State of the Animal Rights Movement
by Kim W. Stallwood
The Summit for the Animals is an annual, two-day informal meeting of the
CEOs of national animal advocacy organizations. The agenda for each Summit
is determined by the Summit's executive committee and this committee is
comprised of nominated representatives from the meeting. The Summit meets
in different parts of the U.S. each year and representatives from the
local organizations active in that particular region are invited to
attend.
At its recent meeting in St. Louis, MO, April 6-8, the editors of The
Animals' Agenda, Animal People, and The Animals' Voice were invited to
make presentations about the state of the movement and the role of the
Summit. Jeri Lerner and Laura Moretti of The Animals' Voice were unable to
attend the meeting. Merritt Clifton from Animal People has already posted
his speech on AR News. I delayed posting my speech for two reasons: (1) to
help facilitate an open and honest exchange of views at the Summit, all
discussions are confidential; members of the Summit committee recently
clarified for me the position that presentations made at the meeting are
not considered confidential, and (2) immediately after the Summit I was
preoccupied with preparing to leave the U.S. for the "Animal Rights View
of England" tour with 14 activists from 10 states. I will be posting
shortly a report on that trip. Now, therefore, I post the text of my
presentation.
My recent trip to England has strengthened my resolve that our movement
in the U.S. will not succeed in making legislative gains for animals until
we have succeeded in establishing animal advocacy as a mainstream
political issue.
State of the Movement and the Role of the Summit for the
AnimalsPresentation made by Kim W. Stallwood, editor in chief, The
Animals' Agenda, at the Summit for the Animals, St. Louis, MO, April
1995.
Forty-seven percent of the respondents to a national poll conducted by
the Los Angeles Times in December 1993 said that animals "are just like
humans in all important ways." In view of this charitable spirit, one is
tempted to ask why membership in the animal rights movement is not larger
than it is. There are, according to the Census Bureau, 204 million persons
21 years of age or older in the United States. Forty-seven percent of 204
million is 96 million people who believe that animals "are like humans in
all important ways." There are, according to the generous but self-serving
estimates of our opponents outside the movement, 20 million people in the
animal rights congregation. Where, then, are the other 76 million people
who said that animals "are just like humans in all important ways"?
Perhaps some of them think--as Groucho Marx is reputed to have said--"I
wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." But
might it also be that some fledgling animal advocates, looking at the
animal rights movement and its leaders, say to themselves, "I wouldn't
want to belong to any movement that would have those people as members"?
As salaried employees and directors of not-for-profit animal advocacy
organizations we are entrusted with our donor's funds to complete
successfully our organizations' missions. This is a preeminent
responsibility. Every action we take and every word we speak demonstrates
our leadership ability--or our lack of it.
Unfortunately, we are exhibiting more lack than luster at present. To
be sure, we are currently experiencing a crisis in leadership at both the
local and the national levels of our movement. This leadership crisis
manifests itself in our inability to articulate a long-term plan to
accomplish specific objectives. And even if we could articulate a
long-term strategy, I suspect that our leadership crisis disqualifies us
from being able to discuss it, for virtually every discussion about our
movement's future degenerates into a battle over egos and organizational
turf.
Success in the animal rights movement is not a question of deciding
which is a more effective vehicle for change: a national society or a
local organization. They are both essential.
Success is not a question of competition between national organizations
and grassroots groups. Each has a responsibility to help the other. Nor is
success a question of whether incremental measures that improve the
welfare of animals are inimical to the preferred goal of abolition based
on the rights of animals. No one has ever proven that a small step
obviates a larger one.
Success in animal rights is, however, a question of the mind-numbing
quantities of individual animals whose suffering cries out to us. In order
to hear those cries more clearly, we must reject the artificial
constructions that divide our movement. We must unite around a long-term
strategy that balances our utopian vision with pragmatic politics.
Instead of cluttering electronic bulletin boards with personal
vendettas, animal advocates should be discussing real issues about our
movement and about the way in which our movement interacts with society. I
am not saying that we should tip toe away from disagreements. It is
healthy to have an exchange of views, but debates must be carried out in a
respectful and meaningful way. We must not permit disagreement to divide
us. Nor must we mislabel a respect for civility in discourse as
censorship.
Our single concern for animals must outweigh at all times any dispute
constructed on ideology, strategy, funding, egos, and organizational turf.
I am frequently at a loss to understanding why a humane movement based on
ethics and the rights of the individual can be so inhumane to its own
members. It is true that we are accountable to our boards and to the harsh
realities of our annual fundraising campaigns, but we are ultimately
accountable to the animals and to those individuals and those foundations
who make possible our programs and who pay our salaries.
Ken Shapiro, the president of the board of directors of The Animal
Rights Network, Inc., which publishes The Animals' Agenda, describes
animal advocates as "caring sleuths"--a hybrid of Mother Teresa and
Sherlock Holmes. As caring sleuths we see the invisible animal suffering.
We not only see animal suffering, we also seek it out; and as we seek out
the invisible animal suffering, it permeates our lives and influences how
we live and what we think. We are outraged that others cannot see what is
clearly visible to us. We become the unwelcome guest who points out that
the food the host is serving was once a living individual.
During the last twenty years or so the animal rights movement was
society's unwelcome guest. Nevertheless, we fought hard to be noticed and
to be heard. There is no denying that progress has been made, albeit
painfully slow and pitifully meager at times. The good news is that animal
rights has arrived and is now being recognized. We have become the
vegetarian guest for whom the host must cater. Our next goal is to
persuade the host to prepare a vegetarian dinner for all the guests. And
then for the host to become vegetarian and, eventually, vegan.
All the talk and the theorizing notwithstanding, there is one
inescapable conclusion about leadership: It ultimately consists of
actions, not positions. A supreme illustration of this fact is a campaign
that took the lead in establishing animal protection as a legitimate
political issue in Great Britain.
This campaign, which was called "Putting Animals into Politics," was
launched in 1977 by the General Election Coordinating Committee for Animal
Protection. Better known as GECCAP, this committee consisted of individual
animal rights experts and representatives from national animal protection
groups. Its founding members included the League Against Cruel Sports and
Compassion In World Farming.
Before I describe that campaign, let me say that one of the roles I
envision for the Summit for the Animals is the fostering of dialog that
would inspire animal rights groups in this country to cooperate in a
similar campaign.
GECCAP's platform comprised a general mission statement, the
identification of four areas of concern (companion animals, farm animals,
laboratory animals, and wildlife), and a list of goals (abolishing the
battery cage, banning the use of dogs for hunting, halting the live export
of food animals, and so forth).
Before the GECCAP campaign, the political status of animals in Great
Britain was much the same as the political status of animals in the United
States today--rather hopeless and undeniably third-class. The political
parties in Great Britain--both the major and the minor parties--ignored
the plight of animals and the protestations of those concerned about that
plight. The people who help to direct the GECCAP campaign, myself
included, felt that it was time the political parties listened to the
people who were speaking out on behalf of animals. Therefore, we launched
a campaign that was based on two simple premises:
-
political candidates and elected representatives care about votes
and campaign contributions;
-
political candidates and elected representatives will care about
animal rights when they are linked to votes and campaign contributions.
Proceeding from these assumptions, the animal rights movement in
the UK succeeded in demonstrating a significant fact to the three major
political parties: A sufficient number of voters would be influenced by a
party's or a candidate's position on animal rights--and by a party's or a
candidate's track record on animal rights issues.
During the 1979 and the 1983 general elections, GECCAP's platform was
advanced by committee members, who attended the political parties' annual
conventions and lobbied for its adoption. GECCAP members attended the
annual conventions in nonelection years, too. Committee members also
worked with representatives from local animal rights organizations who
promoted the animal protection platform in the various parliamentary
constituencies.
GECCAP's approach combined national and local action focused on the
same program. This program was nonpartisan, and although its ultimate
goals were abolitionist, no positive action for animals was derided--or
worse yet, rejected--because it was considered unworthy of some
philosophically or politically correct theory. We concerned ourselves with
the real world, for that is the world in which animals suffer. As a
result, the major political parties accepted animal protection as a
legitimate political issue, one that was included in their manifestos for
the first time. This acceptance came about after GECCAP had convinced
politicians that their positions regarding animals could gain or could
lose them votes.
In the 18 years since the original election committee was formed, other
coalitions have carried on its work and have further established animal
protection as a political issue. Consequently, veal crates are now banned
in England, the single-sow stall will become illegal in 1999, many county
and town councils have banned not only hunting with dogs but also circuses
with performing animal acts from their land. The British county is the
equivalent of a state in this country. All of these issues were included
in GECCAP's original platform. [A footnote: I've just learned that at a
recent conference in the U.K. organized by the Royal Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals a reputed pollster reported that
according to their research animal protection determined the election
results in 25 marginal constituencies.]
Today's primary focus of the League Against Cruel Sports is to pass
legislation to outlaw hunting. As many of you know, Britain's House of
Commons successfully passed the second reading of a bill to outlaw
hunting. This legislation is a private-members bill which means it is not
a government-sponsored bill. Consequently, it is unlikely that this bill
will become law because the Conservative government does not support the
abolition of hunting. It is possible, however, that Labour will form the
next government. It will then be the League's task to pressure the Labour
Party to implement it's long-standing manifesto commitment to abolish
hunting.
Today's primary focus of Compassion In World Farming is to outlaw the
live export of food animals from Britain to the European mainland. There
has been unprecedented public outrage and media coverage on this issue.
People who would never identify themselves as animal rights activists have
been joining demonstrations at the ports that permit the trade.
The abolition of hunting and the ban on the live export of food animals
were part of GECCAP's original campaign that targeted the 1979 general
election. The League Against Cruel Sports and Compassion In World Farming
have remained focused on these issues for the last sixteen years. There
are tremendous obstacles that both groups must still overcome, but their
tenacity ensures their eventual success.
When I came to the United States in 1987 to become PETA's first
executive director, I brought the memory of the
putting-animals-into-politics campaign with me. The more I learned about
the political climate in this country, both outside and inside the animal
rights movement, the more I became convinced that a similar effort was
needed here. Other obligations, however, prevented me from advocating the
adoption of that effort until recently.
After I had become editor in chief of The Animals' Agenda, I defined
its mission as "informing people about animal rights and cruelty-free
living for the purpose of inspiring action for animals." Among the most
important groups we need to inform about animal rights and cruelty-free
living are the groups that comprise this nation's elected officials at the
federal, state, and local levels. Toward that end, I have urged the
formation of a professional association of animal advocacy groups that
would represent the animal rights movement by presenting a united voice
for animals. This group, modeled after GECCAP, would articulate a clearly
defined animal rights mission; it would incorporate a legislative and
public education program that would amplify the voice of the animal rights
movement to the public, the media, and local, state, and federal
lawmakers; it would establish a network for sharing expertise and
resources; it would promote codes of professional conduct and ethics; and
it would provide a framework for mediating disagreements between
individual animal rights groups. Members of this umbrella group would
continue to operate as individual organizations, but by its very existence
it would emphasize the unity, and hence the strength, of the animal rights
movement.
Given the increasing public support for our issues and the changing
political fortunes in American politics--and the worsening tenor of the
debate in some pockets of the animal rights movement--I believe more than
ever that those of us who are willing to work cooperatively on behalf of
animals must take the lead in forming a group such as GECCAP. Like GECCAP,
this group must combine utopian visions and pragmatic politics, for only
through the pursuit of such a strategy can the animal rights movement
succeed in challenging the cultural, political, and scientific assumptions
of speciesism on which animal abuse is predicated. The successful
implementation of a strategy of utopian visions and pragmatic politics
will achieve two goals. First, the community of [human] equals will be
extended to include all nonhuman animals. Second, nonhuman animals will be
accorded under the law the right to life, the protection of individual
liberty, and the prohibition of torture. Unless these goals are achieved,
the animal rights movement will slip from the forefront of this country's
movements for equality and will become, instead, a sad and desolate
footnote in the history of our times.
I thank the committee once again for inviting me to speak. I hope my
comments this morning have given this audience something to think about.
These days, the more I read--and certainly the more I try to write--the
more I appreciate Voltaire's comment, "Language is a difficult thing to
put into words." It is also a most difficult thing to put into action.
Thank you.
Kim W. Stallwood
Editor in Chief
The Animals' Agenda
3201
Elliott Street
P.O. Box 25881
Baltimore, MD 21224, U.S.A.
Tel: (410) 675-4566; Fax: (410) 675-0066;
E-mail:
75543.3331@compuserve.com
May 1, 1995
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