One Struggle (1997, Boulder, Colorado, USA)

In the late 90s, there was a small but vocal section of the animal rights movement that wanted to see greater “intersectionality” between the struggle for non-humans and broader social justice issues. That cry manifested in many ways, from the founding of groups like Liberation Collective and Vegan Resistance for Liberation, to the publications of magazines such as One Struggle.

Launched in 1997, One Struggle was meant to be a more multi-issue alternative to the very popular No Compromise magazine, and it’s editorial board and funding originally included early No Comp participants like Cres Velluci. Sadly, it also included a person who later became a government informant: Jen Kolar, one of the primary sources of (often untrue) information that led to the convictions of defendants in the Green Scare cases.

With a mission to “fight the overall power structure,” the magazine produced only one issue which greatly failed in that task. It was almost exclusively authored by animal liberationists discussing the movement they most identified with, and many of the articles about other struggles were likewise written by single issue participants in those movements and lifted directly from their publications. This doesn’t mean that One Struggle was not a worthwhile read. Many articles documented important events occurring at that time point, and while it was not the best written publication of its era it did manage to avoid the tabloidish, macho posturing of many grassroots periodicals. The international coverage exceeded what was available in any other US AR zine at the time, and the classic “Non-violence is ass kissing” op ed still produces some hearty chuckles.

Even though it was short lived, One Struggle remains one of the most noted movement papers of the 1990s, and we are happy to have it archived here at conflictgypsy.com