FBI Papers Show Terror Inquiries Into PETA; Other Groups Tracked

December 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 20, 2005; A11

FBI counterterrorism investigators are monitoring domestic U.S. advocacy
groups engaged in antiwar, environmental, civil rights and other causes,
the American Civil Liberties Union charged yesterday as it released new
FBI records that it said detail the extent of the activity.

The documents, disclosed as part of a lawsuit that challenges FBI
treatment of groups that planned demonstrations at last year’s political
conventions, show the bureau has opened a preliminary terrorism
investigation into People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the
well-known animal rights group based in Norfolk.

BOOKS: Fund-Raising for Animal Care Organizations & Humane University

November 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

Fund-Raising for Animal Care Organizations
Edited by Julie Miller Dowling

Humane University (c/o Humane Society of the U.S., 2100 L St. NW,
Washington, DC 20037), 2005. 184 pages, paperback. $44.95.

Fund-Raising for Animal Care Organizations is the second in a
Humane University how-to series that began with Volunteer Management
for Animal Care Organizations, by Betsy McFarland. Much of
Fund-Raising for Animal Care Organizations overlaps and closely
parallels the fundraising information included in the ANIMAL PEOPLE
handbook Fundraising & Accountability for Animal Protection
Charities, available in PDF format free for downloading at
<www.animalpeoplenews.com>, under “important materials.”
Thus in reviewing Fund-Raising for Animal Care Organizations
for the ANIMAL PEOPLE audience, the $44.95 question is whether the
HSUS take on the topic offers enough additional information to be
worth the cost.
The answer is probably yes for U.S.-based organizations that
already raise more than $100,000 per year, but no for smaller
organizations and those based abroad.
The ANIMAL PEOPLE handbook, albeit shorter, includes more
information about simple, basic approaches to fundraising that any
organization, anywhere, can use right away.

Editorial: ANIMAL PEOPLE & the role of humane reporting

November 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

“We still haven’t found an executive director. Guess no one
wants to come down to the sunny south and dodge all the hurricanes,”
Suncoast Humane Society interim director Warren Cox wrote on
Halloween from Englewood, Florida.
Sending Cox to Florida was clearly easier than ushering him
into retirement. Now in his 53rd year of humane work, Cox reduced
his possessions before taking his 22nd leadership position by
donating to ANIMAL PEOPLE a complete set of the National Humane
Review, from the years 1933 through 1976.
Published by the American Humane Association, the National
Humane Review for much of that time was a mainstream slick magazine,
sold on train station newsstands, with separate regional editions
serving all parts of the U.S. Even without carrying paid
advertising, and without soliciting donations with particular vigor,
the National Humane Review generated enough revenue at peak, through
sales and subscriptions, to subsidize the AHA itself. At the height
of her popularity, in June 1935 and January 1936, actress Shirley
Temple was twice the cover girl.

Tactics

Editorial: Mainstream no longer accepts meat at humane events

November 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2005:

“With friends like theseŠ” was the first
thing that came to mind after reading the Carbon
County Friends of Animals raffle ticket I’d just
bought,” wrote Michael J. Frendak of Lansford,
Pennsylvania, in the August 2005 edition of
Reader’s Digest.
“I could win one of the following, it
said: a 10-pound box of chicken legs, one
smoked ham, four T-bone steaks, five pounds of
fresh sausage or hot dogs, or a box of pork
chops.”

Editorial: Fighting sinking feelings of failure in an inundated city

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Of the many stresses that Hurricane Katrina and Rita rescuers
had to deal with, perhaps the most ubiquitous was the feeling among
exhausted volunteers that no matter what they did, they had not done
enough.
“I have personally pulled hundreds of animals from roof tops,
attics, and houses,” HSUS food and water team leader Jane Garrison
e-mailed to Karen Dawn of DawnWatch on September 19. “It is amazing
to me that these animals are still alive. I got a dog off a roof who
should have weighed 90 pounds, but was down to 40 pounds from being
stuck with no food and water. These animals want to live and are
showing us this every day.”
But Garrison hardly felt uplifted.

Editorial: Donations & disaster

October 2, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2005:

Disasters requiring monumental animal relief efforts are
likely to happen increasingly often in coming years, as climatic
instability increases due to global warming. Thus the lessons
learned from the response to the evacuation of New Orleans, many of
them still just beginning to be absorbed, may appear to be as
important 13 years from now as the lessons from Hurricane Andrew in
1992 were to enabling the humane community to respond to Katrina and
Rita with markedly more efficacy than the governmental and nonprofit
human services sectors.
The animals’ need has been great after the devastating storm,
and there is rebuilding to follow in Louisiana and Mississippi. On
the positive side, there is now the possibility of improving
conditions for animals in the Deep South in many ways, through the
infusion of new interest, new energy, and new capital. Many of the
disaster relief workers who ventured south to help had never seen the
“Third World of the U.S.” before. Many vowed to return, to help
follow through with the rebuilding, and all who served or donated
are likely to have an enduring intensified interest in animal welfare
in parts of rural Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that only six
weeks ago were seldom noticed.

Who invented no-kill?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

Before there could be a successful no-kill movement, the
techniques of combating pet overpopulation without high-volume
killing had to be perfected.
The basic components were high-volume, low-cost dog and cat
sterilization; neuter/return, to help keep dogs and cats at large
from breeding back up to the carrying capacity of their habitat as
their numbers decline; and high-volume adoption, to find homes for
the animals who still come to shelters or can be removed from feral
colonies.
The standard dog and cat sterilization surgeries were
approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association in 1923, but
did not become affordable for most pet-keepers until Friends of
Animals in 1957 opened the first low-cost sterilization clinic in the
U.S., at Neptune, New Jersey.
Watching from across the Hudson River, the American SPCA in
1968 began sterilizing animals before adoption. Mercy Crusade, of
Los Angeles, in 1973 opened a similar clinic that a year later would
host the first city-subsidized sterilization program in the U.S.
Working for that clinic, Marvin Mackie, DVM, developed
high-volume sterilization.

Tactics

What has no-kill accomplished?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

ANAHEIM–Another way to describe the “no-kill movement” might
be “the democratization of animal sheltering.”
The no-kill concept had already won the battle for public
opinion decades before no-kill sheltering existed on any significant
scale. Dogcatchers were a familiar film villain even before animated
cartoons and “talking pictures” were invented.
Fritz Frelang and rival Walt Disney merely revitalized the
stereotype in Dog-Pounded (1954), starring Sylvester the Cat, and
Lady & The Tramp (1955). More than half a century later,
bird-catching feral cats are still at imminent risk of landing in a
pound full of ferocious dogs, licensing is still advanced from many
directions as essential to end shelter killing, the public still
does not like dogcatchers, and animal control officers still don’t
like their image.
Winning over animal shelter management is a battle still
underway–but increasingly irrelevant to tens of thousands of
volunteer rescuers, donors, and upstart shelter founders, who have
taken the work of saving animals into their own hands.
After decades of railing at “irresponsible” pet-keepers,
animal control agencies and humane societies are facing activists who
are claiming responsible roles, whether or not they can fulfill them.

What can we here do to prevent cruelty there?

September 1, 2005 Dylan Forest Leave a comment

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 2005:

July 28, 2005–our July/August press date–was only two
minutes old when the U.S. House of Representatives ratified the
Central American Free Trade Agreement, a pact which may in time have
an enormous influence on animal welfare.
Explained Washington Post staff writers Paul Blustein and
Mike Allen, “The House vote was effectively the last hurdle–and by
far the steepest–facing CAFTA, which will tear down barriers to
trade and investment between the United States, Costa Rica, the
Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and
Nicaragua.”
Like the General Agreement on Trade & Tariffs, brokered by
the United Nations through the World Trade Organization, and like
many other regional treaties arranged under GATT guidelines, CAFTA
expedites globalization of markets.
Such agreements also strongly encourage nations to adopt
uniform standards and policies on human rights, environmental
protection, and occupational health and safety.
International free trade agreements tend to be bitterly
opposed at introduction by trade unionists, environmentalists, and
some animal advocates, who often rightly fear that hard-won gains
made nation by nation will be lost.

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