Now I don?t like
everything the Southern Poverty Law Center stands for or does. As the definition
of a terrorist today seems to extend to parents who home school their children,
people who value the Constitution, and anyone who smiles for more than ten
seconds straight, I am not sure I want some fellow Citizen group of mine
reporting my group?s love for the Constitution side by side with Neo-Nazis and
labeling us all troublemakers who need to be watched.
I also don?t
think the SPLC takes full responsibility for the power of the media, of which
they are a part, and how they can ?inadvertently? influence their readers with
their own bias. In example, The Intelligent Reporter wrote about a 1984
?raid at the University of Pennsylvania Head Injury Lab [that] caused $60,000 in
damage,?2 and neglected to mention the films that surfaced as a
result of this action which showed animal abuses that violated the law and
resulted in the lab being shut down and that there was no other way to get this
documentation into the public view.
The
Intelligence Report quoted Frankie Trull, President of the Foundation for
Biomedical Research, which promotes "humane and responsible" animal testing,
saying, "Their temperament [scientists] is such that they don't really fight
back. The ALF is like the bully in the schoolyard for them."3 The
same article would read very differently if the schoolyard analogy portrayed the
scientists as the snobby rich kids who do whatever they want solely thinking
about themselves and not caring about any harm they are causing, and the ALF as
the ones who believe in fighting for justice on the playground so much so that
they are willing to be suspended in defense of it. Same facts, different bias.
The SPLC said,
?By refusing to take responsibility for any actions that harm humans, the ALF
and ELF implicitly acknowledge that violence directed at people is a foreseeable
result of the tactics they promote.?3 Is that accurate? What if it
had been written, ?The ALF and ELF, value all life so much, even that of
inhumane abusers, that they have clearly written that they don?t support any
actions that harm humans?? As Joe Friday from ?Dragnet? used to say ?Just the
facts, ma?am.? I think the media needs to safeguard against writing bias as fact
to their overly trusting audience.
The siddhas, enlightened
yogis of the past and present, have known of man?s tendency to react emotionally
and therefore developed exercises to control these tendencies in order to help
them act instead of react. As I am not yet in full control of my
emotions, the most responsible action that I can offer is non-violence. This is
the yogic principle of ahimsa, that by harming none and loving all one affects
the whole collective consciousness. This is my personal bias of the truth and so
I do my best to energize love and connectiveness instead of violence and
destructiveness.
The yogis of the lineage in
which I am initiated weren?t just cave-sitters; they remained in society,
actively fighting for change using the weapons of universal love, devotion,
harmony and wisdom. In the animal rights movement, I question if calling a
person wearing a fur jacket a ?fat pig? or burning down a laboratory is acting
with this same integrity.
In March of this
year at the Grassroots Animal Rights Conference (GARC) held in New York City,
there were many good ideas shared and there was also much division into smaller
and smaller groups into which you were asked to pledge your allegiance. By the
time lunchtime rolled around, I was in such a panic as to where to sit??Is that
the vegan, white, gay section or is it the vegetarian, straight, black, feminist
section???that I took my plate and ate in a bathroom stall in order to avoid the
remote possibility of finding myself in an even smaller compartment not of my
choosing.
For me the most
interesting part of the conference was at the end, where a panel representing
many differing views discussed their take on where the animal rights movement
needed to go. A guy from the SHAC campaign, which has been notoriously
attempting to disrupt Huntington Life Sciences and their vivisection
experiments, said that while he has been a vegan for nine years, that alone is
doing nothing for animal rights. If he buys soy ice-cream, when he wouldn?t have
bought ice-cream anyway, the dairy cow over-drugged and constantly hooked up to
pumps is none the better.
A woman from
Compassion Over Killing said that almost ten billion animals per year are being
abused due to the factory farm industry and we should focus on vegan advocacy if
we want to do the most good for animals, instead of vivisection, which only
amounts to 25-50 million per year.4
Dr. Michael
Gregor ended the panel discussion asking the question, ?How many factory farms
have been shut down due to animal rights groups?? The answer was zero. ?How many
have been shut down due to environmental groups?? The answer was a startling
twenty-five. So, maybe we should dump our ?Save the Whales? baseball cap
for a ?Save the Rainforest? cap if we really want to help animals. That
is what we want, right? Sometimes, with all of the fighting amongst ourselves, I
think we forget.
All of these
different people made valid points. And I felt enriched that they were all there
to express their opinions so that I could gain the benefit of all of their
struggles, frustrations, facts and, yes, bias, to help me better clarify my own
position. I think it would have been a great loss if only one perspective was
allowed to speak, because of animal rights ?leaders? declaring a moratorium on
attending any event which features someone with whom they don?t agree.
Friends of Animals (FoA) has been around for more than forty
years helping animals. Priscilla Feral, President of FoA, has had her own issues
with the SPLC, as can be read in the correspondence letters between her and Mark
Potok on the FoA website.5 But she also heeds their concern as one of
the most respected U.S. social justice groups in their fear that the
environmental and animal advocacy movements could come to stand for violence and
intimidation before our message could be heard and understood by the general
public.The image of the
animal rights movement is shifting to one of a desperate group that has
left the peaceful negotiating table in frustration and resorted to the level of
violence and terror. If you ask the average person on the street what they think
of the animal rights movement they will probably chuckle, thinking these
activists to be low-level terrorists with a ridiculous agenda.
I remember when
I started doing demonstration with the People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals (PETA); it was usually just four or five of us handing out leaflets to
help people become more aware of the animal abuse in the fur industry. Besides
the hostility I encountered from the often infertile soil in which I was trying
to plant seeds of compassion, one of the biggest questions I kept getting was,
?Do you throw paint on people?s fur coats?? This false perception of what animal
rights entails is in large part due to our own actions, or inactions, coupled
with the media?s desire to use spin and, yes bias, to sell their own version of
the ?news.?
The Founding
Fathers of this country believed that government was inherently evil and should
be chained and handcuffed, because if it got loose there was no telling where
and what it would do, and they attempted to do so with the Constitution. A
cursory look at some of the bills being proposed in the arena of animal and
environmental activism shows that their belief was dead on, that now even
protest can be seen as terrorism when it becomes unpopular.
The ?Animal and
Ecological Terrorism Act? introduced in Texas in February 2003, promoted by the
pressure groups U.S. Sportsmen?s Alliance and American Legislative Exchange
Council, would increase penalties for organizations participating in activities
?with an intent to influence a governmental entity or the public to take a
specific action?, defining as animal rights or ecological terrorist
organizations ?[t]wo or more persons organized for the purpose of supporting any
politically motivated activity intended to obstruct or deter any person from
participating in an activity involving animals or natural resources.? The bill
would also create Internet sites similar to those which register child molesters
by name, address, and photo identification.2
Left undefined,
words such as ?influence? can range the gamut from educational leaflets to armed
resistance; ?deter? could range from speaking out against something to
kidnapping. So who is to decide where the vegan cookie will crumble? The
government? Law enforcement? Should we allow government officials to divvy out
our Constitutional rights depending on their random definitions of ?influence?
and ?deter??
This may result
in asking an already frustrated animal rights movement to rot in court trying to
reclaim their right to investigate and protest while at the same time expecting
this not to escalate into violence; that might lobotomize even my non-violent
frontal lobe. Kevin Jonas of SHAC-USA, which supports using intimidation tactics
and destruction in order to liberate animals from abuse, quoted John F. Kennedy,
"If you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution
inevitable."3
The fact that a
bill like this can be promoted, denouncing the ?intent to influence a government
entity or the public to take a specific action,? while Political Action
Committees (PAC) groups with their lobbyists buy and sell politicians every day
with the promise of financial support and votes, is ridiculous.
Shell Sullivan,
founder of an animal rights project called The Animal Spirit, said, ?I do not
resort to intimidation, for might-means-right goes against everything the animal
rights movement stands for. I do not believe the fall of the fur industry will
occur because fur wearers are attacked with paint, but because enough people
have come to the decision to stop supporting the fur industry.?6
The question is:
how are we going to get people to stop supporting the fur industry? By
suggestion? If I said, ?I believe the end of homelessness and the screwing of
the lower and middle-classes will be accomplished not by complaining about these
issues but by the rich coming to the conclusion to stop focusing solely on what
benefits them,? I might willfully submit myself to a beating from the Reality
Police. This is where a conference that contains many differing viewpoints could
help bring ideas to the table.
Different organizations, as
well as individuals, have their strengths and weaknesses. By allowing them all
to speak perhaps we can best help the animals who are sitting on the outside
asking, ?Can?t you all just get along? Well you better, because in the meantime
we?re getting killed out here!?
An animal rights lawyer may
argue that only through legislation can we make a change. A person advocating
violence may say that we can no longer sit around on our hands while animals
suffer. Some support vegan advocacy as the solution. Some target animal
experimentation. What one values is usually at odds with what another values.
But it doesn?t have to be this way.
This is a major problem not
only in the animal rights movement but in our country, and the world, as well.
Values consist of treating people and animals with respect and living honestly,
not in the worship of a savior. Freedom consists in allowing everyone the right
to voice their personal bias, and not only those whose individual orchestrations
sound pleasant to our ears. Instead of embracing our differences, we magnify
them and forget our commonality, which, in the animal rights movement, is the
protection of animals?not personal agendas. If there is a path for us in the
animal rights movement to collectively follow, let?s do so based on hearing all
the options and not by attempting to take off the invite list anyone whose
agenda is not our own. Let?s not look at this as competition, but as a way to
share, learn, and grow. A sharing of ideas does not mean that we have to agree
or acquiesce with everything we hear. But shouldn?t we allow others the
opportunity to do so if they so choose?
John Viscount Morley wrote in
On Compromise in 1874, ?You have not converted a man because you have
silenced him.?7 But the hope in the animal rights movement seems a
desperate attempt to bind and gag anyone else in the movement who has a
differing opinion and then claw your way to the top. It seems becoming, instead
of liberating, animals is the current fashion. And I thought, ?Compassion is the
Fashion,? at least that was the mantra chanted at many anti-fur demonstrations
in which I attended.
Peter Singer, a Princeton
University philosopher most famous in the animal rights movement for his
groundbreaking book first published in 1975, Animal Liberation, recently
told the Australian Herald-Sun, "We who have an affinity with non-human
animals and nature are finding it increasingly difficult to love our fellow
man."3
This is where I think we have
to draw the line and say we have to figure out how to love our fellow
man?by any means necessary. Just as futile as the actualization of true animal
rights seems to be at times to my fellow activists and me, we can never stop
trying to achieve it, and never stop believing that we can achieve it. Otherwise
we have not only given up on our fellow man, but on the animals as well.
But how can we keep up the
fight if we keep fighting amongst ourselves? If we don?t agree to at least
get together at these conferences, all with our own view of how best to
proceed, to discuss all the issues and ideas and see where it leads us,
who will be the better for it? Like it or not, we are all in this
movement we call ?animal rights.? If we can?t even love our fellow animal rights
compatriot, how the heck are we going to love our fellow man?
There are many aspects to our
humanity, good and bad. We are all of it and we need to embrace what we are in
order to hopefully make this a better world. The animal rights movement needs to
see that there are many facets to us which includes more than just our personal
favorite. We need to remind ourselves what our real purpose is: to protect
animals and not egos.
So on the weekend of July 9th & 10th, I am planning to
attend the Friends of Animals animal rights conference. I may disagree with the
keynote speaker from SPLC. I may disagree with the President of Friends of
Animals. But I am not so closed-minded as to think, like the goal of Socrates,
that they may not stir some thoughts in my head that without their rousing I may
not have had access to.
Hopefully by stimulating our minds with opposing viewpoints we will be able to
join together and accomplish the goals our animal brethren and sistren deserve.
If we divide ourselves and focus on the fact that we are advocates of direct
action, legislative changes, vegan awareness, anti-vivisectionists, and/or
female, male, gay, straight, black, white, tall, short animal rights-ists, we
will weaken our movement so much that the current media bias will become true?we
will be a joke of desperate, pathetic people with poor priorities. Hopefully we
can utilize this conference to stimulate our minds without forcing anyone to
drink hemlock as a result of their differing opinions.
Asananda X is a yogi of truth. He leaves advocating for compassion or violence to others, instead seeking to inspire truth with humor. He can be contacted at AsanandaX@yahoo.com. He dedicates all his work to his blessed spiritual guru, Sri Baba Ganesh.
FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES
FOOTNOTES
1.
Joan Dunayer Withdraws, in
Protest, from Friends of Animals Conference,
Which Will
Feature Anti-AR Speaker.
Letter from
Joan Dunayer explaining withdrawal. Friday April 15, 2005
http://nathannobis.blogspot.com/
(Need to go
to April 15 archive)
2. Friends of Animals response letter to Mark Potok, Editor of
SPLC?s Intelligence Report
http://www.friendsofanimals.org/programs/animal-rights/foa-response-splc.html
3. ?From Push to Shove,? Intelligence Report,
Fall 2002
Issue Number 107, Fall 2002
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=42
(Type in
keywords: ?push and shove?)
4. Citizens Against Animal Cruelty & Exploitation
webpage
?STOP ANIMAL
EXPLOITATION TODAY?
Statistics on
numbers of animals killed due to animal experimentation
http://www.angelfire.com/ny4/roar/Page8.html
5. Friends of Animals Website
A listing of
links of letters back and forth between Mark Potok, Editor of SPLC?s
Intelligence Report and Priscilla Feral, President of Friends of Animals
May 8, 2003,
June 27, 2003, July 7, 2003
http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=mark+potok&sp-a=sp10030eda&sp-p=all&sp-f=utf-8
6. Second Open Letter to
Southern Poverty Law Center: Friends of Animals Responds to SPLC?s Criticism of
the Animal Rights Movement. June 27, 2003
http://www.friendsofanimals.org/programs/animal-rights/foa-response-splc.html
7. John Bartlett (1820?1905). Familiar
Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
Number
793. John Viscount Morley, On Compromise, 1874
http://www.bartleby.com/100/604.3.html
OTHER REFERENCES
8. ?Advocates
for Justice and Equality?:
http://www.splcenter.org/center/about.jsp
9. ?The
Intelligence Project: Tracking the Threat of Hate?:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/history.jsp
10. Synopsis
of ?From Push to Shove,? Intelligence Report, Fall 2002: ?Advanced
Intelligence Report Search? on the keywords ?animal rights? (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/search.jsp)
11. Brian
Willoughby, ?Hate in the News: PETA Turns Holocaust into Pig Pen,?
Tolerance.org: A Web Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, March 7,
2003:
http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_hate.jsp?id=724
