Editorial: Crime and counseling

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Pending before the California legislature as ANIMAL PEOPLE goes to press is
SB1991, a bill “to require counseling as a condition of probation for any person who is convicted
of killing, maiming or abusing an animal.”
Introduced by state senator Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), SB1991 was
drafted by the Doris Day Animal League, and is endorsed by the Humane Society of the U.S.,
the Animal Protection Institute, and the Fund for Animals, among many other organizations.
SB1991 sounds good, on paper. If enacted, it will no doubt be ballyhooed in mailings
by all who support it as a “victory,” to be emulated in other states.
But Political Animals founder Sherry DeBoer sees SB1991 as at least potentially
“the most destructive piece of anti-animal legislation ever to move in California.”

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The ultimate sacrifice

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

LHASA, MUMBAI, JERUSALEM––Muslims,
Christians, and Jews marked some of their most sacred holidays
by killing animals. Hindus mobilized to save animals
from slaughter. Snowbound Tibetan Buddhists starved
rather than eat animals who were already dead or dying.
The Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, commemorating
Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, fell on
April 8 this year––halfway between Palm Sunday and Easter,
two days before Passover, and one day before the Jain festival
of Mahavir Jayanti, the annual celebration of the birth of
the teacher Mahavir, a contemporary of the Buddha.
The several moveable feasts and fixed occasions
coincided unusually closely, bringing conflicting cultural
views of animals into dramatic contrast.

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Cuckoo bills & the ESA

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

TUCSON––They used to call it The
Tombstone Territory.
Now it’s potential critical habitat for
yellow-billed cuckoos, who could become the
next target of ideological gunslingers hellbent
on blowing away the Endangered Species Act.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit on
May 5 announced that 29 recovered species
including the bald eagle, Columbia whitetailed
deer, grey wolf, and peregrine falcon will be
delisted over the next two years––just in time,
cynics noted, for the next U.S. Presidential
election, when Babbitt if he survives present
poltical controversies might like to be making a
run for the White House.

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LETTERS [May 1998]

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Maneka
Your articles on the treatment
of animals in India are especially interesting
to me, since I met Maneka Gandhi in
July, 1995 when she was in Chicago to
address a Jain convention. She took 20
vegetarian activists to dinner at a local
vegetarian restaurant, and told us about
the opening of American fast-food franchises
in India, which were and are trying
hard to convince Indians that eating
meat is the “modern” way to eat. Buyers
roam the country offering people money
for their cows. The people, as everywhere,
are shortsighted enough to take
the immediate cash in exchange for their
cows. To a person in rural India, cows
are their life. They drink the milk, and
use the dung for fuel. With no cow, they
have no way to cook, and indeed often
have little to cook.

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Teach the children well

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

JONESBORO, Arkansas– – Why
did Mitchell Johnson, 13, and Andrew Golden,
11, on March 24 steal seven pistols and three
rifles, set off a fire alarm at Westside Middle
School, and as the children ran out, kill classmates
Natalie Brooks, Britthney Varner,
Stephanie Johnson, and Paige Ann Herring,
plus teacher Shannon Wright?
Probably for the same reason a powerful
politician might think he can get away
with repeated self-exposure and other acts of
uninvited sexual aggression against female subordinates:
each alleged offender learned early,
when an older man he admired gave him a gun,
that normal rules don’t apply to hunters.

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Dog ecology in Puerto Rico

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

LUQUILLO, P.R.––To save a sato, one of the
Puerto Rican street dogs lately made legendary by humane
literature, a would-be rescuer first must find a sato– – and
that, these days, is surprisingly difficult.
Mailings from major humane organizations would
have you believe homeless dogs are everywhere in Puerto
Rico. Doing a personal ecological assessment of the Puerto
Rican homeless dog and cat problem, however, I spent six
days and five nights, March 25-30, combing the 320-
square-mile island from Luquillo in the east to Mayaguez in
the west, Old San Juan in the north to Ponce in the south. I
drove every major highway, circling the island and crisscrossing
representative parts of it six times, twice by night
and four times by day, mostly on mere ribbons of winding
asphalt barely wide enough for two cars to pass abreast.

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Editorial: Peace plan two years later

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

Wesleyan University psychologist Scott Plous’ article “Signs of Change Within the
Animal Rights Movement,” just published in volume 112, #1 of the Journal of Comparative
Psychology, rates an exception to the usual rule that two-year-old opinion polls are not news.
Plous in June 1990 surveyed 402 participants in the first March for the Animals in
Washington D.C., and followed up in June 1996 by surveying 372 participants in the second
such march. These subjects were each at least 18 years of age, identified themselves as animal
rights activists, and “reported traveling from another state expressly to join the march.”
Their profiles each year were so similar, except in average duration of animal rights involvement,
which increased by three years, that Plous concluded the animal rights movement has
essentially stalled in terms of recruitment for a decade––a point increasingly evident to grassroots
organizers such as Joe Haptas of the Northwest Animal Rights Network, who says as
much in his letter on page 5 of this edition.

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Will the shelling stop?

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

SAN FRANCISCO––If you think
people who torture animals for alleged “cultural”
motive are as addicted to their deeds as
those who torture just for kicks, and that they
will therefore break any bargain, the Joint
Statement of Principles and Guidelines subscribed
to on March 31 by the San Francisco
SPCA and Representatives of San Francisco’s
Live Animal Markets may strike you as a
cruel and just slightly early April Fool.
You may side with the activists
now burning up the Internet with assertions
that SF/SPCA president Richard Avanzino is
the biggest fool of all, for agreeing––d e
f a c t o––to self-policing to eliminate six types
of animal abuse recognized by both the
SF/SPCA and the live marketers.

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MEMORIALS

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 1998:

In fond remembrance of Steve Siegel, passionately
devoted and highly effective animal
rights activist. You made a huge difference,
and continue to inspire me daily. Thank you!
––Jill Breslauer
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

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