CHILDREN & ANIMALS
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1992:
* Representatives of about 50 animal
protection and child protectionorganiza-
tions met September 14 and 15 in Washington
D.C. under the auspices of the American
Humane Association to discuss common prob-
lems and opportunities to seek solutions
together. We were there; watch for a full
report in the November issue of ANIMAL
PEOPLE.
* “Until recently,” charges the current
edition of the newsletter Notes From The
Green World, “the image of the abandoned
Latin American child was of a ragged child
sleeping in a doorway. Today the image is of
a body, lacerated and dumped in a city slum,”
especially in Brazil, where death squads hired
by local merchants torture and exterminate
suspected thieves with perhaps more impunity
than if they shot stray dogs. Editor Walter
Miale cites extensive documentation of his
charges, including by Amnesty International.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE editors received first
hand testimony about the killings as far back
as 1987, when an acquaintance, a medical
student who assisted street children, was her-
self obliged to flee a death squad. The leading
hope for justice for Brazilian children—and
animals, eventually—may lie in the recent
formation of all-female police units in some
parts of the country to deal with such offenses
as wife-beating, wife-murder, and rape.
Notes From The Green World is published
from P.O. Box 29, Philipsburg, Quebec J0J
1N0, Canada.
* Pennsylvania schoolchildren now have
the right to opt out of participating in dissec-
tion exercises without being penalized. The
new legislation was pushed by the
Pennsylvania Legislative Animal Network and
ANIPAC, a.k.a. the Political Action
Committee for Animals in Pennsylvania.
* The Dissection Hotline, 1-800-922-
FROG, has published new editions of hand-
books on opting out of dissection labs for col-
lege, high school, and elementary school stu-
dents. Copies are available in bulk at $18 per
100 c/o the Animal Legal Defense Fund, 1363
Lincoln Ave., Suite 7, San Rafael, CA
94901.
* Mark Twain scholar Shelley Fisher
Fishkin claims to have discovered the proto-
type for Huckleberry Finn in a 10-year-old
black servant Twain interviewed in 1874, just
before starting to write the book Huckleberry
Finn. In the interview, the young man disap-
provingly described his employers’ atrocities
against cats, colorfully noted his mother’s
contempt for cat abuse, and went on to dis-
cuss his own qualms about killing chickens.
* Firearms, mostly hunting weapons,
are the third leading cause of accidental
death among U.S. children, according to the
Centers for Disease Control; teenaged boys in
the rural South are at the highest risk.
* Modern Animal News Television, a
cable program to debut October 10 on channel
66 in Chicago, will feature regular interviews
with children engaged in animal protection.
MAN-TV seeks student reporters at various
locations around the U.S.; call Lair Scott,
312-278-9011 for details.
