PEOPLE
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2000:
The Kane County Chronicle, of Geneva, Illinois, in mid-January devoted a three-part series to the civil liberties aspects of Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon’s ongoing attempt to prosecute S H A R K founder Steve Hindi for felony eavesdropping. Hindi in July 1999 taped a police officer who was refusing, in front of a crowd of 10,000, to arrest several rodeo performers for acts of cruelty which Hindi had documented on film. Kane County Chronicle reporter Brenda Schory found that the law Hindi is accused of breaking was passed by the Illinois legislature after members were embarrased during the 1960s by public disclosure of various vulgar remarks they made while on the floor but not actually at the podium.
Molly Fearing, who as a teacher at Graham High School in Champaign County, Ohio, unsuccessfully pressed a cruelty charge last year against a fellow teacher for having a student bash a piglet’s head against the parking lot, is now working in a Honda assembly plant after accepting a buy-out offer to leave the school district. She would like to return to teaching, D o n Baird of the Columbus Dispatch recently reported, but because of the local unpopularity of her stand for animals, she would probably have to relocate to find another classroom job.
New Jersey activist Stuart Chaifetz i n January began campaigning for appointment by Governor Christine Whitman to the one seat on the New Jersey Fish and Game Council which is open to a citizen who is neither a hunter, a farmer, nor chair of the state Endangered & Non-Game Species Committee. The seat, with a four-year term, comes open in April.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney in January donated $1 million to the University of Arizona Cancer Center in memory of his late wife Linda, for use in cancer research and treatment using methods which do not harm animals.
Constance Matheson Baker, volunteering at the Humane Society of the Treasure Coast in Palm City, Florida, for more than 30 years, has donated $265,000 to the society toward the construction of a new shelter.
Maneka Gandhi, Indian minister of state for social justice and empowerment, recently received the Diwaliben Millennium Award from the Jain community for promoting the concepts of “Beauty without cruelty” and vegetarianism.
Actors David Hyde Pierce and Wendie Malick are to host the 14th annual Genesis Awards presentation on March 18 at the Beverly Hills Hilton.
KEGL-FM morning show host Russ Martin was named volunteer of the year by Operation K i n d n e s s, of Carrollton, Texas––the largest no-kill shelter in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
United Animal Nations on January 21 honored sixth graders Mikayla Schramm, of Santa Fe, Texas, and Bethany James, of Swain, New York, as winners of a nationwide essay contest on “Why animals do not belong in the circus.”
Doll Stanley, director of In Defense of Animals’ Mississippi sanctuary project, was featured in the January edition of the online magazine < A l l p e t s . c o m >, while founder Elliot Katz, DVM received the 1999 “Keeper of the Animal Kingdom” award from the Guest Choice Network, a coalition of 30,000 restaurant and tavern operators.
