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Animal rights activists have been protesting outside the Sherwood home of Tim Baugus since April. Baugus works for Skanska, a construction company with the contract to build an animal research facility at University of Washington, though he is not involved in the project. (Photos courtesy of Tim Baugus)

On Easter day, along a quiet residential street in Sherwood, a group of 15 or 20 protesters began yelling about blood money and animal torture.

They chanted into bullhorns, carried signs, left messages in chalk, and directed their ire at Tim Baugus, a senior vice president with Skanska USA.

Skanska, a development and construction company based in Sweden, is building an animal research facility at the University of Washington, and a group called No New Animal Lab wants it stopped.

To be clear, the protesters' message is protected speech. But the manner in which they project it? That's up for debate.

No New Animal Lab activists are picketing outside the offices and homes of Skanska USA employees around the country as a way to pressure the company to back out of the contract. Tim works out of Skanska's Portland office, and isn't involved in the University of Washington project.

Yet protesters have targeted the Baugus home eight times since April. Between seven and 30 protesters arrive, often between 10 and 11 p.m. They carpool to a nearby park, walk over to the Baugus house, and yell into bullhorns for 15 to 20 minutes at a time.

"Animal testing is a lie. How many animals have to die?" they chant in one video recorded by the Bauguses. "We'll never back down until you stop the killing" they scream.

On Halloween, activists came onto the Bauguses' property, toilet papering the family's cars and lawn. They placed mutilated stuffed animals, doused in fake blood, along the hedge with a banner that read "Skanska House of Horrors."

"It's so shocking and so foolish, you're just dumbfounded," said Tim's wife Lori.

And yet, it's also frightening. No New Animal Lab has published the Bauguses' address and a map to their home. The family has received hate mail from across the country.

"Our biggest concern is that we're going to get somebody that is a complete radical coming to the house and really, actually doing harm," Tim said.

I met last week with Tim, Lori, and their two nearly grown children who live at home. They have a beautiful property, one of those 100-year-old farmhouse lots that's shaded from the street by trees and shrubs but doesn't have a fence.

Until recently, they didn't need one.

Police have responded to each protest, but so far haven't issued citations. Capt. Ty Hanlon said Sherwood's existing noise ordinance was "vague and ambiguous to the point that it made it difficult for us to cite."

Last week, the Sherwood City Council refined its noise ordinance and passed a new law banning picketing in front of any single home. It doesn't block all residential picketing - protesters could still march up and down the block.

In creating the ordinance, the city turned to a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Frisby vs Schultz, that dealt with anti-abortion protesters who parked themselves in front of a Wisconsin doctor's home. The court ruled a city could ban picketing in front of a specific residence if the ban was "content neutral" and didn't attempt to limit certain types of speech. Unlike protests in front of a business, courts have granted more privacy rights around the home. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote, "There simply is no right to force speech into the home of an unwilling listener."

The activists might have more people see and hear their message if they move through the neighborhood, but that doesn't appear to be the objective. They protest at night; hold signs in the dark. The purpose seems to be to intimidate the Baugus family. Video shows one of their chants: "If you want some peace and rest, cut your ties with animal tests."

"Every tactic they use is a terror tactic," Lori said. "Terrorists want to intimidate, they want to scare, the very definition of a terrorist is to cause terror in you so they get their will."

No New Animal Lab is affiliated with the Washington state nonprofit Don't Expand UW Primate Testing. The director of that group is Amanda Schemkes, an attorney with the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Eugene. I reached her briefly by phone, but she said her group preferred to respond via an email from the No New Animal Lab account.

I asked why they used these tactics. Do they have empathy for the families affected? Do they really expect to stop construction mid-way through?

The response I got was an unsigned list of talking points, explaining that the protests were "a direct avenue to challenge corporate power, greed, and abuse."

I did find an episode of a vegan-themed podcast called "Which Side" in which Amanda and another activist, Justin Kay, spoke about No New Animal Lab's "pressure campaign" against vivisection - surgery conducted on live animals - more candidly.

"I'm tired of asking people to make changes, and we don't have time for that," Amanda said. "And I like that with pressure campaigns it's forcing change to happen."

Targeting Skanska - which has offices across North America and Europe - rather than the University helps No New Animal Lab build a network of activists in major cities.

"Skanska gave us a unique way to be able to protest university research because it's a corporation that has offices all over the country as well as around the world," Amanda said in the interview. "So we can also start to plug in the network that we're wanting to build."

Justin agreed, saying "it's not that vivisection stands out as the most egregious form of animal exploitation, it's that it's an industry where we can exercise this kind of campaign model."

The language in No New Animal Lab releases is telling, because it's about targeting "corporate executives," not families in their homes. And Sherwood's new picketing ordinance is the city "bow[ing] to corporate interests," not responding to neighbors who don't feel safe.

In the podcast, which aired in mid-October, Amanda said No New Animal Lab was "encouraging office and home demos and whatever other mischief people want to engage in for celebrating Halloween with the campaign."

So for Amanda and Justin, this is a home demo campaign.

For Tim, Lori and their children, it's terrorism.

Samantha Swindler writes about life and news in Washington County and the communities that ring Portland. Her column appears Wednesdays and Fridays in The Oregonian and on OregonLive.