I encourage people to send HSUS a polemic not a check, and to donate their hard-earned money not to robotic raconteurs but rather to ardent activists who fight on the front lines of the emerging war over nature with substantial results. I’m talking, for instance, about small groups such as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society; amazing activists like Anthony Marr or Gary Yourofsky, who foment revolutionary change on a shoestring budget; and stellar local animal rescue groups. People should research, explore, and support the best no-kill shelters they can find rather than fuel hypocritical killing machines and bureaucratic behemoths. Every dollar given to HSUS is a dollar that could have saved, not ended, the life of a cat or dog; that could have promoted veganism, not “humane meat”; and that could have supported, not undermined, our civil liberties which the state and FBI seek to annihilate.
As stated above, Wayne Pacelle was quick to step up and help feed a media frenzy calling for the demonization of Michael Vick and the rise of an overt and pervasive form of animal cruelty for which Vick became the poster child. Lost in this rightful attack on dog fighters and the like, however, is that Pacelle is no saint outing sinners. A pre-eminent member of DC-insider lobby culture, he was quick to learn self-serving, profit-making, power-play politics, as he perfected the art of sound bites and media charm. But let us not be fooled. This cunning cum-laude graduate of the Machiavellian school of politics will throw potential allies — and certainly movement competitors and opponents like Rod Coronado and Kevin Jonas — under the bus if it can earn him a penny of financial or moral capital.
Pacelle is a one-dimensional bureaucrat, a CEO and President of a huge global conglomeration that serves animals in name but pursues money and power in reality. He preaches nonviolence as he pulls the switch on thousands of cats and dogs; he praises democracy and rights as he bankrolls witch-hunts that ally him with the most repressive state apparatus in US history.
I’ve seen great activists hired and coopted by Pacelle, and witnessed their sad transformation from vibrant, iconoclastic, edgy, risk-takers into defanged, muzzled, and collared bureaucrats, party-line ideologues, corporate-yes men and women, and zombified conformists. They morph from critical thinkers into True Believers who think we can win animal liberation (in whatever bastardized form they conceive it) through welfare policies, reforms, collaboration with industries, and turn against the radical elements of their own movement — the important role of which they have absolutely no understanding.
However, billions of enslaved animals don’t give a damn about Zogby polls, FOX News commentaries, or tactics that might alienate the masses. They don’t want bigger cages, better euthanasia, or “humane” labels attached to their dismembered bodies. The animals want freedom. If they could speak our language, they would unquestionably applaud the ALF and condemn the corporate entities who seek to continue the oppression though misguided thinking and opportunistic policies.
NOTES:
1 Steven Best, “The Iron Cage of Movement Bureaucracy” at: http://www.drstevebest.org/Essays/TheIronCage.htm.
2 “Wayne Pacelle works for the winged, finned and furry” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2008, online at: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pacelle19-2008jul19,0,4840426.story.
3 It is important that activists have knowledge of the history, goals, modus operandi, and real nature of the FBI, rather than the “good-guy” cartoon portraits one finds on TV series and the media generally. For excellent books exposing the FBI as the US version of the KBG, see Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States. Boston, South End Press, 2001; Brian Glick, War at Home: Covert action against U.S. activists and what we can do about it. Boston, South End Press, 1999; and Nelson Blackstock, Cointelpro: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1988.
4 See Nathan Winograd, “The Real Wayne Pacelle Legacy,” at: http://nathanwinograd.blogspot.com/2008/07/real-wayne-pacelle-legacy.html.
5 “Red Cross, Humane Society Under Investigation,” March 26, 2006, The Washington Post, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032501002.html. See this article for Pacelle’s defense of HSUS actions for Katrina-victim animals and his claim to responsible use of donation money.
6 On the contemptible approach Gang of Ten organization have taken toward environmental grassroots groups, see Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995. There are incredibly important lessons here for serious animal activists if they wish to avoid the same problems that led to the cooptation and defeat of the US environmental movement, such as already threaten the animal advocacy movement in this country and others.
7 See the “Charitable Solicitations Program Charity Profile Report” of HSUS, at: http://www.secstate.wa.gov/charities/search_detail.aspx?charity_id=5458. According to his biography, Winograd “is the Director of the national No Kill Advocacy Center. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School, a former criminal prosecutor and attorney, was director of operations for the San Francisco SPCA and executive director of the Tompkins County SPCA, two of the most successful shelters in the nation”
http://www.nathanwinograd.com/nathanwinograd_002.htm.
9 Winograd, at: http://nathanwinograd.blogspot.com/2008/07/real-wayne-pacelle-legacy.html.
10 Pacelle cited at: http://nathanwinograd.blogspot.com/2008/07/real-wayne-pacelle-legacy-part-ii.html.
11 For their enlightening recommendation, see:
http://www.hsus.org/pets/pet_adoption_information/how_to_find_a_good_dog_breeder/.
12 Cited at: http://nathanwinograd.blogspot.com/2008/05/will-real-wayne-pacelle-please-stand-up.html.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
