By Guest Blogger on September 14, 2009
Once again, it’s a glorious Meatless Monday! Today, Andy Glick is here to share the first part of his experiences in the animal rights movement in Woodstock, NY…
Ingrid Newkirk, PETA
I feel very fortunate to have been involved in the Animal Rights (AR) movement since the early days. In 1989, I formed a group in Woodstock, NY, called WARM (Woodstock Animal Rights Movement). For a few years prior to starting WARM, I had been an avid follower and contributor to PETA and other national groups that were gaining popularity at that time. Some of the many inspirational leaders and organizations at the time included: Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco (PETA), the Fund for Animals with Cleveland Amory, Friends of Animals, Neal Barnard (PCRM), Gary Francione (professor of AR Law at Rutgers and director of the first AR legal clinic at his school), and Dr Michael Klaper (medical doctor, author of “Vegan Nutrition” and “Pregnancy, Children and the Vegan Diet”, lecturer, and one of the very few ethical Vegan doctors at the time).
To add some perspective to all this, “Animal Liberation” (by Peter Singer) was published in 1975. PETA was formed in 1980 and a year later, PETA conducted an undercover investigation inside a primate research lab at the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring Maryland. Alex Pacheco took photos of the chimps and monkeys that were at the lab and turned them over to the police. The researcher, Dr. Edward Taub, was arrested and the lab was shut down. Eventually, this became the first animal-testing case to be heard by the United States Supreme Court. PETA gained national attention (and notoriety) and the AR movement took off in earnest from that point on.
The decade of the 60’s and all that it stood for was still very much alive when the Animal Rights movement was formed. Many people of the 60’s generation were involved in AR…it became their next big cause to fight for. It was a time of discovery in a sense. The curtains were being pulled aside for the first time on nightmares that had long existed for animals. We started to see what was going on behind the scenes in animal laboratories. We learned of the horrors of the fur trade, animals used in entertainment, hunting (and canned hunts), puppy mills and kill shelters, animals used for food, the dairy industry, the effects of eating animals on our health, animals and the legal system, animals used for clothing, dissection…and on and on.
We felt that since we had documentation, videos and testimonies to “prove” it, that all we had to do was go public and present all this newly uncovered information and everyone would be appalled and irate. Finally, great changes would start to occur right away. We had the drive and the passion and the intellect to affect the sorely needed change. It was even said that after Civil Rights and Women’s Rights, it was now time for Animal Rights, and this could quite possibly be the greatest upheaval of all, since so much of society was built upon the backs of animals. But, things didn’t go quite so smoothly, or quite as fast as we would have liked.
On a personal level, I felt I needed to be more involved in Animal Rights on a daily basis and so, in 1989, I decided to start WARM (Woodstock Animal Rights Movement). I placed my first graphic photo ad in the Woodstock Times (a picture of two terrified monkeys in a tight embrace, huddling in the back of a small cage with terror and fear in their eyes) and announced the first meeting of WARM. To my surprise, about thirty people showed up, and we were off to a good start!
I began to hold monthly meetings at the Woodstock Town Hall. Attendance varied from ten to thirty people. I used to bring in photocopies to hand out of recent Animal Rights news, local topics of interest, and suggestions and ideas for campaigns that we could do as a group. We also formed a smaller core group that met separately. This core group broke off into special interest areas: lab testing and cruelty free products, companion animals, hunting, food, entertainment, etc. Each group was to be self directed and come up with its own campaigns.
At the time, there was a feeling of unity within the grassroots community. Perhaps it was because the movement was so new and we were all running full steam ahead for the same goals. And there was also a sense of these groups “belonging” to the larger picture and agendas of the national groups. We were their helpers in a sense. They had the larger memberships and the funds and the exposure, and came up with many of the ideas for campaigns. We would then join in and do our part, along with our own separate issues.
River Phoenix
As a grassroots group, we were involved in many exciting pursuits and projects. From the start, we began to publish and mail out a newsletter (no email back then) telling of our local campaigns and projects and showing what people could do and how to help. We held public lectures on Animal Rights at our local Town Hall. We were honored to have Ingrid Newkirk visit us and give a presentation to a standing room only crowd (hecklers and all). In 1990, Howard Lyman came to Woodstock and spoke about the Beyond Beef campaign. He warned us of a disease we had never heard of called “Mad Cow”, or CJD. Other WARM activities included holding hunting demos every year, hosting local Thanksgiving dinners, organizing a Spay/Neuter benefit, and exposing the cruelty involved in school dissection. One of the special highlights for us was meeting River Phoenix when he was visiting Woodstock with his band. He agreed to do a benefit for WARM at a local night-club!
WARM was very active in pushing for change in legislation. We worked on an anti leg-hold trap legislation and collected petitions for our local legislatures to ban the current leg trap bills that were coming up in session. We were also helpful in assisting other groups in persuading former Governor Mario Cuomo to veto the “Hunting Bear with Dogs” bill. Some members of WARM went to Hegins Pennsylvania to protest and disrupt the infamous yearly gruesome Hegins Pigeon Shoot. A few of our members were arrested there but we put up bail and they all returned home safely. Many of us also went to Washington, DC for the great 1990 March for Animals (and then the follow up and lesser March in 1996). The first march drew about 50,000 people and was a great show of strength. I attended all of the national Animal Rights conferences that I could get to and was thrilled to meet all the other activists and leaders and was inspired beyond my wildest dreams.
While all this was going on, I was formulating an idea for a Cruelty-Free store…Part II tomorrow!
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By Dr. Will Tuttle on August 25, 2009
Continued from Part I: The History of Animal Rights…
With the Renaissance and subsequent Enlightenment in the 16th to 18th centuries, the influence of the church waned as reason and modern science began to ascend, but unfortunately, this was not good news for animals, and signaled the beginning of a much more ferocious exploitation of them for scientific experimentation, as well as for entertainment, clothing, products, and, of course, food. While there had been some modicum of respect for and protection of animals as God’s creatures under the old order, under the new materialism, they were reduced to mere resources and commodities in the clutches of a surging industrialism and population expansion of omnivorous humans that continues unabated to this day, and is threatening all animals, and indeed all of nature and even humanity itself, with destruction and perhaps complete annihilation.
The cross-currents of intercultural dialog have always served to help people question the official story of their culture, and in the 19th and 20th centuries, we saw this happen in the striking rebirth of vegetarianism and animal protection, inspired to a great degree by the rediscovery of Eastern thought in Europe and North America. With the translation of ancient Buddhist and Jain sutras, as well as the Upanishads, Vedas, Tao Te Ching, and other Indian and Chinese texts, as well as the discovery of vast populations thriving on essentially plant-based diets, more people in the West began to question the routine violence toward animals that characterized their culture. The word vegetarian was coined in 1850 to replace the old word Pythagorean, and experimenting with and promoting vegetarianism became popular with many influential writers such as Shelley, Byron, Shaw, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Emerson, Alcott, Besant, Blavatsky, Tolstoy, and Gandhi, among others. There was also a Christian strand as well, with several church leaders such as William Cowherd in England and his protégé in America, William Metcalfe, advocating compassion for animals, with some, like Ellen White of the Seventh Day Adventists and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore of Unity School of Christianity advocating a the main tenets of veganism forty years before the word was invented. They were aided in this by the pioneering work of early vegetarian proponents like Graham, Post, and Kellogg who raised consciousness about the health benefits of plant-based eating, as well as the animal cruelty involved, and also by the efforts of the first animal protection societies such as the RSPCA, ASPCA, and the Humane Society.
In 1944 Donald Watson in England strengthened the foundation for the modern animal rights movement by coining the word vegan and founding the Vegan Society in London, directly challenging the official story and the underlying core of our culture. He defined veganism as “a philosophy and way of life which seeks to exclude, as far as possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.” Thus the vegan movement was born as a continuing manifestation of the ancient and universal wisdom teaching of ahimsa, and is at the heart of today’s animal rights movement.
In the decades since, there have been many books and studies written, many organizations and periodicals founded, many documentaries filmed and websites created as part of humanity’s effort to reduce our violence toward animals. Veganism and animal rights issues are becoming increasingly mainstream as a result of all these efforts, and the momentum continues to build in spite of enormous resistance by all the institutions in our culture, and in spite of the difficulties in responding to pervasive cultural hostility and the complexity of the issues involved. For example, it is increasingly clear today that our violence toward animals is a primary driving force behind environmental devastation, physical and psychological illness, war, hunger, inequity, and social violence, besides being ethically wrong. Groups and individuals align themselves with and promote the animal rights agenda for varying combinations of these factors, depending on their predilections, and so there are a number of competing perspectives.
We live at a time of immense and growing crisis that gives us unprecedented opportunities. The old complacency is being stripped away by the multidimensional crisis facing our culture. More and more people are realizing that the only viable future for humanity is a vegan future. Rather than negotiating with the suppliers of animal cruelty, we can see from the wisdom of those who have gone before us that the real power we have is in reducing the demand for animal foods and products by raising consciousness and educating and encouraging people to reduce and eliminate animal-sourced foods and products. Thankfully, we see this happening today with the proliferation of both secular national, international, regional, and grass-roots groups and efforts to spread vegan ideals and practices, and also, increasingly, religious and spiritual groups and efforts that are similarly doing this.
This is the way forward. The idea of ahimsa and the idea of veganism are so powerful because they resonate with the core of our true nature as beings of love, awareness, creativity, sensitivity, and compassion. Donald Watson and the other sages that have gone before us have planted a seed deep into the core of the obsolete story that has mired and encrusted our culture and that threatens to destroy all life on this planet. As we each water that seed and plant our own seeds, a new garden of compassion will grow that will inevitably break the bonds of violence that enslave all of us. People will realize that as we have enslaved animals, we have enslaved ourselves.
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By Guest Blogger on August 11, 2009
Mia Davis, Campaign for Safe Cosmetics
People deserve to feel beautiful, inside and out. Feeling good about how you look increases confidence, thereby creating opportunities which can lead to constructive change, more energy, and even a more vibrant community. And then you feel even better, and the cycle continues.
Word!
To make yourself look/smell/feel lovely, you probably use cosmetics (creams, makeup, deodorant, etc). Most of us do- on average, American women use 10 a day, men use six a day.
But. There is an un-lovely fact that I hope that you’ll share widely: In the U.S. it is legal for the $50 billion cosmetics industry to put unlimited amounts of chemicals into personal care products, including chemicals linked to cancer and hormone disruption. In fact, cosmetics are among the least-regulated products on the market.
A woman using 10 personal care products a day exposes herself to approximately 130 unique chemicals, some of which can be potent even in super-small amounts. As the day goes on, she is probably also exposed to food pesticides, water contaminants (including hormones), air pollution, flame retardants in furniture, and BPA in plastic water containers. These exposures add up.
Some folks say, “Yeah, but so what? We’re all exposed, and we’re all fine.” I wish that were the case. We’re not all fine.
At the same time that unsafe and untested chemicals have been steadily introduced into our environment, learning and behavioral disorders, reproductive problems, and breast cancer incidence have dramatically risen. A growing body of evidence has linked the pollutants and man-made chemicals in our environment to the increasing risk of breast cancer and other diseases. The Breast Cancer Fund, a founding member of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, has a great fact sheet on some of the cosmetics ingredients of concern.
Now listen up, because this is just whack: While the rates of breast cancer rise (beyond what genetics and increased detection can account for), products marketed to women and girls contain carcinogens – including products that we slather on our faces and bodies, paint on our lips and eyelids, and wash with in the shower while our pores are wide open, on a daily basis.
Women with cancer are no different- they want to feel as well and as sexy (crazy-sexy-well, actually) as possible. Knowing this, the American Cancer Society and Personal Care Products Council (the cosmetics industry trade group) joined forces to create Look Good, Feel Better (LGFB), workshops which provide beauty tips and cosmetics for cancer patients. Sounds like a great service, right?
Well, it would be, if the products in the LGFB kits were free of carcinogens, neurotoxins and hormone disruptors, or chemicals even suspected of having these Über-serious effects. Some of the corporate donors for LGFB are companies that not only use dangerous or suspect ingredients, but actively lobby against legislation that would make cosmetics safer for those of us who do not have cancer and would like to avoid getting it, or those of us living with it and trying to look and feel better. (See my colleague Stacy Malkan’s book Not Just A Pretty Face for the scoop on the trade group’s and big companies’ opposition to safer cosmetics legislation.)
The system is clearly broken when we allow carcinogens in products given to cancer patients. And it is simply egregious that some large companies that could make safer products are not doing so, and are instead launching projects like Look Good, Feel Better, and profiting off of pink ribbons.
This really fires me up, and gets me out of bed in the morning to go work for change via the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
The Campaign is a grassroots coalition- and we need you. Got 2 minutes for cancer prevention and corporate accountability? Please join the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics– and help to make cosmetics safe for everyone. Have more time? Great! Contact us and tell us how you’d like to use your voice, your blog, your skills, your company to tell the public, cosmetics companies and elected officials that cancer is not inevitable, hundreds of thousands of cases can be prevented, and we will no longer allow dangerous ingredients in common consumer products like cosmetics.
Mia Davis is the National Grassroots Coordinator of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, and an all around Toxics Avenger who has worked on getting bisphenol A (BPA) off of store shelves throughout the country. Mia speaks and writes often for the Campaign, and works in collaboration with a diverse network of activists, citizens, health affected communities and scientists. When she’s not organizing to make the world less toxic she enjoys reading, cooking and eating, and the company of her amazing friends, family and creatures. www.safecosmetics.org, and follow Mia on Twitter @nontoxicissexy
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