KINSHIP CIRCLE PRIMARY / PERMISSION TO CROSSPOST AS WRITTEN

11/26/08: Today, I Give Thanks…For the prospect of hope and the nerve to dream of a world without violence and hate.

Mandy, Baby Noah, Isaiah, Rebekkah, Cleveland

I give thanks for those who sleep safely… Pulled from a puppy mill,
rescued from floodwaters, claimed from death row, and saved from the
streets. For their bottomless love, left in whispers and wet kisses.

Today I give thanks for the recognition of life in vacant eyes. For infinite
food left in ravaged cities and the glimmer of water in countless pans. I
thank their rescuers and recall untold mercy, selfless and vast.

Today I give thanks for the promise of a warm lap, despite hurricanes and
floods. And I look to a world where laws can change. Where empathy
prevails… And hope rebounds in the eyes of each animal.

Today I give thanks for all of you!

===============================================

A Thanksgiving Homecoming
===============================================

PHOTOS: Courtesy of Kinship Circle

FROM: The Gentle Barn, info@gentlebarn.org
EDITED FOR LENGTH

While rescuing this year’s Thanksgiving turkeys (we ended up saving the last four), we couldn’t help but notice the horrific conditions in which the other animals lived. Unable to stomach what we saw, we came home with two of the ten cows in the worst shape…and pregnant.

When they got home to The Gentle Barn, one of the cows seemed inconsolably distraught. She tried to get out of the pen, paced, sweated, and mooed as though screaming for someone. Throughout the first night, she kept crying out, barely pausing to take a breath.

At first, we thought her stress was from missing the animals she’d left behind or feeling unsure in her new surroundings. By morning, when her cries had not stopped, we realized something worse was going on. We also noticed her utter was full now and she was expressing milk. When we called back to the place we rescued her from, our fears were confirmed. She’d been separated from her calf, and her baby was to be sold that day…for slaughter. We demanded they release the baby to us, knowing this cow would otherwise die of heartbreak…and they agreed…small miracles!

Back at The Gentle Barn with the calf, his mom heard his voice and practically broke through the pasture fencing to get to him. When we led her tiny baby to her, the calf collapsed on the ground. As mama licked him and nuzzled him with the gentlest touch, he got up. While her baby nursed, for the first time in 12 hours, the mom let out a long moo, like the biggest sigh of relief. Now that her baby is with her, she hasn’t made a single sound. She is happy and at peace, and the two will never be separated again.

The place has been cited and is in the process of being shut down — but there are still seven cows we’re desperately trying to get out, before they are slaughtered. There are two pregnant cows, one with a calf, and four calves who have been weaned. We need to raise $5,000 to save them, transport them to The Gentle Barn, and welcome them into our program — teaching people kindness and compassion to animals. Please help us get them out before it’s too late…No amount is too small! What a great holiday gift for yourself or someone you love.

For more information about The Gentle Barn or to make a donation for the cows please visit: http://www.gentlebarn.org

Action Campaigns I Literature I Animal Disaster Aid Networking
info@kinshipcircle.org or kinshipcircle@accessus.net
http://www.KinshipCircle.org * http://www.kinshipcircle.org/disasters/
KINSHIP CIRCLE is a 501c3 public charity. Donations are tax-deductible.
No goods or services are received in exchange for donations.
Public (501c3) Charity Status: 170 (b) (1) (A) (vi)

SUBSCRIBE:
Kinship Circle Primary: subscribe@kinshipcircle.org
Action campaigns on animal cruelty issues worldwide

Kinship Circle Animal Disaster Aid Network: kinshipcircle@accessus.net
Animal rescue coordination/news in disasters + companion animal alerts
SEND: Address / Phone / Email for placement in geographic disaster zone

November 25, 2008

Did you know that if Americans cut meat out of their diet for just a single day, it would save over 200,000 tons of food and nearly 2 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions? That amount of food could feed all of the estimated 2 million displaced people in need of food in the Democratic Republic of Congo for at least 6 months, and the carbon emissions saved would be more than enough to cancel out the emissions from flying all of that food to the Congo.

This is the conclusion reached by calculations commissioned by WSPA in conjunction with our new report Eating our future: the environmental impact of industrial animal agriculture, released just in time for Thanksgiving. The report and accompanying data show how industrial animal agriculture, or factory farming, not only causes the suffering of billions of animals, but is also a major contributor to climate change, scarcity of resources, and global problems such as poverty and disease.The report concludes by recommending a reduction in meat consumption and a move toward smaller-scale sustainable and humane food production methods.

You can read the full report here, and make sure to check out our ” Tips for reducing meat and other animal products on Thanksgiving” to see how you can start having a positive impact for animals and people by reducing your consumption of animal products this Thanksgiving.

Animal welfare on the agenda in the US and worldwide
Recently animal welfare and WSPA have played a major role at two important policy making meetings. In early November the G77, a loose coalition of 130 developing countries at the United Nations, hosted their first ever ambassador-level briefing on animal welfare issues and how they impact on human livelihoods, where WSPA provided the briefing. The G77 meeting was the highest-level presentation about animal welfare ever received at UN headquarters in New York, and several participating countries spoke up in support of WSPA’s Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW).

Just last week the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), one of the largest veterinary associations in the world, also voted to support in concept WSPA’s UDAW . The AVMA stated that the UDAW aligned with their animal welfare principles that serve as an overarching guide when decisions are made regarding animal welfare matters. Both of these meetings are a great step forward for UDAW and also show that compassionate treatment of animals is now gaining widespread, serious consideration.

World Society for the Protection of Animals
89 South Street, Suite 201 Boston, MA 02111 USA

A worker plays with rescued dogs in a courtyard at the SPARE animal shelter on the outskirts of Cairo. Victoria Hazou for The National

Nadia Abou el Magd, Foreign Correspondent

Last Updated: November 23. 2008 11:39PM UAE / November 23. 2008 7:39PM GMT

CAIRO // The haunting sound of barking dogs and screeching cats followed by gunshots throughout the night is a constant reminder of the struggle undertaken by animal rights activists in the country.

The killing of stray animals is a common practice in Egypt but both the government and grass-roots movements are putting a push on to make life better for dogs and cats.

Last month, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) held its quadrennial animal welfare conference in Cairo. Delegates passed several resolutions, including continuing to set standards for humane methods for controlling stray dog populations and free-roaming cats.

Amin Abaza, the Egyptian minister of agriculture, told the conference his nation “strongly supports the OIE’s work in animal welfare”.

The backing of the government is being supported by one activist who has started working with children to educate them about treating animals properly.

Amina Abaza, the founding director of the Society for the Protection of Animal Rights in Egypt (SPARE), is visiting schools in Cairo to try to change the way people think about dogs and cats.

At a recent visit to Elias Language College School on the outskirts of Cairo, Ms Abaza told about 200 boys aged between seven and 11 that they needed to protect animals because they could not help themselves.

“Animals are created from flesh, blood, feelings and brain, but they can’t defend themselves.

“Why do you want to hurt an animal? Why use your power to abuse a weaker person or animal?”

Ms Abaza, 53, said both the Quran and the Bible urged mercy for animals.

She said awareness of animal rights should start with children, as stopping them from abusing animals while they are young will continue through their lives.

“You don’t have to raise animals, just don’t harm them when you see them in the streets,” she said.

“Hurting animals is a sign of ignorance and cruelty, not poverty.”

Ms Abaza told the children her concern for animals started when she was seven after a white dog that used to play with her as she was waiting for her school bus was killed one night.

Eight years ago, she resigned from her job at Egyptian TV and set up SPARE after her husband urged her to do something to save stray animals “other than agonising and crying over animals’ torture”.

SPARE is based in Saqqara, in the Pyramids area, where its shelter cares for about 95 dogs and 40 cats.

Ms Abaza has been criticised for caring and protecting animals in a country with widespread poverty and where human rights are frequently abused.

“There are human rights groups to defend humans, I’m pursuing the mission that I feel I was created for,” she said.

“Besides, I believe that mercy is indivisible. Those who are used to torturing animals would tend to find it easier to abuse humans as there are unfortunate concepts prevalent in our society these days that cruelty is heroism and mercy is a sign of being weak and stupid. I’m trying to change that.”

Egypt has come under international scrutiny over its animal rights record after Brigitte Bardot, the French actress, last year sent a letter to Hosni Mubarak, the president, asking him for an urgent intervention to stop the poisoning and gunning down of stray animals.

In her letter, Ms Bardot emphasised that “today, animals are treated in the worst way by Egyptians with guilty indifference and the complicity of authorities”.

“This lamentable spectacle sickens anyone who has even the smallest bit of sensitivity or humanity in them. For several years now I have implored you to put an end to this cruel practice, to the immense suffering of all the poisoned and beaten dogs, to this shameless slaughter which poses a real problem to public health.”

After this letter, a presidential decree was issued demanding a report.

While the actions by the government may be slow in coming, there are many in Cairo who love animals and there is a growing trend – especially among wealthy Egyptians who live in villas in the suburbs of Cairo – to own well-bred puppies.

Nervine Mahmoud, 36, who was bitten by her dog and had to get rabies shots, was in tears after she had to hand over her dog to be put down by health officials.

But now the mother of two children has two new German shepherds – Mango and Sushi – who live with her in Sherouk, east of Cairo.

“We just love them,” she said.

nmagd@thenational.ae

California voters have put the animal-rights movement squarely in the mainstream. Will we all soon be vegans?

By Peter Singer | NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 19, 2008

The notion that animals should have rights was widely ridiculed when it was first advocated in the 1970s. Now it is getting more respect. The movement has gained tens of millions of adherents and has already persuaded the European Union to require that all hens have room to stretch their wings, perch and lay their eggs in a nest box, and to phase out keeping pigs and veal calves in individual crates too narrow for them to walk or turn around. And earlier this month Californians voted 63 percent to 37 percent for a measure that, beginning in 2015, gives all farm animals the right to stand up, lie down, turn around and fully extend their limbs. The state’s 45 major egg producers will have to rip out the cages that now hold 19 million hens, and either put in new and larger cages with fewer birds or, more likely, keep the birds on the floor in large sheds. California’s sole large-scale pig-factory farm will also have to give all its pigs room to turn
around.

Pressure on other states to grant the same basic freedoms may prove irresistible. Many people see this movement as a logical continuation of the fight against racism and sexism, and believe that the concept of animal rights will soon be as commonplace as equal pay and opportunities for women and minorities. If that happens, and I believe it will, the effects on the food we eat, how we produce it and the place of animals in our society will be profound.

If this sounds radical, so did suffrage and civil rights a few decades ago. The notion that we should recognize the rights of animals living among us rests on a firm ethical foundation. A sentient being is sentient regardless of which species it happens to belong to. Pain is pain, whether it is the pain of a cat, a dog, a pig or a child.

Consider how widely humans differ in their mental abilities. A typical adult can reason, make moral choices and do many things (like voting) that animals obviously cannot do. But not all human beings are capable of reason, not all are morally responsible and not all are capable of
voting. And yet we go out of our way to claim that all humans have rights. What, then, justifies our withholding at least some rights from nonhuman animals? Defenders of the status quo have found that a difficult question to answer.

If animals do have rights, what rights would those be? The most basic right any sentient being can have is for his or her interests to be given equal consideration. After that, things get more complicated. Some advocates think that all animals have a right to life. Others give more weight to the lives of beings such as chimpanzees, which are capable of understanding that they have a life, and of having hopes and desires directed toward the future. The movement’s supporters
agree that the way we treat animals now, as test subjects and factory-farm products, is flagrantly wrong.

If society were gradually to accept animal rights, it would spell dramatic changes. Some people might accept humanely raised meat, eggs and dairy products, if the animals had good lives, living outdoors in social groups of a size natural to the particular species. But this would most likely prove to be an interim stage. As the demand for animal products dwindles, the meat industry would breed fewer chickens, turkeys, pigs and cattle. Eventually the only remaining beef cattle, sheep and pigs would be small herds preserved so that we can take the grandchildren to see what these once abundant animals look like. Factory farming for meat, eggs or milk would disappear. If we are to continue to eat meat, we’ll have to rely on scientists who are now trying to grow meat in vats. When they succeed, it will be the real thing, grown from animal cells, not a soy-based substitute, and it might even be indistinguishable from the meat we eat now. But since it would involve no animals, and hence no suffering or killing, there will be no ethical objections.

Milk and cheese are no easier than meat to reconcile. Cows will not give milk unless they are made pregnant each year, and if the calves are left with their mothers, there won’t be much milk for humans. The separation of the cow and her calf causes distress to both. Hens are not so concerned about the removal of their eggs, and genuinely free-range hens appear to have a good life, but male chicks have to be disposed of, and no commercial egg producer allows hens to live beyond the point at which their rate of laying declines. That’s why animal-rights advocates today tend to be vegans.

Where animals are now used for research, we must find alternatives. In Europe, cell and tissue cultures have already replaced some product testing of live animals, and that will increase dramatically once harmful research on animals is put ethically out of bounds. Research using animals may not cease entirely, but in a nonspeciesist world it could continue only under the same strict ethical safeguards that we use for research on human subjects who can’t give their consent.

Our greatest difficulty in respecting other species may lie in our quest for land. The animal movement forces us to consider that land we do not use is the habitat of other sentient beings, and we must do what we can to allow them to continue to live on it, including limiting our own population growth. Even wilderness presents a problem. Are humans ethically bound to prevent animals from killing other animals? To contemplate interfering with the workings of ecosystems would be presumptuous, at least for now. We will do better to concentrate, first, on lessening our own harmful impact on our domestic animals.

Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton. His latest book, “The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty,” will be published in March.

Shelter dogs are in the spotlight as the Obamas search for a White House puppy. Many are hypoallergenic too.

By Carla Hall, November 15, 2008

Wanted: Presidential First Puppy. Should be less than a year old. Only hypoallergenic dogs need apply. Poodles and doodles especially welcome. Yorkies, bichon frises, Cairn terriers, Westies, cockapoos and wheaten terriers also encouraged. Must be doing time in a city or county shelter, foster home or private rescue facility. Will be vetted by incoming first daughters, Sasha,7, and Malia, 10. Position is highly competitive.

“There is a perfect dog sitting here waiting for him,” Gillian Lange, founder of a private rescue operation on the Westside, said Friday in a pitch echoed by others eager to submit resumes of shelter dogs to the White House transition team.

“Ever since President-elect Barack Obama announced in his victory speech that his daughters would be taking a new puppy with them to the White House, interest in the subject of the First Pooch has exploded. Animal welfare websites bristle with advice on pet ownership and praise for Obama’s pledge to search for a shelter dog.

Petfinder.com, citing Malia’s allergies, blogged this week that its database included about 5,000 dogs of hypoallergenic breeds.

“We’ve called and e-mailed his transition team; I think we’re approaching harassment,” database co-founder Betsy Saul said, laughing. “I want to communicate the message loud and clear that I will personally help his family find the right dog.”

Ed Boks, general manager of L.A.’s Animal Services Department, said he called the office of Antonio Villaraigosa in hopes that the mayor — who’s on Obama’s economic task force, after all — might “put in a good word for L.A.’s homeless dogs. Our dogs would make the very best ambassadors to the White House.”

But so would the bald and stark-looking Peruvian hairless dog — at least according to the Friends of the Peruvian Hairless Dog Assn. “They do not cause any type of allergy and are very friendly and sweet,” the group’s director, Claudia Galvez, told a wire service reporter this week. Galvez sent a letter through diplomatic circles offering a male puppy.

And Yoyo, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina and a rescue dog of the puli breed — a Hungarian sheepdog — is scheduled to announce her candidacy for First Dog at a Nov. 25 news conference at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in West L.A., according to hospitality and pet industry publicist Susan Hartzler.

The White House has been home to plenty of dogs and cats, an occasional pet pony or cow, even a literary pooch — Bush One’s springer spaniel, Millie, “wrote” a book. But rarely has a First Pet selection generated such interest.

A local animal welfare advocate sent out a group e-mail Tuesday urging animal activists and City Council members to talk up two young poodle mixes housed at an L.A. Animal Services shelter. “Please, everyone use your own method to get to Obama to make it happen,” he beseeched.

It’s not just a matter of wanting to be connected to the new POB (pet of Barack).

Obama’s declaration last week that his family would prefer a shelter dog has bestowed upon homeless creatures in private rescue operations and municipal shelters — once known as lowly dog pounds — a respectability that animal welfare professionals, activists and celebrity supporters have spent decades trying to convey.

“That sends such a clear message that we have got to stop the nonsense of buying from pet stores and puppy mills when so many animals are dying in our shelters,” Boks said. Millions of healthy animals in shelters across the country are euthanized each year because there’s not enough space to keep them all.

Because Malia is allergic, Obama said, the family would have to get a hypoallergenic breed. “But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me,” he added, referring to his white mother and black father.

The shelter community rarely hears that kind of presidential pronouncement.

“It’s huge. The . . . president-elect is standing up there describing himself as a mutt saying he wants shelter dogs,” said Saul. “It feels like it was a long time coming, and at the same time, I feel like Sleeping Beauty who’s been asleep for 100 years and just woke up.”

Shelter officials say they hope the Obamas will be imitated. “If he says he’ll adopt a shelter dog, I bet you people will adopt shelter dogs,” said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Los Angeles.

Even Obama’s mention that it might be hard to find a hypoallergenic shelter dog has only stoked the puppy advice frenzy.

Though many people think shelter dogs are all mixed breeds, in fact a quarter of them are purebred, said Saul, whose database lists about 150,000 dogs from rescuers and shelters across the country.

The Petfinder database lists poodles and poodle mixes as well as other breeds considered hypoallergenic because they shed less than others.

Unfortunately no dog, no matter where it’s from, is completely nonallergenic, according to David Bruyette, medical director of the VCA West Los Angeles Animal Hospital.

“There is protein in their blood that is excreted into the hair follicles and the saliva,” Bruyette said. It’s the protein that often triggers an allergic response, and all dogs have hair follicles, even the hairless breeds, he said.

But there are ways to minimize or avoid allergic reactions: “Rule No. 1, to decrease the allergy load, the smaller the dog the better,” Bruyette said. “And dogs that don’t shed are better” because their hair follicles are less stimulated.

The Obamas could find many sought-after breeds through private rescue groups. It may be a challenge to find the coveted Labradoodle or goldendoodle — reportedly a favorite of the Obama girls — through private rescue groups, but they are out there to be adopted from rescuers. (There were some Labradoodles and goldendoodles listed Friday on Petfinder.com.)

And private rescue groups, which are notorious for subjecting prospective pet adopters to rigorous vetting, may just relax their rules in the case of the First Adopters.

Lange, who usually hands out a two-page questionnaire to prospective adopters and subjects them to a home visit, said she was willing to forgo all that for the Obama family. In fact, she said, “I’m willing to get on a plane and fly to Chicago with the dog.”

Hall is a Times staff writer.
carla.hall@latimes.com

Posted at 09:22 AM
by Ingrid E. Newkirk

When President-elect Barack Obama was born, numerous U.S. states would have prohibited his black Kenyan father from marrying his white Kansan mother. The Voting Rights Act was still a few years away, and the Supreme Court’s order to desegregate schools was being fought tooth and nail. Look at how far we have come. Who alive then would have believed that just a few short decades later, Americans would elect their first black president?

We have broken through a significant barrier, but we cannot stop there. We must now break down the barrier that prevents us from caring about all the “others” who are “not like us,” regardless of race, regardless of gender, and regardless of species.

Prejudice and oppression come about because of a belief that “we” are important and that “they” are not.

In the days of slavery, for example—not so long ago—some people honestly believed that African men did not feel pain as white men do, that African women did not experience maternal love as white women do. And so it was quite acceptable to brand men’s faces with a hot iron and to auction off slaves’ children and send them vast distances away from their mothers. All evidence was to the contrary, yet highly educated people defied their own eyes, ears, and common sense by denying the facts before them. Society accepted this horrible exploitation, and then, as now, it takes courage to break away from the norm, even when the norm is ugly and wrong.

Today, we have abolished human slavery, at least in theory. But we continue to enslave all the others who happen not to be exactly like us but who, if we are honest with ourselves, show us that they experience maternal love as we do, that if you burn them, they feel the same pain as we do, that they desire freedom from shackles as we do.

In their natural homes, elephants live in complex multigenerational social groups, mourn their dead, and remember friends and relatives from years past. Yet we tear them away from their families, confine them with chains to stinking and squalid boxcars, and beat them into performing ridiculous tricks for our amusement.

Rats are detested, yet even these tiny animals—who are mammals like us—have been found to giggle (in frequencies that can’t be heard by the human ear) when they are tickled and will risk their own lives to save other rats, especially when the rats in peril are babies. Although no mouse or rat bankrupted our economy, invaded Iraq, or set poison out for us, we dismiss their feelings as inconsequential and somehow beneath our consideration.

Mother pigs sing to their young while nursing, and newborn piglets run joyfully toward their mothers’ voices. On factory farms, a sow spends her entire life surrounded by the cold metal bars of a space so small that she can never turn around or take even two steps. Chickens who are raised for the table fare even worse. Their beaks are seared off with hot blades, and the birds will never enjoy the warmth of a nest or the affectionate nuzzle of a mate.

The time has come to stop thinking of animal rights as distracting or less deserving of our energy than other struggles for social justice. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” All oppression, prejudice, violence, and cruelty are wrong and must be rejected no matter how novel the idea or how inconvenient the task.

And for those who think that we will never be able to achieve the dream of liberation from oppression, not just for human beings but for all beings, regardless of race or gender or species, I have just three words for you: Yes. We. Can.

Mark Hawthorne
November 11, 2008
American Chronicle

As the post-election celebrations gave way to morning-after punditry, some observers of California´s hotly contested ballot measures were left scratching their heads. Proposition 2 passed, so we´ll have a phasing out of battery cages for hens, gestation crates for pigs and veal crates for baby cows. But Proposition 8, the initiative to ban the marriages of same-sex couples in the state, also passed.

That a ban on gay marriage would be approved in a bastion of progressive thinking like California was certainly outrageous. Yet so are the comments now being made by the news media and some disgruntled Prop 8 opponents: “Chickens rank above gays with California voters,” “Californians Like Chickens More Than Gay People” and “California: Giving more rights to chickens and pigs than people…?” are just a few of the news and blog headlines that range from the hurtful to the patently absurd. It is ridiculous to suggest that any animal imprisoned in a factory farm—where he or she will endure a brief existence followed by a terrifying death—enjoys anything resembling a life, while gay people, though certainly discriminated against, have an abundance of rights and freedoms.

Although I certainly understand the anger caused by the passing of Prop 8 here in California, I don´t believe it´s reasonable to compare it with Prop 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, an animal-welfare issue. One is about marriage; the other is about inflicting cruelty upon the helpless.

This election was not a one-or-the-other situation. I voted for Prop 2 and against Prop 8, and I stood shoulder to shoulder with No on Prop 8 campaigners while holding my “Yes on Prop 2″ sign. There was solidarity among us as we all campaigned for a better world. I was dismayed that Prop 8 passed, but I celebrated the victory for animals—beings who are trapped inside intensive-confinement devices and can barely move.

Abusing animals is always wrong, just as discriminating against humans is always wrong. Why should one oppressed group express their anger by targeting another oppressed group? (I don´t believe there are any beings on this planet more oppressed than farmed animals, who are bred, raised, confined, mutilated and slaughtered at a rate of 55 billion per year worldwide.)

We might also consider the direct connection between the oppression of human beings and the oppression of non-human animals, whether it´s how the domestication of animals heralded the human slave trade, or the relationship between the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women.

Moreover, the very fact that people are picking on Prop 2 rather than one of the many other measures on the California ballot underscores the low regard many people have for the animals they eat. After all, no one is complaining that voters care more about veterans than gays because Prop 12, the Veterans Bond Act, passed, or that people care more about children than gays because Prop 3, the Children´s Hospital Bond Act, passed. No, they target chickens, pigs and cows because, after all, “they´re just animals,” and it´s so much easier to victimize a group that can´t speak up for themselves.

While gay people have a voice, animals inside factory farms do not: they rely on compassionate individuals to speak out for them. I can only hope that the same people who are disparaging the passage of Prop 2 will see that demeaning animals does not further gay rights … that human liberation and animal liberation are inextricably linked.

Mark Hawthorne is the author of Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism (www.strikingattheroots.com). For more of Mark´s writing, see his blog at http://strikingattheroots.wordpress.com/

I got to come home to California to be part of this campaign.

Besides the sheer accomplishment of it all, the single most impressive thing about this campaign is how many heroes there are. California is a big, big state. Ag is a big, big foe. I’ve never been more aware of either of these facts until this campaign and I now see my naivete as a blessing. It just never occurred to me that we couldn’t do everything that we have now accomplished. Someone from our amazing team always rose to the need to take on each important task. And each accomplished task put another brick in the foundation that got us to where we are standing now – victorious.

It strikes me now that when you look back on the past couple years, it is easy to see that it is dozens of my colleagues and our partners, hundreds of discovered and documented truths and facts, thousands of dedicated volunteers, tens of thousands of supporters, hundreds of thousands of voter signatures, and millions of donated dollars that got us to this momentous occasion. And each and every link in that chain was essential to pulling us through to this point.

There is nothing trivial about the suffering of animals. How they live matters. And as of tonight, it’s clear that how farm animals live matters to the people of California. It matters enough for them to mark their ballot – in the midst of a near-recession – and say YES! I want to stop cruel and inhumane confinement.

It is a simple and yet profound principle we have advanced: that ALL animals, including those raised for food, deserve humane treatment.

Tonight, as we celebrate the fact that voters in my state agree with this principle, as we pause in our relentless effort to make this planet a gentler, kinder and more decent place for the species we share it with, and as we thank one another for all the sacrifice, determination and effort we have brought to this campaign, let us take a moment to consider all those whose continued suffering relies on our continued efforts.

We have built a true army of the kind in the Golden State. We have assembled a coalition like no other animal protection campaign has ever assembled. And we have momentum, respect and unity like never before.

Let’s not stop now. Let’s build on this victory. Take tomorrow to rest. Okay, take the rest of the week off if you must.

But then let’s resume our just and right struggle. Together.

For the animals’ sake. And for our own.

Thank you, everyone, who touched this campaign in any way. It’s been an honor.

YES! on Prop 2… it is so.

Jennifer Fearing
Yes on Prop 2 Campaign Manager