At one time, escaping the dirty, dangerous city was a privilege. Now the wealthy are flocking back for newly “livable,” walkable neighborhoods that are safer than they’ve been in decades. New residents are remaking cities in their own image, driving prices way up, and ultimately pushing poorer city dwellers out to the suburbs.

A new report from the Brookings Institution, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America,” reveals how formerly affluent bedroom communities have faltered in recent years. Brookings researchers found that between 2000 and 2011, the rate of poverty in the American suburbs grew by nearly two-thirds — more than twice as fast as it did in cities. “The federal government spends $82 billion a year across more than 80 programs to address poverty in place,” the study notes. “But the spread-out nature of suburban poverty, and the lack of expert public and nonprofit service providers in suburbs, mean that most of those dollars remain focused on urban communities.”

Here’s a chart showing the increase in suburban vs. urban poverty in the last few decades:

To some degree, it makes sense that there are more poor people in the suburbs than there are in cities: Three times as many people live in the suburbs as in urban centers in the U.S. What’s really notable here is the rate of change.

But this report doesn’t really say that cities are winning. If anything, it says we’re all losing — you’ll notice that both of those trend lines in the graph are on the rise. It’s further evidence of the growing wealth chasm and how it dictates our choices.

Suburban poverty isn’t the epidemic — poverty is. Regardless, Brookings seems to have offended suburban champions who argue that white-picket-fence, car-friendly living is the real American way of life.

There are a few reasons the suburbs are losing wealth way faster than cities, besides the fact that comfy car-free city-living has become such an attractive, increasingly elite lifestyle. Working- and service-class industries moved to the suburbs, then crashed, while more lucrative “creative class” industry jobs have largely concentrated in urban centers. Cities are not only attracting the wealthy, but rewarding them for their investments. Urban home values have maintained and even increased while suburban ones have crashed on people for whom their house was their greatest asset and investment.

And living in the suburbs often requires extra resources. Hundreds of thousands of poor suburban families don’t have cars, so daily life becomes a time-consuming struggle of simply getting around places that have limited public transportation and often no bike-friendly infrastructure to speak of.

None of this sits well with those who champion the ‘burbs. Suburb-lovers and Richard-Florida-haters Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox have some choice words for urbanists at the Daily Beast. They call Brookings “something of a Vatican for anti-suburban theology,” pointing out great wealth disparities in large cities such as Chicago and New York, and championing suburban growth.

But suburban poverty is real. It’s the other side of the urban-gentrification coin toss — the losing side. When a city neighborhood hits peak coffee shop and beer garden, when families move out and investors move in, locals get pushed out. And the organizers and activists and the resources fighting for the poor don’t always follow them to the suburbs to keep helping out.

The major concern here is not just that poor people are being pushed out of the cities they’ve called home. It’s that when they’re in the suburbs, those poor people have a lot fewer opportunities to thrive.

Brookings has been beating this poor-suburbs drum for years now. “This ongoing shift in the geography of American poverty increasingly requires regional scale collaboration by policymakers and social service providers in order to effectively address the needs of a poor population that is increasingly suburban,” a 2010 Brookings report read.

Ironically, despite all the sniping back and forth between city lovers and suburban apologists, this is one point on which everyone seems to agree: “Rather than castigating suburbs for exaggerated dysfunction, retro-urbanists would be much better served focusing on how to correct and confront the issue of poverty, which continues to concentrate heavily in the urban core and elsewhere in America,” Kotkin and Cox conclude.

Such a vital issue shouldn’t — and doesn’t, really! — pit urbanists against suburbanists. No city is an island. Urban living is great, but ultimately our cities are only as great as the poverty concentrated in their centers, now spilling out into their suburbs.

May hasn’t gone so hot for some of the sharing economy’s most promising entrepreneurs. 2012 might have hinted of challenges to come, but so far 2013 has overdelivered. In the last two weeks, New York regulators and courts have essentially shut three of these companies down, at least temporarily.

SideCar Technologies, a donation-based rideshare start-up, ceased its New York business after a judge said even free rides from the company would violate the city’s laws governing cars-for-hire, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Then last week, RelayRides, which allows car owners to rent out their vehicles, came under fire from the state Financial Services Department for what officials called “repeated false advertising and violations of insurance law, which are putting the public at risk.” Basically: RelayRides told car owners that the company’s insurance policy covered them 100 percent in the case of a car renter, say, mowing down a pedestrian, but the car owners could actually be found liable.

But the issue really came to a head this week, when a New York judge deemed vacation rental middle-people Airbnb illegal in New York City and New York state. Airbnb’s services violate laws against underground and underregulated hotels, as well as a state-wide ban on short-term rentals enacted in 2011. Airbnb is now lobbying in Albany to change the law, but the East Village host who rented out his apartment for a few days and was made an example of got slapped with a $2,400 fine.

Last year, California cracked down on ridesharing and car-hire start-ups. The state hasn’t shut them down — it’s looking for a way to regulate them within the current system — but it’s asking a lot of the same questions about insurance and liability that are vexing New York.

“It’s a blow for an industry still trying to gain credence with an insurance industry that’s largely still baffled of its very existence,” wrote Richard Nieva at PandoDaily. Of the company’s troubles, RelayRides CEO Andre Haddad said in a statement: “Innovation, by its nature, does not always fit within existing structures.”

These peer-to-peer services definitely don’t — in fact, in a lot of cases, they’re a direct challenge to local business and governance. To some extent, this clash isn’t just expected; it’s a necessary growing pain. After all, services like RelayRides and Airbnb have really wormed their way into our decaying economy.

If I can’t get a cheap place to stay or hail a quick, easy ride, that’s annoying and expensive for me. But that’s nothing compared to the potential consequences for people like my friend Kate, who is underemployed but making a decent wage driving for Lyft. The sharing economy has become just that — an economy — and a lot of people rely on it not just for convenience, but for a living.

Last year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the site has “helped thousands of people stay in their homes” during times of economic uncertainty, by providing them with another income stream.

The regulated economy has failed Kate and people like her. The sharing economy hasn’t. That’s power. And the more these start-ups become enmeshed in the socioeconomic fabric of an individual place and leverage it, the more powerful they will become.

Will that involve some following of the laws? Well, yes, sure. Maybe smaller, more nimble and more localized start-ups could better navigate these laws — or maybe it’ll take the sheer muscle of national and even international operations to bust past stodgy regulators and crappy municipal codes. Either way, there may be some bumps on the road toward sharing economy bliss, but the road’s still there.

It was a quiet year for tornadoes — until last week, that is. A string of twisters has ravaged the middle of the country over the past several days, culminating in a two-mile-wide tornado tearing up Moore, Okla., Monday afternoon. So far at least 37 people have been confirmed dead in Oklahoma, and that toll is expected to rise.

The weather has twisted a few of our fellow greenies on the internet into a tizzy. “Extreme storm, climate change, OMFG!” they cry. We almost had a seizure reading this missive from the Wonkette folks, and we’re fairly sure they had one while writing it.

Wishing the best for tornado victims in OK. Hope this sells at least a few on consequences and importance of climate change.

— Wesley Starnes (@WesleyStarnes) May 20, 2013

But the science on tornadoes and climate change isn’t clear enough to OMFG about it just yet. As Grist’s John Upton reported recently, the number of twisters has been roller-coastering up and down from year to year. “It certainly feels like one of those boom-bust weather cycles that we expect from climate change. But there doesn’t appear to be any evidence directly linking the recent tornado cycle to global warming.”

Widespread damage in @cityofmoore .#OKCOSO deputies are assisting.#tornado #okwx twitter.com/OkCountySherif…

— Oklahoma Co. Sheriff (@OkCountySheriff) May 20, 2013

The Associated Press wraps it up with this insight: “Will there be more or fewer twisters as global warming increases? There is no easy answer.”

Cars piled on top of each other in Moore, OK. Via KFOR. #okwx #tornado twitter.com/alastormspotte…

— Scott McClellan (@alastormspotter) May 20, 2013

“Most climate scientists believe that clearer answers will be forthcoming with better climate modeling tools — and patience,” according to the Huffington Post.

Worst tornado damage I have seen since Joplin. Picture of what’s left of a daycare in Moore, Oklahoma. Brings tears. twitter.com/StormCoker/sta…

— Georgia Storm Chaser (@StormCoker) May 20, 2013

Post-Superstorm Sandy, we’ve entered a kind of fugue state when it comes to natural disaster, forgetting that there has been a long history of extreme weather events that sometimes have nothing to do with how much carbon is in our atmosphere. For as disastrous as Sandy was, be honest: You relished pointing out that climate change connection.

Horrible. The only word to describe this view in Moore, OK. #okwx #tornado #PrayforMoore twitter.com/alastormspotte…

— Scott McClellan (@alastormspotter) May 20, 2013

We really like to find reason in chaos, though, and we also like to blame things! At one point there were several little kids trapped in the rubble of a building in Moore, Okla., that earlier in the day was their elementary school. If we can’t blame climate change, who can we blame?

Maybe scientists will conclude that this really is the fault of that atmospheric carbon. Maybe they won’t! For now, at least, the only thing I’ll be blaming for this mess is Sarah Palin. Because, you know.

Grist is currently in the middle of our spring fundraising drive. We’re aiming to collect 2,500 of your generous gifts of support by tomorrow, and then we won’t bug you about this again for a while!

If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the great green work Grist does every day. But don’t take our word for it. Just listen to your conscience.

As of this week, Loflin has planted America’s first real crop of industrial hemp in more than a half-century.

The 40-year-old farmer from Springfield, Colo., has been scheming for months. “I believe this is really going to revitalize and strengthen farm communities,” Loflin told the Denver Post in April. Now he’s leased 60 acres of his father’s alfalfa farm to plant and tend the hundreds of hemp starters he’s already been grooming.

Hemp, for those who aren’t familiar, is a variety of cannabis that — sorry kids! — won’t get you high. Strong, nutritious, and super sustainable to grow, hemp is used for everything from rope to cereal. It requires few herbicides, and has even been called carbon negative by some boosters. And while it’s illegal to grow it in the U.S., it’s not illegal to sell. Right now imported hemp — the only legal kind — accounts for about $500 million in annual U.S. sales, according to the Hemp Industries Association.

So what if it were homegrown, Loflin-style?

Loflin’s not completely on his own here. Colorado legalized hemp, along with recreational marijuana, last November. Last week, Colorado passed a bill that would register hemp farmers with the state and create a committee that would work with farmers and the Department of Agriculture to (hopefully) keep plants in the fields and farmers out of jail.

“This is monumental for our industry,” Bruce Perlowin, chief executive of Hemp Inc., told the Denver Post. “It will unlock a clean industrial revolution that will be good for the economy, good for jobs, and good for the environment.”

In April, Kentucky passed a measure to legalize industrial hemp production, over the objections of local law enforcement who said it would turn the state’s residents into a bunch of stoners. Kentucky farmers are a bit more cagey about plowing ahead Loflin-style, though, and are instead lobbying the feds to just make this stuff legal already.

So far, though, the feds aren’t buying it. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2013, first introduced in Congress in February, is currently chilling on a couch in committee, with no vote in sight.

Because that dank shit sustainable fiber is still straight-up Schedule I illegal, hemp farmers don’t qualify for federal crop insurance and other government benefits afforded to farmers of legal crops. And fear of reprisal is keeping many farmers and researchers away, even in states that say it’s OK.

“The law is clear on this matter,” a board member at Colorado State University, a top farming research school, wrote in a letter to U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), “and we do not want to do anything that would unintentionally result in personal criminal liability for CSU employees or that would disqualify the institution from obtaining future government funding.”

Without movement in Washington, this fibrous future rests with folks like Loflin, who are willing to risk jail time for this plant. But even if Loflin lands behind bars, he’ll always be able to say he was the first. As he told Denver’s Westword, “It’s my crazy competitive nature.”

Smokey the Bear always seemed like a pretty reasonable bear-dude to me. He doesn’t appear to have any other politics beyond encouraging campers to douse their fires. But that’s not how artist Lopi LaRoe sees Smokey. Last fall, LaRoe radicalized the U.S. Forest Service’s stern spokesbear in artwork and merchandise.

“This is Smokey waking up and saying, ‘Oh you didn’t do that to my environment.’ Smokey wants to fight the corporations and protect the air and the water and the plants and the animals and the people,” LaRoe tells Waging Non-Violence.

Turns out the U.S. Forest Service is not super into that, and has threatened LaRoe with legal action if she doesn’t stop selling Smokey the Anti-Fracker merchandise plus remove all her images from the web.

But considering how reasonable that Smokey always seemed, it got us thinking: What other cartoon bears might be wishing they could get political, were it not for their overlords? We checked in with a few to get their response.

It’s springtime at the Point Reyes National Seashore, about an hour outside of San Francisco, and the cold wind whips off the sea and through the tall grass along the cliffs. Cows wander and graze along the fingers of land that reach out into the estuary’s tiny bays, an area altogether encompassing just over three square miles.

Beyond the estuary, at the outer edges of the seashore, seals sun themselves on the beaches, packed in tightly and squirming along the shoreline.

From March through June, the estuary is quiet. The seashore boasts more than 28,000 acres of agricultural land, most of it for beef and dairy production — but it’s pupping season for the seals, and the National Park Service has instated its annual ban on the motorboats that usually zip around the estuary, planting and harvesting millions of oysters for the Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

These estuary oysters have been here for decades, but their lease has run out. If the National Park Service gets its way, this estuary will soon be protected as pure wilderness, with no oyster farming allowed, and those seals will never hear a motor in this water again.

The Lunny family, which owns the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, has been fighting for years to stay put — the family’s appeal is due to be heard in court this week. But recently, this dispute has gotten caught up in national environmental battles, including the fight over the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Members of Congress and national green groups have weighed in. And what ultimately amounts to just two square miles of “potential wilderness” have split the environmental movement right down the middle, locally and nationally.

The battle for this estuary has become far more than a fight about an oyster farm — it’s become a flashpoint in the debate over what we want out of the natural world, and what we can afford. At a time of both economic and ecological crisis, how much sense does it make to put a fence up around nature? How much sense does it make to let business interests capitalize off public lands? And who gets to decide?

This is not a wholly unique dispute — conservation and agriculture have come to blows in the past, and often. But this fight has torn at one of the greenest communities in the country, a place where the local town center is papered in anti-Keystone XL posters and fliers for classes on switching to solar power.

Marin County, where Point Reyes is located, is the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area’s eco foodie obsession. The county was the first in California to offer a local organic label and is now home to over 20,000 acres of certified organic agriculture.

Proponents for sustainable, local food systems argue that local oysters are a healthy, ecologically friendly source of protein, grown close to home, with the added benefit of filtering the local water. Among them are critically acclaimed restaurateurs such as the owners of the Hayes Street Grill and celebrity chef Alice Waters, who have aligned themselves with the Sonoma and Marin County Farm Bureaus, the California Farm Bureau Federation, and Marin County’s agriculture commissioner.

Backing the National Park Service in its efforts to oust the oyster farmers are national conservation and parks protection groups, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as the California Coastal Commission. Notable conservationists including oceanographer Sylvia Earle have also weighed in to support increased protections for the shoreline and the ouster of the farm.

Both sides say they are motivated by a desire to protect the environment and be responsible stewards of the land. Both sides claim broad support, say science is on their side, and blame one another for campaigns of misinformation. From personal attacks to falsified reports to piles of lawsuits, it’s been salty and slimy, and it’s far from over.

It’s a Sunday morning and Brigid Lunny pushes up the sleeves on her Drakes Bay Oyster Company sweatshirt. She’s manning the register at the oyster shack, the spiffiest of a cluster of small buildings on a teensy plot of land perched on the shore of an inlet along the estuary. The farm’s workers live in the houses nearby — you can see their gardens and hear their backyard chickens.

According to local farm groups, the beds these workers tend in Drakes Bay produce nearly a third of all oysters grown in California. The oyster shack and picnic grounds along the shore also draw tens of thousands of tourists each year.

Starting early this morning, customers stream into the little white shack, coolers in hand, asking about the state of things, offering their support.

“How’s the fight going?” one man asks.

“Pretty good,” says Brigid, the granddaughter of owner Kevin Lunny, as she piles oysters into bags. “We have another court case in May, and who knows what that will bring.”

“Well I hope they go in your favor,” the man says, grabbing the bags. “This seems kind of ridiculous.”

“If anything was to go wrong with the environment because of the business here, it would’ve done so a long time ago. Not now,” Brigid says, shrugging.

She points to the nearby road and the gas-guzzling tourists driving along it, to the ranches nearby, to the kayaking businesses that operate in the same waters. “For me, that’s not wilderness,” she says. “It’ll never be wilderness.”

Almost 40 percent of the Point Reyes National Seashore really isn’t wilderness — it’s a “pastoral zone” in Park Service parlance, set aside for agriculture. The park was established in 1962, more than 100 years after many of the ranches on these lands were first started. It was a big conservation win during a time of development, but it was still an odd one. Existing ranches were allowed to stay by selling their land to the government and leasing it back.

The Philip Burton Wilderness Act of 1976 protected more of the seashore, but was no less confusing. While the act designated much actual and “potential” wilderness in the area, it also called for the preservation of other significant land uses: “recreational, educational, historic preservation, interpretation, and scientific research opportunities as are consistent with … preservation of the natural environment.”

In addition to the cattle ranches, there was also an oyster farm in these waters when the park was established — it had been there for almost 30 years. In 1972, the federal government bought out the Johnson’s Oyster Farm, offering a 40-year lease and a “conditional use” permit. But before that lease ran out, in 2004, Point Reyes rancher Kevin Lunny purchased the farm, expanded oyster cultivation to the other small bays in the estuary, and said he wanted to stay.

The Park Service has allowed for “non-conforming” uses in other wilderness areas — motorboats in the Grand Canyon, for example. But the Department of the Interior warned Lunny that the government was required by the 1976 act to convert the area to wilderness “as soon as the non-conforming use can be eliminated.” President Obama’s interior secretary, Ken Salazar, had the authority to extend the Lunnys’ lease, but declined, based on the 1976 “potential wilderness” designation and a controversial environmental impact study. On Dec. 4, 2012, Salazar officially deemed the estuary protected wilderness. The oyster farm would have to go.

The Lunnys sued to overturn the decision, and the farm has continued to operate these past few months thanks to an emergency injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District in San Francisco, which stated that “the balance of hardships tips sharply” in the Lunnys’ favor until the court can address “serious legal questions” about Salazar’s decision.

But it’s been the serious environmental questions swirling in the estuary that made this fight a national battle over how we use and protect public lands.

The dispute over the estuary is, in simple terms, a dispute over the Drakes Bay Oyster Company’s expired lease. But that doesn’t account for the cultural, philosophical, and scientific issues at play in Drakes Bay.

The Lunnys and their supporters contend that the oyster operation is completely sustainable and that the bivalves even help filter the estuary’s waters. Moreover, they say that Salazar, who recently left his post at Interior, had an “obsession” with getting rid of the farm. “In their obsession to eliminate the oyster farm, [Interior Department officials] abused the law, the facts, the science — and especially the oyster farm, its employees, and their families,” their lawsuit reads.

“Closing the Oyster Farm would have a broad, negative and immediate impact, on the local economy and the sustainable agriculture and food industry in the San Francisco Bay Area,” the farm’s supporters wrote to the court in March, adding that advocates for Drakes closure are “stuck in an archaic and discredited preservationist paradigm.”

Local biologist Phyllis Faber said the California Coastal Commission “has ‘lost its way’” in working with the National Park Service to remove the farm. “It has engaged in an inexplicable campaign — exceeding its charter — to bureaucratically smother — to drive out of business — a working family farm.”

“I’m not going to say that it makes no impact at all,” says Brigid Lunny, leaning against the counter, oyster knife in hand. “But having these buildings torn down seems like more of an impact than just leaving them, you know?” When she talks about the hypothetical end of the farm, she tears up. “We’re a good family; we’re stewards of the land.”

This kind of talk rankles Amy Trainer, executive director of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.

“Not only is this operation wholly incompatible with wilderness, to say it’s sustainable is just a joke,” says Trainer, pointing to a bevy of charges against the farm, from non-native oysters choking protected eelgrass, to motorboats running seals off the shoreline, to farm waste dumped in the estuary. “I think those claims are hollow, and it does a real serious injustice to the number of truly great sustainable agricultural operations in Marin.”

From the conservationists’ perspective, this isn’t about food versus wilderness — it’s about a business versus the people.

“Every piece of land can’t be everything to everyone. That’s not what national parks were created for,” says Neal Desai, associate director of the National Parks Conservation Association’s Pacific regional office. “We can grow oysters elsewhere. But we can’t have another place to protect the marine wilderness.”

“There’s no question that the environmentally preferred alternative for this area is for it to be restored to wilderness,” Trainer tells me. “Get the 19 million non-native oysters out. Get the pressure-treated wood racks out. Get all the plastic bags out. Stop the motorized boat trips. Stop the disturbance of harbor seals. Stop all these adverse impacts.”

Two blocks from Trainer’s office, a storefront window proudly displays this bumper sticker.

For nearly 10 years, each side in this debate has thrown whatever it can at the other. Every environmental impact report, every scientific study, and every claim has been debated. The National Park Service itself reprimanded some of its own scientists for biased and even false reporting aimed at booting the farm.

But as nasty as the local fight got, no one expected the conservative D.C. political machine to jump into the Drakes fray.

In late 2012, the relatively new government watchdog group Cause of Action offered pro bono legal assistance to the Lunnys. Cause of Action says it is nonpartisan, though critics point to the fact that the executive director formerly worked with the Koch brothers. (The group’s donor list is secret.)

“We have an interest in exposing how the Department of the Interior used taxpayer dollars to purposefully misrepresent science in an effort to harm an existing small business,” says Cause of Action spokesperson Mary Beth Hutchins.

Other support has been even more problematic. Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana recently tacked a proposal to extend the farm’s lease to a bill that would expedite the Keystone XL pipeline and oil drilling in Alaska. The Lunnys have readily accepted Cause of Action’s assistance — hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal aid help — but have distanced themselves from Vitter’s bill, emphasizing their ethos of sustainability.

Conservationists, though, see a slippery slope: Let the farm stay on the public lands, and that could give legal precedent next time for an oil company. “It’s been very interesting to see the company that this business is keeping in trying to achieve its agenda,” says Trainer. “Their agenda is clearly free-market fundamentalism — open up public land, anti-regulation, anti-restrictions on use of public property.”

There are multiple outstanding lawsuits seeking to save the farm, with the first set to be heard in court beginning May 14. This battle could rage all year, and beyond — enough time for the Lunnys to grow another crop of oysters.

But regardless of whether this oyster farm goes, the Point Reyes National Seashore will not ever really be wilderness — the pastoral lands are here to stay. When Salazar decided to give Drakes Bay Oyster Company the boot, he also extended all ranching leases from 10 to 20 years. Conservationists point to the powerful shellfish lobby that’s rallied to save the oyster farm, but the big agriculture muscle here is clearly in the cows.

One-quarter of the county’s cattle live on this land, overrunning the park trails. Standing water pools that reach down into the mudflats are full of acid-green algae. Runoff from the cliffs above flows down onto the beaches in slimy green trickles.

“If the ranching has impacts, those should be managed to the extent possible,” says Desai, with the National Parks Conservation Association. “Can more be done? I’m sure. Has this actually been addressed? Probably not. The park has been focused on this oyster farm issue.”

The park has been focused on other threats, too — far greater ones. “Rising sea levels impelled by melting glaciers and polar icecaps will likely dramatically change this coastal park’s environment upon which animals have come to rely and humans come to enjoy,” reads the park’s mission statement on climate change. This is the horrific future fate against which both sides of this battle are ostensibly trying to hedge. If we stand to lose it all, maybe we should build that tall fence — but how much does it matter if we save it but can only appreciate it from distance?

The green movement is arguably bigger and more diverse than ever, and our wild places and arable lands are fewer and further between. The battle for Drakes Bay might be a small one, but it could be indicative of how these fights will continue to play out on public lands, from now until this estuary has slipped under the rising tides.

Correction: This article originally misspelled Brigid Lunny’s name. We’ve fixed the error.

A slew of bills currently in front of state legislatures around the country aims to make it a crime to document what goes on behind slaughterhouse doors. But these bills themselves may be a blessing in disguise for animal rights activists.

Take the example of Wyoming, where a proposed bill recently dropped like a pesticide-poisoned honeybee. The bill would have made any recording illegal without permission from the facility owner, with a penalty of six months in jail and a $750 fine. Pushed by a Republican rancher, Wyoming House Bill 126 seemed set to pass the state senate.

That is, until “PETA had Bob Barker come out against it and it got a lot of media attention,” Green is the New Red journalist Will Potter explains. “Bob Barker saves the day.”

Potter and activist Andy Stepanian have been two of the most outspoken voices against ag-gag bills. When several bills made their way to state legislatures last year, “the threat was clear and real,” Potter says. A domino effect seemed impending: If farm-friendly legislators could push these bills through in Missouri and Utah, what might happen nationwide?

“Each one of these pieces of ‘model legislation’ is seeing just how far they could push the envelope,” says Stepanian. “‘We have case law on record in this state, why don’t you do the same thing in your state?’ In time it chips away at our democratic freedoms.”

But ultimately — oddly enough — both Potter and Stepanian aren’t worried. Sure, if they passed, these laws would be a gut shot to the animal protection movement. But in becoming a national news story, ag-gags may have backfired instead. Every time a publication covers farm protection proposals, it uses the horrible images of abuse that investigators have dug up. That has made these stories a great way for activists to spread their message. And it has made Potter and Stepanian downright optimistic.

Yeah, seriously.

“It’s unbelievable how this issue has brought together so many different groups: unions, civil liberties groups, environmentalists, animal protection groups. And all those people are in the same rooms, signing on to the same letters, and voicing the same concerns,” says Potter.

“We have to make sure we don’t let ourselves get bogged down with constantly focusing on the fact that we’re being repressed. They’re repressing us because we’re effective,” says Stepanian.

Recently an ag-gag bill died in California, while bills in Arkansas and Tennessee inched closer to approval. No matter, according to Potter and Stepanian — activists still won. In mobilizing to address a common enemy, activists have forged unlikely but powerful alliances.

“There’s no way these bills are going to stand up to public scrutiny or legal challenges. And in the meantime, I think all movements seem to be responding very forcefully rather than being afraid of this,” says Potter. “Ag-gag bills have already backfired in terms of the massive outcry of public opposition. And if they go through I think they’ll also backfire in motivating people to do undercover investigations on their own, motivating people to get active in a wide variety of ways, and really invigorating a movement that feels like they’re being censored.”

With so many ag-gags defeated in recent years, activists have reason to be optimistic. But even in some states that have defeated ag-gags, the bills keep returning for another shot. In rallying the opposition, these bills may be the biggest thing to happen to the animal protection movement in recent memory, but they may also prove to be the movement’s biggest test.

“Farm protection” or “ag-gag” laws aim to outlaw the kinds of undercover investigations that have resulted in massive meat recalls, plant closures, and even criminal charges.

Specifically, they’re designed to deter the kind of work done by people like Lindsay.

For two years Lindsay (not her real name) has worked for a national animal advocacy nonprofit that sends investigators to take jobs at farms and slaughterhouses across the country, each for a few weeks at a time, in an effort to root out abuses.

“I use a hidden camera to film the day-to-day activities in these facilities while I am there working. I take detailed notes on what I witness and document,” she tells me. “With such minimal [government] oversight, these industries are pretty much left to police themselves, so it’s not uncommon to find acts of abuse or negligent behavior that may violate state or federal laws.”

When Lindsay works on one of these farms, she acts like any other employee — except for the secret documentation part. Under a slew of existing and proposed ag-gag laws, Lindsay would be committing at least two crimes: fraudulent employment and secret filming. “I do not work in the states that have passed ag-gag laws already, nor do any other investigators I know,” she says. “These laws are clearly intended to stop investigations like the ones that I do, and they in fact have that effect. It feels like a desperate move by industrialized agriculture.”

Desperate or not, industrialized agriculture is certainly aware of the impact of Lindsay’s work. Videos like the ones she records have taken down whole companies and spurred the prosecution of many abusers. They have also taken a bite out of Americans’ appetite for meat. A 2010 Kansas State University study [PDF] found that, “As a whole, media attention to animal welfare has significant, negative effects on U.S. meat demand.”

Ag-gag laws are a direct and calculated response to all this. Emily Meredith, communications director for the Animal Agriculture Alliance, a nonprofit industry advocacy group, admits that clandestine video has been “very effective” for advocacy organizations over the last 10 years.

“I’m not gonna deny that there are bad apples just like there are in every industry,”  Meredith says. “But the majority of farm families do the right thing every day. These videos are really an unfair portrayal of the industry as a whole.”

Meredith says activist videos are edited and manipulated to appear more damning in an effort to promote a “vegan agenda” by any means necessary — even using legal practices, such as piglet castration, to shore up allegations of illegal abuse. “Those tactics have become very popular and successful for the activist community in their fundraising efforts and in spreading misinformation about the industry,” she says.

As Meredith sees it, farm protection bills are a reasonable response to such an onslaught. Plus, by giving secret filmers a small window of time to turn their damning footage over to law enforcement, the laws should please everyone, right?

“[Activists] are trying to promote this legislation as ‘gagging’ when in fact all the legislation mandates that you report the abuse, which really goes to the heart of the issue,” Meredith says. “If you really cared about animal welfare would you even wait a second to report animal abuse? In my mind you wouldn’t be waiting at all.”

Lindsay and other activists argue that these investigations often require several weeks of documentation to establish patterns of abuse or criminality. And either way, they would be criminalized under many of the laws, regardless of whether or not they turned over their footage to law enforcement. As for publicizing legal practices like piglet castration, they say that while these practices may be legal, that doesn’t mean the public is comfortable with thinking about what sorts of pain their dinner may have endured.

“As larger numbers of people see these investigation videos, we are seeing major shifts,” says Lindsay. “People are demanding companies change their practices or they are moving away from animal products altogether.”

It’s obviously not what the meat industry wants to hear. “I think where this legislation is being introduced, the legislators in those states recognize that agriculture plays an important role in our national economy and in their state economy,” says Meredith. “They respect what these farm families are doing every day and they recognize how important it is to preserve their way of life and their family businesses.”

Meredith is optimistic that farm protection or ag-gag laws will “probably strongly deter” activists like Lindsay.

Lindsay doesn’t think that’s such a good thing: “The fact that the industry is going to such great lengths to prevent people from seeing what happens on farms and at slaughterhouses further proves that they have something to hide.”