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Chapter 6. What Do We Want?" Animal Rights!
The year was 1979. I had moved up to a better paying 5-day job, but one which did not sufficiently challenge. I was a restaurant cashier for a famous New York landmark, The Algonquin Hotel for almost two years. I worked lunch and dinner shifts, but there was a lot of time in between. I enjoyed reading many books during breaks and sometimes when I was actually working.
Among the books I took special interest in were those about humans' treatment of animals. It was shocking to learn how furs were obtained. Hideous trapping and so-called "fur farms" where animals such as minks and foxes spent their entire lives in small cages, only to be gassed or electrocuted and made into garments nobody needed. Trapping was even worse. Animals lingered for hours or days in horribly cruel leg traps which cracked bones and often forced some animals to chew off their legs to escape. Traps were "non-selective," catching whatever stepped into them, whether fox, rabbit, cat, dog or even child.
"Research" on animals wasted over a hundred million animals a year and billions of tax dollars in usually painful, redundant and non-productive experiments -- many of which weren't even designed to help people.
Worst of all, was the way animals were raised for "food" in crowded, stressful and cruel conditions commonly referred to as "factory farms." Peter Singer's breakthrough book, Animal Liberation asked the important question, "Do animals have rights" as it shed light on the major ways non-human animals were abused in modern culture.
One night, after computing dinner checks, I sat with my head buried in a book when the owner of the Algonquin Hotel passed by. "What are you doing?" the elderly man inquired of me in stern manner. I looked up, suddenly embarrassed. "Sorry, sir," I answered, without explaining that I had completed my work to that point. "You know you're not supposed to read here," Mr. Brody admonished. You're fired!"
The next day I applied for Unemployment Insurance. I would finally have some real time to spend with my daughter who had been born 4 years earlier after a brief marriage. I would also try to find some ways of helping animals.
I called "Friends of Animals," a national animal protection organization based in New York City to inquire if there was a way to help animals being abused for fur, vivisection or on factory farms. "There is going to be an anti-fur rally this Saturday against the fur convention at the Coliseum" the polite woman on the phone told me. I happily took down all the information.
It was a chilly day in March when I bundled up Tara and myself to support the rally against fur. I was thrilled to see several hundred people at the rally, most of whom carried creative signs and shouted slogans to those wearing fur attending the convention. "Forty raccoons die for one fur coat!" "Go back to the stone age!"
My small daughter and I wandered through the crowd when I saw a young man sitting behind an anti-vivisection table. I went up to it to gather flyers and information. "Hi," the skinny young man with a trim beard said to me. "My name's Tom McGowan and I am a volunteer for United Action for Animals. Would you like information on vivisection?" Tom and I got into a long conversation about vivisection and what UAA was trying to do about it. I was fascinated. Tom was obviously very bright, knowledgeable and committed. "Would you like to come to a demonstration next week against New York University?" he asked. "Sure." I answered enthusiastically. "Just tell me where and when."
Tara was only 4-years-old, but already she was a trooper. She seemed to have an early grasp of the issues and was happy to hold up a sign protesting vivisection or any type of animal abuse. Tara loved her pets at home and understood that some people "did bad things to animals." She wanted to help.
The following week we attended one of numerous protests against painful experiments conducted on animals by NYU. Tom McGowan had all the research abstracts of the experiments and even the names of the vivisectors. We protested everything from spinal crushings on cats to counting rat droppings and then decapitating the rats. Tom was a reservoir of knowledge and possessed countless documentations of horrible things done to animals in the name of "science" at NYU. I was especially impressed with the way Tom could personally debate vivisectors.
After the rally, Tom, my daughter and I went out to lunch. I learned that Tom was a vegan vegetarian, had a great sense of humor and was gay. I was in the process of becoming a vegetarian, but still occasionally ate chicken. Tom gave me pointers on how to give up meat entirely.
Tom introduced me to another friend and fellow activist, Warren Doyno. Warren was a short, stocky fellow with a world of passion and booming voice, but he lacked the knowledge or refinement of Tom. Warren liked to be the "voice" of animal rallies, leading chants and slogans with all the passion of an ardent lover. Warren's favorite issue to work on was fur. All of us agreed to do "information tables" outside Alexander's Department store which was notorious for promoting fur via sickening TV commercials by "Fred the Furrier!"
I ordered a #10 steel-jaw leghold trap from an outdoor catalog and learned quickly how to use it. We obtained and blew up color photos of animals in traps from various animal organizations. We made posters and bought tons of literature from organizations like "The Humane Society of the United States" and " Friends of Animals."
We took Tom's card table and began to set up our anti-fur display outside Alexander's Department Store every Saturday and sometimes during the week in the evenings.
New York City in the late 70's was teeming with women in fur coats. Every other woman seemed to be "decked out." Tom, Warren and I indeed had our work cut out for us.
I got a long wooden stick and used this to set off the leghold trap. The device made a loud "SNAP" every time I tripped it, causing people to stop in their tracks and take notice. Often the wooden stick would break. "This is what happens to an animal's leg when caught in this horrible trap!" "DON'T BUY FUR!!" Warren yelled at the top his lungs, as I continually set off the trap. People were horrified with the blow up pictures and the trap. Hundreds flocked up to our table to pick up flyers and eagerly sign anti-trap petitions.
Most of the time, Tom, Warren and I were civil and concentrated mainly on educating people on fur. However, there were times when things got raunchy. Those who had the audacity to pass our table decked out in fur were treated to not-too-polite slogans and sarcastic barbs. "Got hide the fat, somehow, eh, lady?" "You should have spent the money on a facelift, instead of fur!" "Walking Morgue" "40 Dead Animals on your back!" "Skin yourself and see how it feels."
One Saturday afternoon, a man and woman walked by our display, both of them decked to the ankles in coyote fur. I suddenly stopped working my trap to sing out, "There She Goes, Mr. America!" Suddenly, the man stopped and turned towards our table. His face was red with pure fury. He headed straight for me. "You son of a bitch," he sneered.
Warren immediately stepped between the man in the coyote coat and me. "What you think you're doing?" Warren demanded to know. "You touch this lady and I will break your nose!" The two men almost came to blows that day. Tom and I had to get between them.
As said, sometimes things got "raunchy."
Nevertheless, Tom, Warren and I were early pioneers of anti-fur activism.
Little did we know then that the movement against fur was soon to take off.
As was the movement for Animal Rights.
"What do we want? Animal Rights," soon to be the rallying cry of millions.