Last month, based on my commitment to keep our movement informed of major media stories about animals, I sent out, on DawnWatch, a New York Times op-ed written by Peter Singer. I did not comment on it, though I know my readers expect me to weigh in on what I send. I hesitated because it is vital to me to keep my personal life away from the work I do for animals, but they converge here, for I have filed suit against Peter Singer for Sexual Harassment and the Intentional Infliction Emotional Distress. I will share more on that suit further below.
My concern with Peter Singer's stances is not new. I explain in my own book, Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the way we Treat Animals that while Singer holds that it's wrong to make judgments on the worth of a life based on species, because that would be speciesism, he argues that it is fine to do so based on qualities that he assumes to be unique to healthy humans. That's like saying we can't discriminate on the basis of race, because that would be racism, but that if we discriminate on the basis of an attractive hair color that is exclusive to one race, that is no longer racism. It's a specious argument against speciesism, and not one that Richard Ryder, who coined the word for which Singer is given far too much credit, would likely condone.
One such quality that Singer has cited as unique to most humans is our ability to plan for the future. Yet anybody who has come home to see their dog abandon their spot by the door and run to grab her leash, knows the dog has been looking forward to an evening walk. And what of squirrels gathering nuts for the winter? Meanwhile, as I wrote in Thanking the Monkey, many human plans for the future don’t go further than heading to the pub Saturday to watch the game. How does that make our lives more worthy than those of other animals?
It is not unreasonable to value one’s own species above others; almost everybody does it. What is unreasonable is to hold that value while holding yourself up as the foremost representative for those who you judge less worthy of life.
Let’s compare Singer’s stance to recent lines from the New York Times columnist, Margaret Renkl:
“We fail the creatures with whom we share our ecosystems when we believe that only we are unique, that only we move through the world as individuals, while our wild neighbors are nothing more than bundles of hormones driven by instinct, with none of the originality that distinctly individual beings are capable of.”
Last month I brought Winky Smalls to the wonderful Animal Wellness Center in Venice and was delighted to see this quote from Henry Beston displayed on the lobby wall:
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
As mainstream writers in the world's most influential papers discuss the "unique" and "distinctly individual beings" in other species, and Ed Yong's An Immense World lands on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal “Best Books” lists, it is disheartening to see real estate as precious as the New York Times editorial page used, by somebody given credit as one of our movement founders, to recommend only that we eat fewer animals and treat them better before we do.
NEW YORK TIMES PIECE ON CLIMATE CHANGE
In his April 23 New York Times piece, "Change your diet, save the planet," Singer devotes a strong paragraph to the abuse of billions of animals each year, reminiscent of many pieces penned by the New York Times’ Nicolas Kristof over the last decade, even while the columnist was still eating animals. But then Singer writes that "the outsized contribution of meat and dairy products to climate change is for me now an equally urgent part of shifting to a plant-based diet."
Equally?
Imagine Gloria Steinem, with a book titled Women's Liberation Now coming out, focusing a New York Times piece on a cause she deemed "equally" important.
Many of us care deeply about climate change, and discussing it can help animals. If people give up eating meat daily, for environmental reasons, they might find it easier to consider our fundamental arguments for animal rights. But will their professed concern about climate change really cause them to change their diets? Check out Bill Maher's recent segment on the celebrity climate activists (other than Greta) all riding around in their private jets.
A recent study revealed that while half of Americans consider climate change to be a "very serious issue" only a third want to see the industries most closely associated in the public mind with it, the fossil fuel industries, completely phased out. So while talking about the environment doesn't hurt, we are kidding ourselves if we think it will drive significant societal dietary change.
A prime focus on climate also opens the door to suggestions that we should invest in ways to make meat production more efficient "by reducing cow's methane emissions," as was recommended this month in a recent Washington Post piece, or to calls for methane as a potential energy source.
MEAT REDUCTION IS A TOOL, NOT AN END GOAL
Singer continues with, "But we need not be hard-line about avoiding all animal products. If everyone chose plant-based foods for just half their meals, we would have fewer animals suffering, and a tremendously better shot at avoiding the most dire consequences of climate change."
That math is questionable, for while the rate at which our population is increasing has slowed, the population is currently continuing to increase, so it is more likely that halving our intake would delay but not avoid "the dire consequences of climate change."
As for saving animals with that recommendation: yes, such a change would save many animals, and in general campaigns that encourage meat reduction are helpful because studies have shown that those who go vegan gradually are far more likely to do so permanently. But I hope activists can appreciate the nuanced difference between encouraging people to cut down, in order to get them to take the first step on the right path, and actually instructing, "But we need not be hard-line about avoiding all animal products." I can't help but bring up Gloria again and imagine her suggesting that we don't need to take a hard line against sexism.
Animals deserve better.
PEOPLE CARE ABOUT ANIMALS
The presumed need to focus on environmentalism goes against research done by Faunalytics, which reveals that the majority of people, and the vast majority of women, are interested in protecting animals. It flies in the face of the entertainment industry rule, "Never kill the dog," because people will change the channel if you do. There's even a reference website, "Does the dog die?" to warn people about films in which the story line involves animal suffering.
Let’s remember that almost two-thirds of Californians voted in favor of Prop 2 and Prop 12, which banned the most egregiously cruel housing for farm animals, despite agribusiness’ massive advertising effort to warn them that meat and egg prices would rise. People care about animals, so we need not hide our concern for them while trying to save them using backdoor approaches. When we do that, we undermine our movement.
TALK THE WALK
I argued that point at the very end of my book Thanking the Monkey, in a section entitled “Talk the Walk,” which shared Marianne Williamson’s inspiring take on a Dateline segment. The segment showed an actor pretending to be hurt and crying out for help. Nearby, two other actors were just hanging out and talking. In a candid camera type of situation, Dateline watched the reactions of people walking by. Almost every person, as they saw two others ignore the cries for help, just kept walking. One person in 20 stopped, and then called for more help. But once that first person stopped, every person who came along joined in to help.
As Marianne explains it, once one person acts from an awakened heart, others will follow.
Right now it seems many of us are trying to hide our hearts and hide our love for animals. And that pushes other activists to shout it in a tone that doesn’t sound like love at all. What is missing from Peter Singer's New York Times op-ed, and from too much of our activism lately, is the willingness to boldly and lovingly assert that the lives of animals matter. It is time to stop cloaking our cause in other causes we believe to be more popular.
LOS ANGELES TIMES PIECE AND MY LETTER
As I was putting together this essay, another piece by Singer came out, this one in the Los Angeles Times, where the animal-concerned editors at that paper at least made sure Singer focused on animals rather than climate change. Singer notes “there is now strong evidence that fish can feel pain,” while nevertheless grammatically treating fish as objects with the pronoun “it. ” The piece basically decries that 50 years after the release of Animal Liberation, animals are still treated badly before they are killed.
I am profoundly grateful to the Los Angeles Times for featuring my response, as the first letter on May 22, displayed with a photo of pigs in transport trucks and the headline "More Than Nice Cages for Animals."
I wrote:
" As always, it’s good to see animal issues covered in The Times, but one has to note the irony when the author of 'Animal Liberation Now,' Peter Singer, calls for bigger and better cages. ('Think humans’ treatment of animals has improved in 50 years? Think again,' Opinion, May 16)
"That is a call for animal welfare now, a worthy goal but one that lags behind most of the animal advocacy movement and even behind current trends in society.
"There is a growing understanding that other species are not here for our use. They have worth and wonder of their own, which is becoming more frequently acknowledged in human society.
"That acknowledgment will bring change that we will not see if our main focus is on causing animals less suffering in their servitude."
EFFECTIVE ALTRUISM ISSUES
During the last decade, there has been no person more closely associated than Peter Singer with "Effective Altruism," a system that attempts to measure how much good each charity does with each dollar. An example Singer gives is that if forty people each give a thousand dollars to Guide Dogs for the Blind, one dog can be trained as a helper to one blind human. Meanwhile $40,000 given to a different charity could restore sight to 40 people in third world countries.
I love that example because Guide Dogs for the Blind breeds Labradors, many of whom don't make the cut and end up needing regular homes, while thousands of dogs whose temperaments would be perfectly suited for the job are killed in shelters.
But one cannot always numerically calculate impact. Malcolm Gladwell spells that out in The Tipping Point, a book all activists should read.
The Effective Altruism movement urges funders to donate to charities that can prove how many animals they help. One of the top recommendations is a group that urges food companies to stop using eggs from hens in battery cages. That effort will surely help end that one hideous farming practice and ease some of the suffering of billions of animals. But those approaching the companies would have no success if other activists weren't changing public opinion, pushing the envelope, and putting societal pressure on those companies to at least make some improvements. Thanks to Effective Altruism, however, the guys negotiating the deals to get millions of animals bigger cages are grabbing the bulk of funding, while those changing the way society views animals, who can't count the number of animals they have helped, are, by Effective Altruism standards, not worth funding.
Effective Altruism starves out the activists creating the sparks, and Peter Singer wonders why our movement isn't lighting up the world.
Krista Hiddema's chapter on Esther the Wonder Pig is one of my favorites. It describes a brilliant campaign to get Esther’s millions of followers directly, financially, involved in her life when she was faced with a medical emergency. Peter Singer, in his lack of wisdom, weighed in with a column criticizing the effort because all that money could do far more good than helping just one animal.
But in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini describes fascinating psychology studies from which we can extrapolate that if we want to turn Esther's admirers into committed pig people, asking them for $10 to help her, and letting them share responsibility for her progress, is a darn good way to do it. Peter dear, that money was not otherwise about to be donated to charity. And based on the studies in Cialdini’s book, we know that each doner’s next $10 wasn't going to be spent on a bacon sandwich.
Effective Altruism may be helpful for fields that most people already acknowledge matter - human life, for example. And it may work in the field of basic animal welfare, within the framework of humans having the right to breed, own, and kill animals. But for those of us trying to change the way society views our fundamental relationship with other species - by influencing the media for example, as DawnWatch does - Effective Altruism calculations can be deadly, as they ignore the Tipping Point influence of activism that directly affects smaller numbers but can have a powerful effect on society.
Peter Singer's dedication to that field, and his ability to attract animal advocacy donors to its biometrics, has bogged our movement down in welfare reforms when true change was on the horizon.
Please know that I support welfare reforms. I don't know how anybody could look at a photo of a sow living in a coffin-sized gestation crate and not want to get her out of it, even if it's only into a bleak and overcrowded communal pen. Plus, just as importantly, welfare campaigns show the shocking suffering caused by our food system; they wake people up. But seeing the bulk of animal advocacy funding flowing in that direction is distressing, and we have Peter Singer to thank for much of that flow.
A PASS FOR CONSCIENTIOUS OMNIVORES
That flow is probably no accident given that during his current book tour Peter Singer told the Guardian, that "conscientious omnivores" can "get a pass" if it can be shown that the animals bred and killed for their meat didn't suffer.
One of my mentors taught me that when faced with an ethical question on animal rights, it is always useful to ask what the answer would be if we were talking about humans. I use that guideline with questions of welfare: of course we would strive to get humans better conditions on death row, even if they shouldn't be there. And I use it with questions such as this one about conscientious omnivorism. Would we say it's okay to raise and slaughter humans for food, as long as they don't suffer?
Again, Singer's argument, this time about conscious omnivorism, is not entirely unreasonable, but coming from somebody currently speaking on behalf of our movement it is dispiriting. We should not have to argue about the worth of animal life against somebody promoting Animal Liberation Now.
INFANTICIDE, AND THE WORTH OF HUMAN LIFE
When one reads a headline such as "Peter Singer says there is no reason to say humans have more worth or moral status than animals" one expects an uplifting argument against harming other animals. But Singer's argument does not uplift animals so much as it downgrades some humans. In that Guardian interview I cite above he says, "Defenders of speciesism argue that humans have a special rational nature that sets them apart from animals, but the problem is where that leaves infants and the profoundly intellectually disabled."
Singer argues that parents should have the right to euthanize severely disabled newborns.
In his exquisitely written and profoundly influential book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, Matthew Scully, who wrote the book while serving as a senior speechwriter for President George W Bush, chastised Singer's stand on infanticide. In my otherwise glowing review of Scully's book, I defended Singer and wrote that I was appalled by Scully's lines: "In the same way, animal liberationists who turn to Peter Singer for guidance must ask themselves how we can protect vulnerable animals from the caprice of man if we do not protect vulnerable people, the sick, the aged, the newborn and the unborn -- how it is possible to love cats and dogs and baby seals if we do not love the most innocent and defenseless of human beings."
I am ashamed that I defended Singer. In 2002 I was a new and strong activist, but also a lost young woman who had been seduced by her hero, unaware of how ethically problematic that situation was, and unaware that I was one of many women in it. As I think people wiser than I know, a sexual relationship can severely cloud one’s judgment. (Those surprised to learn both of that relationship and my sexual harassment suit should know that having acquiesced under professional pressure does not preclude such a suit.)
Singer argues his infanticide stance logically, but it is likely to send chills up many spines. It is an association our movement could do without.
THE PERMISSABILITY OF ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
In Thanking the Monkey, I acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree on whether it’s ever okay to experiment on animals to save human life. I suggest we focus instead on the vast majority of animal experiments, which bring us better oven cleaner, or drugs that work for an extra hour or two. Let's tackle the issues on which every decent person would agree. In our tribal society, people may not appreciate the nuance involved in accepting that something might be a reasonable view, while not personally supporting that view. Of course, I am personally against deadly animal testing, even for the purpose of saving human life, because I believe in a circle of line rather than a hierarchy of life, and don’t see other species as expendable objects here for our use.
Peter Singer, however, has said that animal experimentation is justified if the good done to others outweighs the harm inflicted on the animals, even making that point with regard to terminal primate research. That's the utilitarian way of looking at the world. While I acknowledge there may be reasonable people who agree, who should not be shouted down or shamed, especially given that they may currently be in the majority, I am sorry to see one of them trying to carry the torch for the animal liberation movement.
The Los Angeles Times columnist, Robin Acarian, recently asked, "Can there be anything humane about causing animals to suffer, even if it’s for the good of humanity?" In a follow-up piece she wrote, "I look forward to the day we stop using sentient beings in laboratory experiments. We must find ways of improving the health of human beings without harming or killing other living creatures."
Can we have more Robin Abcarian and less Peter Singer on animal testing, please?
PETER SINGER'S DIET
During our recent health crisis Peter Singer wrote that hospital beds should be denied to those who chose not to get a certain shot. While one can reasonably argue that people should accept the consequences of their choices, everybody knows that a fast-food diet leads to heart disease and diabetes. Yet Singer never suggested that those whose diets had led to those comorbidities should be denied hospital beds, even though such a policy might have encouraged millions to go vegan. How sad to see such a strong stand on shots and weak stand on meat from the author of Animal Liberation Now.
But then Peter Singer is in no ethical position to discuss diet on behalf of our movement.
It is probably impossible to be totally vegan in this society – car tires aren’t even vegan – so we must all draw our own lines. Eating animals, however, is well beyond the cheat level of most people who would consider themselves to be part of the animal rights movement. Yet in his most recent Guardian interview, Singer announces that he has no objection to eating oysters because he doesn’t think they can suffer.
Anybody tempted to agree with Singer that oysters, and other mollusks he eats (he once wrote me that he had ordered mussels rather than be “stuck” with bread and salad) should read Ed Yong's extraordinary book, An Immense World, which I mentioned above. From that book I learned what I had already suspected, that humans can barely fathom the way other animals experience the world, with senses far more impressive than ours.
A thoughtful and thorough analysis of the subject of eating bivalves, on the AnimalEthics.org site, tells us that “some bivalves have simple eyes,” that “mussels have aversive responses to cold water, and produce morphine….in response to muscle damage,” and also “alter their responses according to differing danger levels… such as the smell of a predator which causes them to close their shells.” It tells us that “Scallops have been found to show increased heart rates in response to cues from predators” and that while older bivalves are generally stationary, young bivalves swim. The section ends with, “What we do know is that there is an enormous amount of possible suffering at stake. Given the possible sentience of these animals, the most prudent course of action appears to be to err on the side of caution and not harm them.”
Can we persuade the author of Animal Liberation Now to demonstrate and advise such prudence?
Not only does Peter Singer eat some animals, he notes, "Also, if I am out somewhere where it’s a real problem, I will go for something vegetarian. That my everyday purchases are vegan is the main thing."
Being vegan at home, in other words with one's everyday purchases, while being loser in restaurants, is the advice I offered in Thanking the Monkey, my 2008 book aimed squarely at people with a concern for animals but little knowledge of what they go through, written in the hope of getting them to start to question our right to use animals as we do. I sure didn't recommend it for people committed to our movement, who are calling themselves leaders of it.
APPROPRIATING WOMEN’S VOICES
I have “co-written” many newspaper pieces with Peter Singer over the years, to which he contributed no more than a decent editor, yet put his name first on each piece.
In 2016, a new editor at the Los Angeles Times asked Peter Singer for a piece on whether taking half-measures, such as giving up chicken and fish, could cause more harm than good. Singer brought me on as a cowriter but rejected my first draft. I overhauled the piece according to his direction. When the editor rejected our submission, reiterating her first request, Singer responded, "We did in fact draft a broader piece at first, more like what you are suggesting...." at which point I restored the piece and the editor expressed delight that we "had this alternative version handy."
Singer's contribution to that piece was little more than a line noting that "pound for pound chicken is responsible for less environmental degradation than beef," a line I resisted as superfluous to a piece on cruelty. As Singer held firm I added, "a diet that is responsible for hundreds of times more suffering is not made ethical by producing a lower level of greenhouse gas emissions." Thankfully, Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns responded with a published letter that spelled out "the poultry industry’s baleful effect on the environment."
When the editor asked whose byline should go first, Singer acknowledged privately to me that I had done the bulk of the work – twice - but said that because his name was more recognizable, the piece would be more widely read and thus be better for animals if his went first. I am embarrassed to admit that under such pressure, for animals’ sake, I acquiesced.
When a famous man, only tangentially involved in our movement at the time, puts his name on the work of women devoted to it, and puts his name first, he continues to get writing assignments on animal issues, as editors view him as the leading voice. But it's not his voice. We are currently hearing his actual voice on his book tour - a voice for animal welfare but not rights, for some animal experimentation, and for eating animal products and even some animals when veganism is inconvenient.
One might argue it was better for animals when I and other women were writing for him! But here's the problem: that perpetuates the patriarchy, and that is bad for animals. Studies show that women are far more likely than men to be vegetarian or vegan and to be members of animal welfare and animal rights organizations. The standing of animals is directly related to the standing of women in society.
I treasure a text from Gloria Steinem regarding my suit against Singer that ended with, "I send encouragement and gratitude for standing up to a patriarch." Though Gloria’s first concern is women's rights, I pray my stand will ultimately help animals.
SEXUAL HARRASSMENT CLAIM AGAINST PETER SINGER
My sexual harassment claim against Peter Singer, filed in the Santa Barbara court, alleges that he slept with dozens of women from the animal rights movement in the last few decades, and handed out prestigious paid co-writing assignments, in the period covered by the claim (2002-2020), to women only with whom he had been sexually involved or was trying to be and that he professionally punished women who did not condone his behavior. I was professionally punished at exactly the time that I stopped pretending to condone it. I and other women caught in his web were gravely harmed. I am ashamed to admit that for almost two decades I stuffed down my discomfort with his conduct in order to receive the professional aid he had unique power to give.
All of this was while he headed up the ethics department at Princeton University.
I originally filed my claim, last year, under "Intentional infliction of emotional distress" because I was unaware that California Civil Code Section 51.9 allows for Sexual Harassment claims outside of traditional employment scenarios. The first amended complaint rightly included Sexual Harassment, which is hard not to see when one looks at the list of his female "co-authors" during the period in question and sees a list of his sexual endeavors and conquests, unless one judges the correlation pure coincidence.
The Santa Barbara court has ruled against my sexual harassment claim and decided that Singer’s “vulgar and offensive” language during a private conversation at a 2018 fundraising dinner was not “severe harassing conduct,” and that a 2020 letter in which he demeaned my work and quit the DawnWatch board “contained nothing that could possible construed as sexual harassment,” and so my case fell outside the statute of limitations. I have formally objected, and will appeal, because I believe it will be clear to a jury, based on the discussions Singer and I were having right before his walk-out and his letter, both of which were profoundly professionally punishing, that they were retaliation (“retaliation” components having been addressed in Judd vs Weinstein, 2020) for my refusal to continue to overlook the grave harm caused by his sexually outrageous conduct and the related, pervasive, abuse of power. Whether the professional harms he inflicted were retaliatory elements of my sexual harassment suit is a triable matter for a jury, not a matter for dismissal of the claim at this stage.
I suffered from a lack of legal representation as I argued against Singer’s highly experienced law firm. The upside to a loss at this level is that an appeal will be taken up by a higher court, at the state level, and become part of California case law. If you know a lawyer admitted in California who might be interested in this case, knowing I have 5,000 emails between myself and Peter Singer that back up everything I claim in the suit, please reach out.
This case has been taxing, of course, but I could not continue to be silent with that silence tacitly covering for horrendous behavior. I have seen men who have devoted their lives to our movement virtually kicked out of it for allegations of misdeeds no greater than Peter Singer's. I saw a friend whose contributions to our movement have been stunning, who has no sexual harassment allegations against him, deprived of a speaking spot at the Animal & Vegan Advocacy Summit due to a suggestion that he had enabled an offender. No matter how one views those circumstances, one must see the bitter irony in Peter Singer delivering the 2022 keynote address at that conference. I understand that the organizers did not know that for the last few decades Peter Singer has been treating our movement like his personal harem and was, at the time of the conference, fighting that claim in court. Now they know.
ANIMAL LIBERATION NOW
It’s painful to see Peter Singer back out there in the media this month, under the banner of Animal Liberation Now.
Animal Liberation Now is Alexandra Paul and Alecia Santurio, risking their freedom to establish the “right to rescue” two hens, and rejecting deals for reduced sentences, with Alexandra Paul stating, “When I think about the consequences for me, they are minimal compared to what the animals are going through.'"
It’s DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung successfully arguing in court for the women's acquittal, after he and Paul Darwin Picklesimer were acquitted in a similar case in Utah, about which Hsiung wrote in the New York Times, "Perhaps the jury verdict in our case is a sign that more people are rethinking whether their diets should include meat.” Notice he wrote “meat,” not “less meat.” How perfect that the group attributes its open rescue inspiration to Australian activist Patty Mark, of Animal Liberation Victoria (ALV), far less famous singer than Singer but widely credited with pioneering the open rescue field.
Animal Liberation Now is DxE’s extraordinarily articulate and fun communications director, Cassie King, standing before a city council for a “right to rescue” resolution.
It’s that message being carried by the folks at Elwood’s Organic Dog Meat, who playfully remind us that there is some insanity in calling oneself an animal lover, while continuing to eat animals, no matter how they are farmed and killed.
Animal Liberation Now is the female founded nonprofit Fish Feel, which devotes itself to the horrors inflicted on those magical beings and never uses the pronoun “it” on them, or refers to “good evidence that fish can feel pain” as if there is still any doubt.
It’s smart activism, rather than effective altruism, and includes working full force on freeing Lolita, the orca who has been stuck at Miami’s Seaquarium for fifty years. She is just one animal, but smart activists understand that one animal can grab the imagination of a nation and change our relationship with a species, or genus, and eventually the whole animal kingdom.
Animal Liberation Now is the movie “Guardian of the Galaxy III” making sure a generation grows up with the message that animal testing is just plain wrong – not wrong sometimes, depending on how greatly humans think they might benefit from it.
It’s the bipartisan organization White Coat Waste Project, towing our cause out of the far-left lane where it has been parked and ignored for too long, a topic I covered in my 2015 article in The Progressive,
“Making Animal Protection a Political Issue.”
It’s the bipartisan team of Rand Paul and Cory Booker pushing arguably the most significant advance against animal testing in US history, the FDA Modernization Act, which ended the archaic requirement for animal testing on all new drugs. That Act passed the Senate unanimously - in our current political climate! Only with bipartisan efforts will we see significant change for animals.
Animal Liberation Now is the extraordinary contribution made by Canadian writer Jessica Scott-Reid, who isn't jetting around the world giving talks and picking up prizes but whose input and output has been stunning when it comes to media discussions of animal rights issues.
It’s the devout yogi and celebrity magnet Sharon Gannon of the Jivamukti International Yoga School, insisting that animal rights are a fundamental part of the curriculum there.
Animal Liberation Now is saucy Pinky Cole and her "Slu*ty Vegan" restaurants (asterisked for spam filter's sake) taking the world by storm, and it’s musician Denai Moore’s new cookbook, Plentiful: Vegan Jamaican recipes to Repeat touted on the front page of the Washington Post, while vegan sushi, brought to us by dancer Yoko Hasebe, is covered in the Los Angeles Times and then announced on front pages of McClatchy newspapers across the country.
Those last victories indicate that for too long we have been avoiding the word vegan because “plant-based” has better connotations. Without faulting those who use “plant-based,” let’s reclaim the word vegan and change the connotations. We have all heard the joke:
Question: How do you know there’s a vegan in the room?
Answer: They will tell you.
If only that were true! We need to up the frequency and volume of our sharing, while we significantly soften the tone.
That brief list leaves out so many brilliant activists working passionately and tirelessly for animal rights.
Let’s hang the “Animal Liberation Now” banner over the activists who stand for it. It doesn’t fit a man who wrote a great book in 1975, but in the first two decades of this century has kept his hand in our movement, so to speak, substantially by putting his name on the work of women with whom he has been sexually involved, a man who isn’t even vegetarian, and who currently, in the media, calls only for meat reduction and better treatment of the animals we farm for food.
Peter Singer can have animal welfare now, climate change now, or effective altruism now. I would have liked to have added sexual predation now, but as noted above, a Santa Barbara Court has ruled against my claim of sexual harassment. I expect a higher court, taking the retaliatory component of the claim into account, will reverse that ruling so that the case can proceed.
Our quest for Animal Liberation Now, a quest for justice and compassion, cannot be led by a heavily compromised man who stands, at best, for animal liberation now and then.
Yours and all animals',
Karen Dawn of DawnWatch
