A n i m a l W r i t
e s
© sm
The official
ANIMAL RIGHTS ONLINE newsletter
Publisher
~ EnglandGal@aol.com Issue # 05/31/00
Editor ~ JJswans@aol.com
Journalists ~ PrkStRangr@aol.com
~ MRivera008@aol.com
~ SavingLife@aol.com
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE ARE:
1
~ Speak Louder! by
Michelle Rivera (MRivera008@aol.com)
2 ~ Delmarva Chicken Festival Protest United Poultry Concerns
3
~ VegPledge from Jeff
Nelson
4
~ Remember, It's the Individual
That Counts
by Linda J. Howard
(jhoward@erols.com)
5
~ SoyStache Links
6
~ Poem: Emily Dickenson
7
~ Quote to Remember by Joe Namath
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Speak Louder!
by Michelle
Rivera
(MRivera008@aol.com)
So
you have gone vegetarian and you attend all the animal-rights demonstragtions
in your area, good for you! You have
"educated" your friends ad nauseum with all kinds of graphic
descriptions of slaughter houses and battery farms, puppy mills and steel-jaw
leghold traps, excellent!
You have learned to use your computer
to find information and send the news to friends all over the country, and you
even joined PeTA, HSUS and the Farm Animal Reform Movement. You are on your way to being a very
effective activist! But there is one
tool that, if you aren't using it, you may as well go back to your "old
ways."
Your right to vote. Now wait!
Before you decide that this is one of those "do the responsible
thing" articles, like the articles we see on wearing our seat belts, replacing
our fire-alarm batteries and performing routine self-breast exams, hold
on. While seat belts, fire alarms and
breast exams may save OUR life, exercising your right to vote may save the life
of an animal.
Got your attention now, don't I?
When you read your action alerts and
follow the instructions to "write your senator" about pending
legislation, you are doing the animals a great service. However, if you cannot honestly start out
your letter with the words "Dear Senator, I am a registered voter in your
district," your letter may be falling on deaf ears. Unless you have the power to put a person in
office, or get 'em out, you are powerless.
Exercising your right to vote won't just get your legislators attention,
it will help us put people in power that can help the animals. Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Joseph Biden
and Congressman Peter Deutsch are all people who have sponsored very important
legislation on behalf of the animals.
Who gave them that power? We
did. Voters. And if you aren't a registered voter, you are not using your
voice in the manner most effective for the animals.
So do it. Become a registered voter.
The NRA's enormous power comes from the fact that they are a huge voting
block. Here is a link to make it very,
very easy for you. Keep informed, keep
interested, and keep voting.
http://election2000.aol.com/cgi-bin/webreturn.pl?dir=aol&link=
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Delmarva Chicken Festival Protest
Activists! We Need You at the Chicken
Festival!
ACTION
ALERT FROM UNITED POULTRY CONCERNS
Please join United Poultry Concerns in
a protest demonstration at the Delmarva Chicken Festival on Saturday, June 10,
in Berlin, Maryland, near Ocean City on the Eastern Shore, from 12 Noon to 5
PM. We need you to help us table, leaflet, hold banners, and carry signs at
this annual Delmarva Festival of Death sponsored by the poultry industry. This
will be our 10th year protesting at this horrible festival.
Action: Delmarva Chicken Festival Protest
Date: Saturday, June 10
Place: Main Street, Berlin, MD (a little town on
the Eastern Shore)
Time: 12 Noon to 5 PM
Directions: From Salisbury, MD, take
US-50 East towards Ocean city and drive 19 miles. Turn right on MD-346 and
drive 2.2 miles. Turn right onto MD-818 and drive 1 mile into downtown
Berlin. Look for signs to the Delmarva
Chicken Festival. Plan to car pool from
your area. For information about car pooling from Washington, DC, call Franklin
at 301-564-9164 or email franklin@upc-online.org.
Thank you for Sticking Up for Chickens!
We
look forward to seeing you!
For
Information contact:
Karen Davis - Tel: 757-678-7875
Franklin Wade - Email:
franklin@upc-online.org
The Moment You Turn Your Back You Are
Involved
United
Poultry Concerns - http://www.upc-online.org
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VegPledge
First tested two years ago by EarthSave
Louisville, EarthSave International officially unveiled a new program last week
to support its mission of helping create a more healthy, compassionate planet
-- the VegPledge!
http://www.vegpledge.com
EarthSave began publicizing the website
a little over a week ago and has already had 1,000 people take the pledge! On Friday alone, 200 people took the
VegPledge online -- including enthusiastic people from the US, the UK,
Australia, Europe and Asia, all making a promise to go veg for the next 60
days.
30
people signed up last week to help Spread the Pledge -- by distributing
materials and getting others to sign up.
The VegPledge is also for people who
are veg and want some help going vegan (take the vegan VegPledge!).
As
part of the program, EarthSave is giving away FREE a 36-page veg starter kit --
the Healthy Beginnings Care Package -- chock full of the latest nutritional
information (with thanks to Brenda Davis, RD), as well as a brief discussion of
the many great reasons to go veg, recipes, and tips for transition and
shopping. There are also other goodies,
like free Vegetarian Times magazine issues and a great VegPledge tee-shirt --
ALL FREE!
With Kevin Nealon (of Saturday Night
Live) endorsing the VP, it's an ideal vehicle to get those friends and family
members who need just a little help to experience the joy of going veg! Soon the 50-some EarthSave chapters
(including those in Canada, Australia and Asia) will be moving forward on the
ground to bring many new meat-eaters into the veg fold.
If you have a website, please consider
helping promote the VegPledge by putting up a banner ad (see
http://www.vegpledge.com/promote.htm ) and you can help others discover and
take the VegPledge -- for all the right reasons!
Source: Jeff Nelson
<headveg@vegsource.org>
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Remember, It's the Individual
That Counts
by
ljhoward@erols.com (Linda J. Howard)
20629-F. Standing alone it is doubtful that those six
characters evoke much empathy from anyone.
Perhaps it would mean more if you realized what the characters 20629-F
represent...
That's the identification number on the
Primate Freedom Tag of the rhesus macaque (born on June 30th 1980) at the
California Regional Primate Research Center who I sponsor. I named her "Faith" because
to me, and though I've never met her, I consider her an individual being and
not a number. The name "Faith"
was chosen because I believe it is essential that we, as advocates and
activists, keep the faith that our efforts will someday result in liberation
for Faith (aka # 20629-F) and thousands of other individuals in
laboratories.
If you have ever met a monkey in a
"research" facility, or one who has been retired from life as a
"tool for research," you may have noticed a number tattooed on
him/her. It is much easier to
desensitize and be detached from the individual if one refers to the individual
by an arbitrary number rather than a personal name; thus in laboratories, it is
much easier to inflict pain on them when one is detached and desensitized from
the fact that a living, feeling being is the subject at one's hands.
As
animal protection proponents, we are careful not to use numbers and labels
which remove references to the sentiency of the individuals. However,
inadvertently, we do it all the time in a different way. Many of our campaigns are focused on groups
comprised of numbers of animals. Though the individual animals are not being
referred to as specific numbers (as is the case in laboratory environments,)
when we read "12,000 mink"; "421 monkeys"; "500,000
rats", a similar detachment from the fact that these numbers represent
individuals often occurs.
I just had the honor of spending a week
volunteering at the Texas Snow Monkey Sanctuary. Keeping in line with appreciation of individuals, rather than
writing a scientific-type essay about the social structure of snow macaques, or
the assimilation process for captive baboons, I want to provide an introduction
to some of the wonderful individuals I met at the sanctuary.
First a little background: The Texas Snow Monkey Sanctuary is located
on 186 acres of desert scrub land near Dilley Texas (approximately 80 miles
south of San Antonio and an equal distance north of the Mexico border.) The sanctuary has two large enclosures
surrounded by state-of-the-art, high-voltage electric fences.
The smaller five acre enclosure is home
to over 30 snow macaques, twelve vervets and 19 cats. [Yes, cats! As far as
humans are concerned, the cats are "feral" and unapproachable but as
amazing as it may seem, the cats are the companion "pets" to the
monkeys. The monkeys play chase with the cats and cuddle up with them at
night. I've seen this monkey-cat
rapport for years but I always find it almost unbelievable.] The larger 65 acre enclosure contains 316+
(depending on expected births which may have occurred this week) snow macaques.
Most all of the macaques are
descendants of a troop relocated by necessity from Japan to Texas in 1972. A few of the snow macaques are former
"pets" who became uncontrollable or ones who were retired or rescued
from "research." Half of the
vervets are former "pets" who were relinquished or abandoned and the
other half were previously used in laboratory experiments.
The Texas Snow Monkey Sanctuary is a
magical place. The monkeys have proven
to have survival skills for coping with all the South Texas fauna and flora,
including predators and dangers which would not be instinctive or innate for
their species. The monkeys have adapted
beautifully to the former unfamiliar environment, even developing new alarm
calls for various dangers. It is the
closest thing I've ever witnessed to allowing captive monkeys to live freely.
After every visit to TSMS, I've said
that I could just pitch a tent in one of the enclosures and live there happily
(the monkeys never cease to amaze me); though I doubt I'd adapt as quickly as
the snow macaques and vervets have. A
rattlesnake would probably have me for lunch before I caught on to the alarm
call the monkeys created and fully understand to indicate the presence of
rattlesnakes. In fact, it was the fifth day I was in Dilley when I
"discovered" that there are scorpions indigenous to the area! [The "discovery" was not an
academic one, but rather when Lou Griffin picked up a scorpion half an inch
from my shoe and nonchalantly said, "Look, a little scorpion." After
my initial panic attack, I was paranoidly aware of the presence of scorpions
and kept a watchful eye for scorpions for the duration of the visit.]
Only a few monkeys at TSMS are caged in
traditional (but spacious and enriched) enclosures. These are the newcomers who are learning to become monkeys so
they can be introduced into the free-ranging colonies. The sanctuary has never had a monkey who
could not be fully rehabilitated with enough time and patience, regardless of
how much "humanization"; abuse, or neglect the monkey experienced in
a previous situation. The official
motto of the sanctuary is "Humans don't help... Humans don't
hurt..." The monkeys pay almost no
attention to humans who are in their free-ranging enclosures. Why should they? They have plenty of monkey socializing and monkey politics to
attend to and (YAWN), from their point of view and in the greater scheme of
things, humans are pretty boring.
That is until feeding time!
I've
often heard humans comment that monkeys are "grubby" [well, it may be
true but I prefer to say "focused on sustenance"] because they do
indeed enjoy their food. The second day
of my visit to TSMS, a young vervet in the smaller mixed enclosure jumped from
a tree into the bucket I was feeding treats from -- right into the bucket! Everyone who knows me well knows my longtime
affinity for vervets but I couldn't let him stay in the bucket. Unfortunately,
that looked like an excellent idea to a couple of adolescent macaques and
before I could figure out what to do with the precocious little vervet, the
little macaques were trying to secure a place in the bucket too! I had no choice but to "dump" them
out, salvaging all the food I could.
Well, they all started screaming bloody-murder because they didn't get
their way and a bunch of adult macaques came to the rescue. "Yipes!,"
I thought as they approached! But then, the Mamma macaques just reprimanded the
youngsters (as all good mothers do.)
One
of the adult females stayed by my side the rest of the time and (sometimes
standing semi bi-pedally, holding on to my pant leg,) she "protected"
me from any trouble-seeking youngsters who were harassing me (that's a favorite
game to the fearless and rebellious little ones) and ones who were trying to
"steal" food. I never had a
chance to point her out to Lou (Lou Griffin, the dedicated and hardworking
Executive Director of TSMS who knows each and every monkey by name upon sight)
to find out her name, but I can tell you that she is one dynamo monkey who I'll
never forget! I sneaked a caramel to
her that evening and gave her a little wink.
In typical macaque style, she just kept a stoic look on her face and
gracefully ate the caramel. We're pals
forever now! She protected me every day
I worked in the smaller enclosure and I tried to give her a token "Thank
you" treat every day.
My favorite part of this visit to Texas
Snow Monkey Sanctuary was getting to meet the ten newly arrived baboons. The baboons were retired from 11 years of
vascular "research" at Boston University Medical College. They were wild caught in Africa as very
young baboons and before arriving at TSMS in mid-April, none had seen or heard
other baboons since their capture. I
spent hours "socializing" them so they'll be prepared for
assimilation as a group in the 5 acre enclosure being built for them. I talked to them (part baboon talk and part
English); assured them they wouldn't be harmed, fed them lots of good food
several times a day. Sometimes I would
be so happy that The Big Boys (as we began to affectionately call them) are no
longer in danger and are beginning to trust and show the appreciation they
feel, that I'd cry. It was a happy cry of course... I hope all the animals in
labs now can be so lucky someday and be afforded the opportunity for a peaceful
life out of harm's way.
The
Big Boys learned quickly that I was not trying to trick them or harm them. After a few days, most of them began
grooming me or letting me groom them (especially the latter, which is most
common behavior for male baboons -- being on the receiving end of grooming.)
They drank from my water glass; licked broken ice cubes from my hand and
readily accepted all the yummy (albeit healthy) treats I brought and hand fed
to them. Every morning, I cooked a
special and nutritious breakfast for them.
[Upon hearing this news, my fiancée commented in an amused way,
"Gee, you never cook for me like that." to which I responded,
"You were never in a lab! Those
guys deserve to be given special attention."]
I'll
try not to write a novel about each of The Big Boys but I would be remiss if I
did not describe each of them and their unique personalities.
Lancelot, Rocky, Joshua and Shaq...
These four are magnificent looking! I
wouldn't hesitate to say that they are the Chippendales of the baboon
kingdom. Lance has the most
beautiful eyes and features, I was immediately infatuated with him (and he's
very gentle.) Rocky has a
powerhouse stature and always a stoic and wise look. Shaq, had he remained in the wild, could have led any
baboon troop with confidence and dignity.
Joshua is still a little shy and reticent about fully trusting
humans but he is slowly coming around as time passes.
O.J., O'Reilly and Jimmy...
These three simply love attention and the only thing they love more than being
doted on is food. Any food. All
food. Jimmy especially never
seemed to tire of eating and smacked his lips and blinked his eyelids quickly
if he thought you had any morsel of food he could be given. And Jimmy would "Thank me"
for the smallest tidbit I gave him by lip smacking and rapidly rubbing my hands
in his. Sweet Jimmy is a slight
little fellow with unattractive, uneven features and a splotchy complexion but
his personality and gregarious nature wins him a special corner in the hearts
of everyone who meets him!
Mr.
Mellow...
He's the largest of The Big Boys, weighing 104 pounds! Though he eats well and
is rather overweight, he's not greedy about food. He eats delicately and would pick and chose what he wanted from
the foods I offered to him. Instead of
hastily stuffing any and all food in his cheek pouches, Mr. Mellow would
make a little pile in front of himself and separate the food items by the order
he wanted to eat them. Mr. Mellow
always ate the crunchy peanut butter on toast sandwiches I gave him exactly
like most humans do, holding it with two hands and sometimes even picking off
the crust and discarding it! [Some of
The Big Boys took the sandwich apart and ate the peanut butter first and then
the bread -- they all had a different method.]
Moe... He has
figured out that someone should be boss and he's decided that he'll take on
that responsibility! He is constantly
testing his effectiveness and engaging in power struggles with everyone,
including humans and dogs! Moe-Moe
(his nickname) comes across as being belligerent but it is all more for show
than legitimate because he forgot to be on guard too often to be taken
seriously. I tried not to let him see
me laugh at his phony pseudo-macho behavior so as not to offend him! He would have taken it very personally and
likely held a grudge.
Curly... Curly
is in a class and category of his own. Curly
is blind. He is also precious by any standards, baboon or otherwise. He responds wonderfully to hearing his name
and begins holding out his hands for whatever you are trying to give him. He gently molds his hands around the food
from one's hand and slowly examines it by feeling and smelling it before
gingerly taking a small bite to make sure it's edible. We're hoping Curly's blindness is
reversible and he will soon be checked out by a team of veterinary
opthalmologists. Keep your fingers crossed!
Blind or sighted, Curly will be given all the TLC he needs to be
a happy and well-adjusted baboon.
Last but definitely not least is Nicki. OK, first, Nicki is not one of The
Big Boys... Instead, she's the only Big Girl (though she's quite petite.) Nicki, who was just introduced to The
Big Boys last weekend, came from a roadside zoo. She had met other monkeys but never baboons. The look on her face when she arrived at The
Big Boys' enclosure was priceless! When
I pointed out Lance (who was sitting on his highest shelf) to Nicki
her eyes completely bugged out and she sat staring in dismay for a long while
before shaking her head and doing a double-take. Nicki was very impressed with her new friends! Unfortunately, for Nicki (who was
very "humanized" and used to being "only baboon," which is
similar to a spoiled only child), the newness wore off quickly. After a couple of days, she was beside
herself in anger over any attention The Big Boys were getting. She screamed and pouted and threw numerous
temper tantrums, vying to get all the attention for Queen Nicki (my
nickname for her.) I am certain that
she will learn to appreciate being a baboon.
It will just take time and it will happen at Nicki's pace without
the adjustment being forced on her.
If I ever win the lottery, I think I'll
start a Foundation that just takes people to our great sanctuaries. I can't believe that if people see all the
wonderful individuals, they could ever harm them. Sure, I'm biased because many of these individuals I am referring
to are personal friends of mine, but I believe it would HAVE TO make people
think twice before inflicting harm on them.
Let
us never forget that each being, large and small -- no matter the species -- is
an individual... a unique, feeling being who is here on this planet living what
is quite possibly the only life that individual will ever have ... as is true
for humans as well.
For
a peaceful kingdom and coexistence for all individuals,
Linda
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SoyStache Links
Check out these links to many things
vegetarian!
http://www.soystache.com/links.htm
Here is just one example of the wealth
of information you will find at this website. Take a look at these physicians
who are advocating a vegetarian diet!:
Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (PCRM): A non-profit organization advocating a vegan
diet supported by over 5,000 physicians and 100,000 laypersons. Excellent
source of information.
http://www.pcrm.org/index.html
William
Harris, MD: The Scientific Basis for Vegetarianism.
http://www.vegsource.com/harris
Michael Klaper, MD: Institute of
Nutrition Education and Research
http://www.vegsource.com/klaper
John
McDougall, MD: McDougall Wellness Center.
http://www.drmcdougall.com
Dean Ornish, MD: Healthy Living
http://www.allhealth.com/ornish/
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Poem
"If we
can stop one heart from breaking,
We shall not
live in vain;
If we can ease
one life the aching,
Or cool one
pain,
Or help one
fainting robin
Unto it's nest
again,
WE shall not
live in vain!"
-- Emily Dickinson
`*³³¤³*´`´`*³:»§«:´*´`´`*³¤³«:*´`³¤³´`³¤³´`³¤³´`³:»«:*´`´`*:»§«:*´`´`*:»«:*³¤³´`³¤³´`³¤³´`*:»³¤³*´`´`*:»§«:³*´`´`*¤³³*'
Quote To Remember
"I have been a vegetarian for a few years. Fred Dryer of the Rams
has been
one for ten years. It shows you
don't need meat to play football."
~ Joe
Namath, football player
«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»§«¤»¥«¤»
Susan
Roghair - EnglandGal@aol.com
Animal Rights
Online
P O Box 7053
Tampa, Fl
33673-7053
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/1395/
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Rights Online=-
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Resource Site
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