WOOFS AND GROWLS
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July 1996:
Though ANIMAL PEOPLE
heard frequent complaints that our former
World Wide Web site, maintained by the
Animal Rights Resource Network, was
incomplete and hard to find, it reportedly
drew 183,000 “hits” in five months, amounting
to as many as 1,220 readers a day.
Consultant Patrice Greanville is now at work
on a new site to be posted under our own
name soon, which will include a complete
archive of back issues plus prompt additon of
current issues. The ARRN site proved unviable
for both technical and philosophical reasons,
the latter resulting from a conflict of
the ideological mandate of ARRN with the
ANIMAL PEOPLE journalistic ethic.
A week before World Animal
Awareness Week, June 18-24, featuring the
June 23 second March for the Animals, preregistration
reportedly stood at 3,000. The
National Alliance for Animals sold sponsorship
and sought media coverage by promising
“to draw a huge six-figure crowd” for the
March itself, which appeared unlikely to
draw even the 24,000 participants whom the
National Park Service counted at the 1990
March. Coming after the June 1 Stand for
Children rally, which according to NPS drew
200,000, the March was even at possible risk
of being upstaged by a June 29 protest against
the new Washington D.C. dog ordinance,
which requires that pit bull terriers and
Rottweilers be leashed and muzzled when in
public. The protest was scheduled for
Freedom Plaza by one Margaret Mincey,
claiming support from Rottweiler clubs and
other dog groups “all over the world.”
One hundred years after the 1895
founding of the New England AntiVivisection
Society, and 10 years after the
present ruling coalition of PETA and Fund for
Animals board members began the electoral
coup that in 1988 deposed the regime of former
probate judge Robert Ford, leading to his
1989 censure by a judicial review board for
“gross abuse” of his authority, the New
England Anti-Vivisection Society is again
split by a coup attempt. The 50 founding
members of the Philip G. Peabody Coalition,
including many former NEAVS staff, claim
NEAVS lacks “any direct program targeting
vivisection.” Their joint statement is available
from POB 852, South Lynnfield, MA
01940; 508-535-4203; 617-734-4068; or
617-696-6740. NEAVS president Cleveland
Amory has issued a rebuttal, available either
from NEAVS (333 Washington St., #850,
Boston, MA 02108) or the Fund (200 W.
57th St., New York, NY 10019).
James and Krys Cherry on June
1 discontinued the AmNet online bulletin
board, largely because the dial-in format had
become obsolete. “In operation since 1984,”
Cherry recalled, “AmNet was the first with
animal rights online information, and probably
second or third covering environmental
news. With the growth of the Internet, calls
to the bulletin board service have decreased
considerably. AmNet will most likely start
again on the Internet,” Cherry promised,
adding, “Operating on the Internet should be
considerably cheaper.”
Adam Werbach, 23, founder of
the Sierra Club’s national student
p r o g r a m, a two-year board member, and
protege of environmental movement legend
David Brower, was on May 20 elected to a
one-year term as board president. Werbach is
not expected to have a significant influence
on longstanding Sierra Club policies, such as
neutrality on hunting that often amounts to
defacto endorsement of pro-hunting public
lands policies. One day later Brower, 83,
quit the board, for the second time, arguing
that the Sierra Club should follow the direction
indicated by membership polls and more
militantly oppose public lands logging. As
executive director in the 1960s, Brower led
the Sierra Club back to the activism of
founder John Muir, after it had become
essentially a hiking club. Like Muir, he
focused on opposition to damming wild
rivers. Fired in a 1969 clash with the board,
Brower founded Friends of the Earth a year
later; returned to the Sierra Club board after a
split there; resigned in 1983 to found Earth
Island Institute; and accepted re-election to
the Sierra Club board in 1994.
Borrowing the title Man Kind?
from Amory’s 1974 best seller of that title,
Topeka Capital-Journal reporter Mark
Sommer produced a 15-part series on animal
use-and-abuse controversies in a mid-May
ten-day series. Covered were biomedical
research, hunting, factory farming, the animal
rights movement, circuses, zoos, fur
trapping, greyhound racing, puppy mills,
the exotic animal traffic, cruelty sentencing,
and the interface of religion and animals.
