Great post.

So "Social change occurs on an incremental pathway", does it, Mr Pacelle?  I recently came across this great quote by Martin Luther King, the message of which I think the animal movement needs to take to heart:

"I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to `order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: `I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a `more convenient season.'

... I had ... hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: `An [sic] Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.' Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively."

Martin Luther King, letter from Birmingham Jail, 16/4/1963: http://www.futureofthebook.org/letterfrombirminghamjail/gravely-disappointed-with-the-white-moderate

What an absolutely fantastic quotation, Jason. Thanks so much for sharing it.

Go Vegetarian, or at least cut down on meat consumption. It takes 10 to 16 pounds of grain to produce just one pound of beef. This is a gross misuse of resource in a World racked by starvation, poverty and Homelessness. Also, the meat industry produces more greenhouse emissions than all the cars on Earth combined. Thank You for reading.

   Yeah, thank all of the wonderful Californians for their support of of prop.2. California's economy will thrive now. Agriculture, organic or commercial will now cost $15 more an acre to farm each year. While the huge slaughter houses, and citrus industry buys mass amounts of land in Chilie to continue every thing this prop. was supposed to stop.  The Mexican immigrant community, I'm sure will, be thankful too. While farming cost rise, I'm sure they'll be looking foward to the pay raises they'll never see. Yeah, they'll also be glad to know that the animals they consume will have much more room. Yeah, while they sleep 4 families to a house and use plastic buckets to defecate in, because they can't afford electricity. Way to go California!

i think that animal cruelty is not right people should see that but then again they are heartless careless people to think that doing cruelty to animals is right.

i tried to go veg.but it was really hard for me to the point that i was starving myself so i just cut down on how much meat i eat .

Ah, I just found this old post.  On the topic of Prop 2, I agree with Lisa, and appreciated the quote by Martin Luther King. 

But I was also in favor of Prop 2 passing.


What bothers me, as it did with the petition that my vegan friends wouldn't sign, to vaccinate instead of cull, during the Foot & Mouth outbreak in the UK ("They're going to die anyway"), and their lack of interest in the Canadian seal hunt ("What about the cod?"), is the refusal of some in the AR Movement to back any kind of reform that doesn't go far enough.  
It's not that I don't understand their arguments.  I heard very articulate arguments for and against last summer at AR2008.

But for AR people to vote "no" on Prop 2, they were voting on the side of Big Ag, who spent Big Bucks to discredit the proposition and try to get people to vote "no".  If Big Ag didn't like Prop 2, there must have been something good about it.  It would have been worth voting "yes" just to spite their efforts.  (I'm also bothered when I read things by AR people against groups like HSUS & PETA.  It falls right into the hands of NAIA & CCF.  We need more solidarity in the Movement, instead of the constant distancing and division over ideological differences, which I compare to denominationalism in religion.)


Incremental is all that's going to work, when you're dealing with the general voting public.  You start where you can, and where the majority can agree.  If vegans represent 2% of the population, vegans will not sway an election.


Yes, the conversation needs to continue.  And the information that was put out there on fliers, etc., when they were getting signatures, etc., needs to be built on.  This is the abolitionists' chance to fill in the blanks.  


LS's comment reminds me of something I read somewhere here a few months ago, by people who supported reopening/reinstating horse slaughter in this country.  I don't buy it, and consider it a troll response.

If the California farmers would really move their operations to Mexico or wherever, to avoid having to give a hen an extra inch of cage space, then they need to be publicly outed to blow the whistle on how unethical people are willing to get to work around the law and continue the worst practices of close confinement.  The names of those companies should be named, so consumers could boycott.

If the California farmers honestly think giving animals enough room to turn around is too much for the public to expect, then that needs to be widely publicized, too, to not only show how awful the industry is, but to enlighten the consumers -- because as always, the farmers are meeting public demand.


And if people can't seem to find a way to cut meat from their diets, maybe they could at least cut out eggs, which would very quickly dismantle the worst of all agricultural systems, numbers-wise and misery-wise.  Aren't over 9 billion of the 10 billion animals killed for their flesh every year chickens? (That would be a huge cut in the slaughter numbers, if people just stopped eating eggs -- even though it wouldn't dismantle the broiler industry.)  

If people just stopped eating eggs, it would take care of the need for the egg farmers to move their operations south of the border -- if there really is any threat of them doing that.  Thank you for the heads up, LS -- whoever you are.