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Response from Karen Dawn to HSUS's Response
(below) to the NAALPO's
critique of HSUS
September 2, 2005
According to the press, Pim Fortuyn was a popular rising politician. Time
Magazine wrote, "Polls before his death predicted that Fortuyn would attract
about 17% of the vote, enough to make him a major player in forming a new
government." Before his death at the hands of Volkert van der Graaf,
Fortuyn had noted his commitment to reinstating all fur farming. The piece
by Wayne Pacelle and J.P. Goodwin says that "the shooter also lodged a
bullet in the heart of the anti-fur campaign." I had not read that the Dutch
bans on fur farming were lifted after his death, as Fortuyn had intended if
he lived, or that what was left of the Dutch fur industry had done a sudden
rebound since his death in any way that was not commensurate with the growth
of that industry elsewhere. In fact, my general impression is that fur is
rebounding at an alarming rate in other countries, where no violent
activists have shot anybody. If people on this list have other information,
perhaps you could respond privately, in order to take what is turning into a
discussion off this news only list.
Please note that I am not in any way supporting murder as a tactic, just
trying to get the facts straight and determine if the situation is being
fairly represented.
-----Original Message-----
September 02, 2005
Critique of Movement Tactics
In response to the NAALFPO's attack on other segments
of the movement that don't agree with arsons or
violence, I thought it important to provide some
perspective.
Below is a piece I proudly co-authored with Wayne
Pacelle. It explains why arsons, bombings and other
acts of violence are morally wrong, and ultimately
backfire.
Hopefully my posting of this essay can provide
perspective as to why the NAALFPO feels it necessary
to act attack another group for the supposed crime of
criticizing certain behavior.
---
Looking at the Bigger Picture: Violence, Change, and
Public Opinion
By Wayne Pacelle and J.P. Goodwin
Throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s, activists in
Holland had organized one of the world’s most
effective anti-fur campaigns. Domestic fur sales
shrank 90 percent, with 105 of the nation’s 125 fur
stores closing by 1999. Legislators banned fox and
chinchilla fur farming, and were taking a serious look
at outlawing mink ranches—which produced a staggering
10 percent of the world’s mink pelts.
In 2002, an animal rights campaigner assassinated Pim
Fortuyn, the leader of a marginal right-wing political
organization that had been outspoken in its sympathy
for fur ranching. Though he later claimed he targeted
Fortuyn because of his anti-immigration policies, the
shooter also lodged a bullet in the heart of the
anti-fur campaign. Fortyn’s assassination prompted a
wave of sympathy votes for his party in a national
election, resulting in the seating of more of his
followers in parliament than ever before. In a more
lasting sense, the assassin’s action caused average
citizens to associate animal activists with extremism
and violence—diminishing sympathy for the goals of the
movement and calling into question the judgment and
character of its adherents.
Fortunately, no animal advocates have chosen murder as
a political tactic here in the United States. Yet,
there has been a ratcheting up of rhetoric, and a slew
of illegal acts by self-proclaimed animal activists
who operate under the mantra "by any means necessary."
This brand of activism will only retard, not hasten,
progress for animals.
Take the case of the anti-cruelty ballot initiative
campaign in Arkansas in 2002. The proposed initiative
would have made certain acts of animal cruelty,
including cockfighting, a felony offense—not a small
matter in a state with more than 400 "farms" raising
tens of thousands of gamecocks for deadly fights.
Early polling showed support for the initiative at
around 80 percent. After volunteers gathered 80,000
signatures to place the measure on the November 2002
ballot, its enactment seemed inevitable.
Prior to the launch of the initiative and continuing
throughout the signature gathering campaign, however,
some animal activists had mounted a high-profile
effort targeting a Little Rock-based corporation
called Stephens, Inc., which had multiple business
holdings, including an investment company and several
television and newspaper outlets throughout Arkansas.
The campaign—dubbed Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
(SHAC)—centered on forcing Stephens, Inc. to divest
its resources from Huntingdon Laboratories, which in
the United Kingdom had been charged by animal
activists with torturing dogs in needless experiments.
The SHAC campaign involved the application of pressure
by legitimate means such as letter writing, phone
calls, demonstrations, and media exposure, but it went
much further. Campaigners obtained credit card numbers
of the executives of Stephens, Inc., and ran up tens
of thousands of dollars in purchases. They also
vandalized company property, harassed executives at
their homes, threatened them, and destroyed their
private property. All of this activity attracted
enormous press attention—in a state where one of every
two people holds a hunting or fishing license and
where agriculture is the dominant industry.
During the election, the Arkansas Farm Bureau and
other campaigners against the anti-cruelty initiative
reminded voters about the "radical" views and tactics
of animal advocates, exploiting the climate of anger
related to the SHAC campaign. Aggrieved by the
personal attacks on it, the Stephens family put tens
of thousands of dollars into the opposition campaign.
On election day, voters rejected the initiative, with
62 percent casting ballots against it. In neighboring
Oklahoma, however, voters handily approved a ballot
initiative to make cockfighting a felony. And also in
the South, Florida voters approved a ban on keeping
sows in gestation crates. There were no comparable
SHAC campaigns in either state.
Experienced campaigners know that winning reforms is
tough, even when the stars are aligned in our favor.
When people within our movement pursue tactics that
are viewed as far outside what’s generally acceptable,
and in fact deploy behaviors that conflict with the
basic tenets of respect and compassion that animate
our movement, it hurts us all; effecting change
becomes even more complicated and difficult.
Some in our movement consider illegal actions heroic.
Indeed, there is some courage involved in breaking the
law and putting one’s freedom at risk. But when
individuals resort to property destruction, arson, and
intimidation, we think more of hopelessness than
heroism. Only people who feel impotent and
marginalized resort to vandalism and threats as a
means of social change.
As a practical matter, it is naiïve to think that
multi-million and billion dollar industries will be
toppled by sporadic acts of vandalism and
intimidation. These companies are large and powerful,
and they can easily sustain broken windows, destroyed
equipment, and spray-painted slogans on their walls.
In fact, the smartest of these targeted companies
leverage these incidents to position themselves and
shape public opinion to protect their interests. The
companies that harm animals on a daily basis cast
themselves as victims. By engaging in these acts, our
movement cedes them the moral authority. And often, in
the end, the animals are removed from the picture,
while the illegal tactics are imprinted in the
public’s minds.
In some cases, sophisticated industries will use these
incidents to try to stifle legitimate dissent. Take
the case now of the bills advanced in state
legislatures at the behest of factory farmers and
other animal-use industries that seek to criminalize
even the taking of photographs on private property.
We must have confidence in our ideas. We have to
believe that our ideas can transform individuals and
institutions. This isn’t wishful thinking. The signs
of positive change for animal protection abound in our
culture. Public attitude surveys demonstrate that a
majority of Americans oppose intensive confinement of
animals on factory farms, oppose the use of steel
jawed leghold traps, and oppose painful and
duplicative animal tests, to give but a few examples.
There is no question that the work of social change,
especially for animals, is arduous and that the road
is long. Of course, we are frustrated that the pace of
change is not quicker. And, yes, it is exasperating to
see both the indifference of average Americans and the
strength of corporations that abuse animals.
But there is no shortcut to lasting and meaningful
social change. Civil rights activists and women’s
rights activists fought hard for decades and they
effected real change by working within the system. Gay
and lesbian activists are now achieving enormous
success through political organizing and basic
education; almost overnight, their issues have been
incorporated into television scripts for millions to
see and hear, and their issues have been injected into
the center of the national political debate, when just
a few years ago elected officials considered the
subject radioactive.
For animal activists, meaningful change on factory
farming, animal testing, sport hunting, and other
issues can only be achieved by diligent grassroots
organizing, active recruitment and education, and
clever and ethical campaigning. During the last 12
years, voters have approved 15 statewide ballot
initiatives to protect animals—including bans on cruel
traps in five states, hound hunting in four states,
cockfighting in three states, horse slaughter in one
state, and gestation crates in one state. It occurred
after thousands of activists gathered hundreds of
thousands, even millions, of signatures. During the
last five years, the torrent of calls and letters
generated by animal activists prompted Congress to
pass 15 new laws to protect animals. And major fast
food corporations, such as McDonald’s and Burger King,
have acknowledged for the first time ever that animals
matter and that they are taking preliminary steps to
provide humane treatment of farm animals.
It is a romantic ideal to think we can break down all
laboratory doors and knock down the walls of factory
farms today or tomorrow and free the animals. That
simply won’t happen, and to pursue that approach in
lieu of more lasting and meaningful types of activism
squanders our time, talent, and energy, and in the
process hands a strategic opportunity to our
opponents.
We can choose to use physical force and sabotage as a
means to achieve our goals—and the result will be
frustration, arrest, incarceration, and, ironically,
the strengthening of animal use institutions. Or we
can choose the path of grassroots campaigning and
organizing that every successful social movement in
recent times has pursued.
Wayne Pacelle is the President of the Humane Society
of the U.S. (www.hsus.org).
J.P. Goodwin is Deputy
Manager, Animal Fighting Issues at the Humane Society
of the U.S.
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