NEWSANIMAL LAW

Continued from part 1, "Breaking Unjust Laws: Clarence Darrow and Inherit the Wind."

In his essay "Theory of Non-Resistance," Clarence Darrow wrote, "In modern society the controlling forces arrange things as they want them, and provide that certain things are criminal." And in our society, where the majority do not object to oppression of and violence toward our fellow animals -- and indeed, where many even profit from, and much of society is based on, that oppression and violence -- that translates into unjust laws protecting violence and criminalizing, of all things, acts of compassion. Exploitation, abuse, and killing are accepted; rescue, investigation, and free speech opposing the oppression can be prosecuted.

One of my favorite quotations from Darrow fits well with his "controlling forces" statement and is oh-so-relevant for the animal rights movement (and much else) in today's climate:

Note: This is the first part of a two-part post.

Several years ago, on some random television-surfing weekend, I happened upon an old black-and-white movie I'd never seen. I don't remember why I stopped to watch, but I do clearly remember how it blew me away, how I found myself wanting to clap and cheer for attorney Henry Drummond as his portrayer Spencer Tracy delivered a brilliant performance, full of powerful oratory.

This new favorite -- Inherit the Wind (1960), based on a stage play, based loosely on the Scopes monkey trial (the parallels are impossible to miss, but the drama is nevertheless heavily fictionalized at times) -- was a simply remarkable film; I couldn't get enough of it. And Spencer Tracy's superb portrayal of Drummond, the film's fictionalized Clarence Darrow, from whom the playwrights borrowed some of the lines given to Drummond, renewed my interest in the real-life late 19th- to early 20th-century lawyer. So what, you ask, do Inherit the Wind and Clarence Darrow have to do with animal rights? Plenty.

I'm sending you elsewhere this afternoon. First, to my friend over at For the Pit Bulls. She has written a post that is in part a response to the TIME article that I recently read as well, which asks, "Can Attack Dogs Be Rehabilitated?" Regardless of whether you read that article, do at least read my pal's response. It choked me up. But I am glad I read it. And it deserves to be read. (One point I'd add relates to the flaws in the TIME article, one of which was the writer's insistence on referring to individual dogs as "it" rather than "he" or "she." That's a topic that's long deserved a post all of its own.)

Then, mosey on over to Green Is the New Red. Will has a post up about yet another laughable-if-it-weren't-so-scary development in the government's and industries' infuriating characterization of (and efforts to intimidate and criminalize) the animal rights movement. Are you ready? PETA has now been listed by the USDA as a "terrorist" threat. Whatever you think of PETA, its tactics, and its positions, the idea of it as "terrorist" group is off-the-charts ridiculous. Read more from Will here. Seems we just can't get enough Green Scare- and AETA-related news these days.

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Photo (mine) shows Mabel the pit bull looking back at me with her break-my-heart "I want to plaaaay" expression as she watches the dogs next door play with each other -- and with the toy she wants.

Well, isn't this just lovely. Men out looking for bears to kill in northern Pennsylvania trespassed on another gun owner's land on Tuesday, and sometime after the latter man confronted the hunters, there was a shoot-out. The 63-year-old landowner (for the record, I hate this word and concept, but that's another matter entirely) is dead. And the 23-year-old who was on the other end of the shoot-out was injured.

Violence breeds violence. It's a lot easier to kill your fellow humans when you're already in the habit of killing -- and when you're toting around lethal weapons for the purpose of killing.

And what else can result from hunters defiantly trespassing in their search for animals to kill? The property owners who try to stop them, even just verbally, can be arrested under hunter harassment laws. And no, I'm not kidding.

Once again, if you're an activist for anything or anyone in an area that challenges the status quo, it's time to be nervous, angry, and loud about what's happening in this country. A little over a week ago, I briefly told you about the two Minneapolis animal rights activists who were jailed in Iowa ("Activists Jailed for Refusing to Testify Before Grand Jury"). A few days later, Will Potter of Green Is the New Red wrote in detail about what came next. If you did not follow the link in the latest roundup, read that post now: "Minneapolis Activist Indicted for Conspiracy to Violate Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act."

As Will noted, the indictment of Scott DeMuth under the AETA "marks a continued expansion of the scope of the new terrorism law," using "terrorism" to describe an alleged conspiracy not to kill or cause physical harm, but to cause economic damage.

This week, we've been reminded yet again of just how outrageous this all is.

Two Twin Cities activists have been jailed on contempt charges in Davenport, Iowa, for refusing to cooperate with a federal grand jury investigation into, it is believed, an action taken at a University of Iowa laboratory in 2004. The two were offered limited immunity but still refused to testify about (again, presumably) a break-in that involved  vandalism and the rescue of numerous rats and mice. The Minneapolis/St. Paul Star-Tribune and the Quad-City Times have picked up the story.

A "Support Carrie and Scott" blog has been set up where you can read more, including statements from the recently jailed activists themselves. I'll post more on what fellow activists can do to offer support as the situation unfolds.

Seems like a good time to direct activists again to the Center for Constitutional Rights' If An Agent Knocks booklet.

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Photo by Flickr user bloomsberries

Utah is full of unpleasant animal news these days, from the upcoming protest issues mentioned yesterday to the University of Utah undercover laboratory investigation (which we've yet to discuss here) to this: yesterday a U.S. district judge rejected a plea bargain made between the prosecution and a defendant animal rights activist who released several hundred minks last year -- because he believed the plea deal didn't punish the defendant enough for "terrorizing" the man who makes his money terrorizing (no quotation marks) animals.

So what did defendant William Viehl do? Did he try to kill someone? Burn down the owner's house? Hold him hostage at gunpoint? Poison his water supply?  Because you'd think he would have had to do something like that for the judge to insist the fur farmer had been "terrorized." Of course, Viehl did no such things. He and his codefendant released animals and spray-painted a barn. He cost the so-called victim money.

This morning, I learned for the first time of the Service Dogs for Veterans Act, a bill cosponsored by Senator Al Franken and described by OpenCongress.org as "a bill to require the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to carry out a pilot program to assess the feasibility and advisability of using service dogs for the treatment or rehabilitation of veterans with physical or mental injuries or disabilities, and for other purposes." A related provision was recently passed as part of the Defense Authorization Bill.

The details aren't terribly clear -- I've seen variations from place to place -- but a Minnesota Public Radio report summarized it thus: "The Veterans Administration would develop partnerships with organizations that provide disabled veterans with service dogs." Other sources have indicated that the "effectiveness" of the program will be studied, with possible expansion to come. One dog blog post, published a couple months before the legislation passed, indicated that "half the service dogs will be for veterans with mental health disabilities and the other half will help those with physical disabilities," but I haven't been able to determine yet whether those specifics and others made it into the final legislation.

The issue of nonhuman animals, dogs in most cases, as "service" animals for humans is not a black-and-white one in the animal rights community. On one hand, it can be argued that using animals in this way is just that -- using them and further building on our view of them as tools. On the other hand is the common argument that the dogs can benefit from the relationship as well and can be well loved and cared for, just as they would be in a home in which they're not also service-providers.

President Obama's record on animal issues in his first year in office has been less than inspiring, including his decisions to give responsibility for protecting animals in his administration to decidedly un-animal-friendly people (Sam Hamilton to head the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior, for example) and, on a more personal level, his unfortunate failure to set an example that could have benefited shelter dogs.

And the Center for Biological Diversity has just weighed in on an administration report regarding candidates for endangered species protections. Obama's administration, the Center reports, has identified "a total of 249 species in need of protection." So what's the problem?

The review also describes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s progress in listing these species, showing that the administration has, to date, only listed one species – a Hawaiian plant reduced to a handful of individuals.

“This review shows that the Obama administration has not substantially improved the dismal record of the Bush administration in providing protection to the nation’s critically endangered wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Protection of only one species in 10 months reflects a failure to enact substantial reforms in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”

Please read more here.

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Photo of juvenile yellow-billed loon retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

I've got good news -- at least if you're a domestic cat in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and some other California cities, that is. But there's no shortage of bad (and baffling) news too, on the very same front. First, the good: last night, San Francisco's proposed ban on declawing cats won 9 out of 11 votes from the city's supervisors; on Monday, the Public Safety Committee of the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to ask City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to draft an ordinance banning the practice; and in late October, the Santa Monica City Council passed a ban.

But the United States and Canada overall are still embarrasingly behind other countries in this area, and despite progress in California, a veterinary "welfare" organization in the state just managed to pass a law that will make it illegal for municipalities to pass any further such bans as of January 2010. The people behind the bans? Actual advocates for cats. The people behind the law to stop the bans? The California Veterinary Medical Association, a chip off the good ol' un-animal-friendly American Veterinary Medical Association block.