There’s a right way to fight for a cause, and there’s a wrong way. Letter-writing campaigns, public demonstrations, and protests are the right way. If a cause targets an industry’s practices, boycotting works too.

However, threatening children and mailing people envelopes full of excrement is definitely the wrong way.

Last Thursday, six members of an animal rights group were convicted of threatening, harassing employees and destroying property of a New Jersey company that performs lab tests on animals, according to The Associated Press. The group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, claimed that the First Amendment protected its actions, which consisted of posting information on its Web site.

The information group listed the names, addresses and home phone numbers of employees of the Huntingdon Life Sciences laboratory, along with a list of the employees’ children’s schools, according to the AP. As a result, homes were vandalized and threatening e-mails were sent – e-mails promising violence such as cutting open the 7-year-old son of one employee and stuffing his body with poison.

SHAC argued that posting the employees’ information on its Web site was protected speech and its president, Pamelyn Ferdin, called the conviction of her group the beginning of “a very scary path of going toward fascism,” according to the AP.

What a load of crap.

It’s ludicrous for SHAC to try to abuse the First Amendment and deny legal responsibility for violence simply because they didn’t make any threats themselves.

On its Web site, the organization claims it doesn’t use violence as a means of protest, but its past history says otherwise.

In August 2002, two British members of SHAC were arrested for threatening to burn down the home of a man who was allegedly tied to Huntingdon Life Sciences, according to the Boston Herald.

Additionally, an American insurance broker sued SHAC for harassment after being attacked with smoke bombs and receiving hate mail filled with blood and excrement, according to Britain’s Financial Times. Even the FBI has described SHAC as having an “extensive history of violence in the United States and abroad,” according to Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

SHAC is one of several groups that falsely presents itself as being comprised of environmentalists, specifically animal rights activists. The claim is specious. Legitimate animal rights activists legally protest causes they believe in – they don’t commit eco-terrorism, and they don’t target the associates, families and children of those they oppose.

SHAC may believe that its actions help the cause of the animals suffering lab testing, but they don’t. Just like any terrorist act, threats and harassment put an ugly face on an otherwise noble cause and turns public opinion against it and, by association, the activists who fight for the same cause legally. It also makes people sympathize with animal laboratories. Meanwhile, animals are still in laboratories enduring experiments and suffering for the sake of science.

While I strongly oppose cruelty to animals, the torment groups such as SHAC have put innocent people and their families through is inappropriate.

SHAC’s motto is: “Words mean nothing. Action is everything.” Perhaps they should change it to: “The right action is everything.” If they protested in an honorable, legitimate way, they might accomplish more than the bad publicity and legal woes their tactics have earned them so far.

-Veronica Rollin is a political science junior and a staff columnist for The Daily Aztec.

-This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec. Send e-mail to letters@thedailyaztec.com. Anonymous letters will not be printed – include your full name, major and year in school.