scenes garbage pile at Coachella, which hosts some 160,000 folks over two weekends, is particularly mountainous, and other large events suffer as well.

"Sasquatch was more like 'Trashquatch.' It was awful," says Tucker Gumber, who attends festivals constantly — he hit 18 of them in 2012 alone — and reviews them on his website, thefestivalguy.com. "The grounds are so pretty, but inside there weren't enough trash cans, there were no cleaning crews coming through, and the trash next to my campsite didn't get emptied all weekend."

Some organizers, however, are focused on neutralizing the environmental effect of the pop-up cities they create. Take Lightning in a Bottle, the electronic music, yoga and arts festival, which has its eighth itineration this weekend in Temecula. Eco-responsibility is in the event's mission statement; organizers brag about stages made from recycled materials. Portions of the event — which hosts 14,000 people — are powered by solar energy, and there are local organic-food vendors. An extensive waste-reduction program is manned by a volunteer "green team," which is 120 people strong. Many can be found backstage, elbows deep in waste, sorting refuse. Not exactly most folks' idea of a wild party.

"A lot of volunteers complain at first," says Shena Jade Jensen, Lightning in a Bottle's sustainability director, "but we've had people say that it was life-changing because they realize, when they're in it, how much waste we're creating and how big a difference recycling makes when done properly."

Lightning in a Bottle's Temple of Consciousness area offers workshops on topics including permaculture, healthy eating and meditation. Attendees have the option to purchase carbon credits to offset their trip to the festival. (And many of them do — the festival also claims 100 percent participation among its organizers.) Rideshare buses travel to the site from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, and attendees who drive in solo must pay $30. Lightning in a Bottle also provides free filtered water, so long as folks bring their own containers. "Attendees should be upset when they have to pay $5 for a tiny bottle of water," Jensen says.

These types of efforts have earned Lightning in a Bottle top accolades from A Greener Festival, a U.K.-based nonprofit that judges events of this kind. The organization also praised Milwaukee's zero-emissions Rock the Green festival (which was canceled for 2013) and Nevada's Symbiosis Gathering.

Bonnaroo — which hosts 100,000 people in rural Tennessee every June — was the biggest U.S. festival to be highlighted by the nonprofit. "We've got an aggressive recycling program, yoga, meditation, free water and composting," notes Richard Goodstone, co-founder of Superfly Productions, the company behind Bonnaroo and San Francisco's Outside Lands.

Meanwhile Burning Man, the 60,000-person new age–y music and arts party in the northern Nevada desert, emphasizes "leave-no-trace" efforts; attendees are known to self-regulate in order to keep even the tiniest bits of trash off the ground.Coachella seems to be less successful when it comes to sustainability, despite recycling and carpool programs, free water for folks who turn in used water bottles, and other initiatives over the years. Eventgoers who try to dispose of their food waste have had trouble, for example: The recycling, compost and trash bins are confusingly labeled, and as a result many have been piled high with garbage. (A representative from the company that puts on Coachella declined to be interviewed for this article.)

In any case, it's easy to see how even well-intended fests might be tempted to hold back green initiatives that are too expensive. "If it's 10 times the cost, we may have to say that we're not going to do the most sustainable option," Goodstone says. "We can only do so much based on our finances."

Festival devotee Gumber says electronic dance music events tend to be the dirtiest, and indeed Electric Daisy Carnival and HARD seem to provide recycling bins as more of a token gesture. (While EDC parent company Insomniac had plans to launch a comprehensive recycling program, those efforts have been shelved for the time being.)

"Electronic music culture has always been about community, but green has been more fringe," says Janine Jordan, founder of the nonprofit Electronic Music Alliance. "It pushes some people away for some reason."

To help counteract this mindset, volunteers from the arts collective Do Lab — which puts on Lightning in a Bottle — have gone on to become sustainability directors at other festivals. Also helpful? When a festival owns its own land, such as Bonnaroo, which bought several hundred farmland acres at its location in 2007. This allowed Superfly to improve its water-filtration systems and install compost pads, among other improvements. The fest's "Clean Vibes" crew (born out of the earthy Phish scene) picks up garbage piles left by attendees at campsites. The crew also posts information at all the waste stations to teach folks what should be sorted, recycled and put in the trash. Coachella could benefit from some folks on-site like this.

Lightning in a Bottle even plays a song with lyrics encouraging folks to pick up their junk after the music's over each night, which ensures the grounds are kept fairly tidy. Festival organizers are looking into options for algae generators and — brace yourself — turning human waste into energy.While such initiatives might sound daunting, to say the least, for $350 A Greener Festival will come to your event and assess what can be done to make it more eco-friendly. The nonprofit emphasizes that these types of programs can help generate long-term savings, and considering that it can't be cheap to move giant piles of garbage out of exceedingly remote locations, this isn't hard to believe.

Of course, much of this is in the hands of those in attendance; not surprisingly, attendees at the more hippie-dippy events tend to be the best about cleaning up after themselves. But it's clear that organizers can change folks' behavior patterns. It involves providing the right incentives, the right penalties and, perhaps more than anything else, making it easy to be green.

"Thousands of people are coming to an event that's going to be one of the most memorable experiences of their year," Jensen says. "It's up to [festival organizers] to decide what kind of legacy they want to create in the world out of that." "

(from http://www.laweekly.com/music/trashed-music-festivals-are-environmental-disasters-2614424)

ANIMAL ACTIVISTS ARE SHOUTING OUT THEIR CRIMES ONLINE

By Josh Saul, April 2016

Nicole Kissane and Joseph Buddenberg spray-painted the word killer in red on the front of Furs by Graf in San Diego, glued the locks, and sprayed smelly butyric acid into the store. The animal rights activists then walked to the homes of the store’s elderly owners, where they spray-painted animal murderer in red on an old recreational vehicle and poured muriatic acid on the driveway to stain the concrete. From there, they went to the home of the owners’ daughter, where they painted her pickup truck red and dumped muriatic acid on her porch, according to federal prosecutors. About a week after the vandalism at Furs by Graf in July 2013, a website called DirectAction.info posted an anonymous dispatch.

"In the early morning hours of July 16, 2013, anarchists in San Diego took action on behalf of the millions of fur-bearing animals who are trapped, enslaved and killed to sustain the global fur industry,” it read, describing the damage done at each location. “These actions were taken to vocalize the cries of the millions of wild beings yearning for freedom. This is in vain unless it inspires others to liberate and sabotage. Every fur farm prisoner deserves a jail break.”

Later that month, Kissane and Buddenberg withdrew $300 from a bank in Escondido, California and drove for 18 hours to Plains, Montana, where they snuck onto Fraser Fur Farm in the early morning and freed a bobcat, court papers state. “Emaciated and filthy, his beauty was evident even through the matted fur and traumatized stare, with his bushy jowls and black ear tufts,” read the DirectAction.info dispatch that was posted about two weeks later. “This should be a lesson to Frazier [sic]. If you ever again hold wild creatures captive on your land, we will breach it to free them.”

Two days after releasing the bobcat, Kissane and Buddenberg cut the chicken-wire fence behind the Moyle Mink Ranch in Burley, Idaho, avoided the security guard who patrolled the property at night, snuck on the farm and released about 3,000 mink from their cages, according to prosecutors. “Their initial timidity quickly became a cacophony of gleeful squealing, playing, cavorting, and swimming in the creek that runs directly behind the Moyle property,” stated the dispatch posted on DirectAction.info the next day under the title, “First Fur Farm Raid of the Summer!”

Kissane and Buddenberg continued releasing mink and vandalizing businesses that used animal products throughout the summer and fall of 2013. The pair drove over 40,000 miles to free almost 7,000 mink from farms in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and did more than $400,000 worth of damage, federal authorities said. Dispatches were posted on DirectAction.info after most of their raids. When the pair was arrested and indicted on federal animal enterprise terrorism charges last year, the FBI press release said, “To publicize their crimes, the defendants drafted ‘communiqués’ describing their conduct and posted them on websites associated with animal rights extremists.” In court papers filed less than a month before Kissane and Buddenberg pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to commit animal enterprise terrorism, prosecutors described the communiqués in court papers that read, “This encourages others to follow in their footsteps.”

DirectAction.info posts dispatches from animal activists across the world announcing their crimes—or “actions”—with about 140 “communiqués” last year describing crimes in the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia. Sample headlines include, “Hundreds of Hares Liberated” in Italy, “Rabbits Rescued from Lab Breeder” in Brazil and “Partridges Freed” in Turkey. The page lists a West Palm Beach, Florida, address and a data encryption code, which activists use to securely send in their dispatches—often from public computers at libraries or FedEx office locations. Many of the same dispatches are also posted on the website for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. DirectAction.info—which calls its webpage “Bite Back”—didn’t respond to a Newsweek email seeking comment.

Publishing online accounts of your crimes—even anonymously—brings significant risks. Federal agents check sites like DirectAction.info regularly to learn of animal rights-motivated crimes that local cops don’t always flag up to them. Publicity can increase law enforcement attention. And if the activist is arrested, their dispatches are noted in the indictment and throughout the ensuing plea discussions and sentencing. So why do it?

Two reasons, explains animal rights journalist Will Potter. The first is to release the animals and cause economic harm to the business. The second is to spark a discussion about how our society treats animals—and with that goal in mind, activists publish online accounts of their actions. “So part of [the goal of] these illegal actions and these communiqués is to point a spotlight on what is happening and say this is why we did this and we had no other choice,” Potter tells Newsweek. “It’s a guaranteed opportunity to have that voice heard. Whenever these communiqués are written and there’s an explanation for why an action took place, it’s overwhelmingly then referred to in the press or by the FBI pointing to that motivation.” The publicity can also make clear to business owners that the activists want them to close their doors, said Ben Rosenfeld, a San Francisco civil rights attorney who has represented many radical activists. “I can’t speak for anyone specifically, but generally sending communiques serves the purpose of letting these exploitive animal industries know that people are watching and some people are willing to take the law into their own hands in a nonviolent way,” Rosenfeld says. Tyler Lang, who was convicted of animal enterprise terrorism for releasing 2,000 mink and spraypainting “Liberation is Love” at an Illinois farm in 2013, toldNewsweek that activists publicize their actions so they can define their own motives and and goals. “The message ‘Liberation is Love’ was a response to groups like Fur Commission USA using their influence to try to paint activists as ‘terrorists’ rather than as individuals motivated by compassion to save animals who current laws have clearly failed,” Lang said in an email.

The communiqués have been vital to most prosecutions of animal activists—making them a “double-edged sword” that attracts the desired publicity but can also link suspects to specific crimes or be used by prosecutors to argue for harsher federal charges under the federal animal enterprise terrorism act, Potter says. “In this case, if there wasn’t a communiqué, if there wasn’t a movement affiliated with these actions, it would just be a property crime. But now we’re talking about terrorism because there’s a nexus and a connection to animal rights activism.” Potter also said the main tactic used by animal rights activists has shifted from releasing animals to filming undercover videos that reveal farm conditions, with those videos posted on DirectAction.info and the North American Animal Liberation Press Office.

The controversial Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was passed in 2006—critics say it wrongly brands protesters and vandals as terrorists—and applies to anyone who “intentionally damages or causes the loss of any real or personal property used by an animal enterprise.” After the passage of the AETA in 2006, there was a “dramatic drop” in the number of communiqués, as activists learned that their writing was used to classify defendants as terrorists. “I don’t think the number of crimes dropped off, but the communiqués changed pretty radically,” Potter says.

Buddenberg was one of the first people charged under the then-new AETA in 2008 for holding threatening protests at the homes of University of California Berkeley professors who used animals in their research, but a federal judge tossed out the charges in 2010 because prosecutors weren’t specific enough about the charges against him. They didn’t repeat their mistake. The January trial memo that outlined the case against Buddenberg and Kissane details everything, from how the unemployed duo funded their epic cross-country trips—stealing from stores like REI and CVS and selling the pilfered items on eBay—to how a chef caught Buddenberg writing “Directaction.info” on a bathroom wall of the University of California at Berkeley dining hall where he worked. The memo describes “militant environmental groups” like the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front but stops short of saying that Buddenberg and Kissane are members. “These groups aren’t groups in the traditional sense. There is no leader, although there are influential individuals in the movement,” the memo states. “Like-minded people are encouraged to act for themselves and do what they can to effect change.”

An Idaho mink farmer said he didn’t mind the activists “bragging” about their crimes online, but he did object to them attacking the industry. “If you’re against abortion, you don’t need to go around blowing up abortion clinics. If you don’t like to hunt, don’t go hunting,” said the farmer, who asked not be named because he fears activists targeting his farm. “But the idea that we live in a country where people want to impose their values on you and force you to change your living, that’s completely un-American.” The farmer also said freed mink die quickly, with the animals getting run over by cars or starving to death when the sudden influx of predators exhausts the food supply. The recaptured animals also suffer: the farms keep mink penned in the same pairs their entire life, so the animals fight viciously when they are caught and thrown in with an unfamiliar new pen-mate.

Buddenberg is scheduled to be sentenced May 2 and Kissane will be sentenced in June. If the judge accepts the plea deal, he will do two years in prison and she will do six months. Defense attorneys for the pair declined to comment. But while Buddenberg was confined to home detention in November as his case inched forward, he showed an unabated desire to help animals and draw public attention online to their welfare. “For anyone who can help, there's a turkey in the middle of the street near my apartment. Oakland, 56th st and San pablo. I'm on house arrest so there's not much I can do,” he posted on Facebook.

(origionally postred by Newsweek, http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/13/animal-rights-activists-direct-action-bobcat-453253.html)

Phamily! -- RE-GROUP && RE-FOCUS !! We aren't going anywhere!

FROM HERE ON OUT . . . Well. as many of our readers may be aware we have shifted from our IRL (In Real Life, for the now-formerly-uncool others such as myself!) focus from criminal and family law to environmental and animal rights law activism and research the decision has finally been made:

Instead of closing down/retiring this entire blog, we will now be posting articles and accepting submissions and suggestions again related to the topics of environmental and animal rights, food and animal science, and (IDEALLY) our community!

Alrighty, folks, onward!!!

~Katie <3