Guest guest Posted March 16, 2005 Report Share Posted March 16, 2005 Dear Animal Vigiler, FYI, please find (below) "Thoughts from the Vigil Circle" from circle gathering on February 27, 2005. Feel free to respond to any of the following thoughts. Also you can join the Vigil for Animals and post your response for others within the group to read. Right now we only have 6 members in the group; it would be nice to have more. See "3 Easy Steps..." to join the group at the end of this e-mail. Bob O'Brien (for the Vigil) ---------------------- THOUGHTS FROM THE VIGIL CIRCLE - 2/27/2005 The circle gathering took place the Sunday afternoon of February 27; in attendance were Loretta Chardin, Steve Whitworth, Shannon Moreno, and Bob O'Brien Bob began the circle gathering with the lighting of a candle and the reading an excerpt of the book The Impossible Will Take a Little While by Paul Rogat Loeb; Howard Zinn (historian, author of A People's History of the United States) is quoted in Mr. Rogat's book. Following is an excerpt of that quote : "In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone half way around the earth. Let's go back a hundred years. A revolution to overthrow the tsar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers, but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd...." After the reading of the quote above, the "talking piece" (giving whoever holds it the opportunity to speak) was passed around. Following are some of the thoughts that came out of the gathering. Loretta expressed the need to get celebrities to speak out in support of our cause, thus giving the issues we are working on more media attention ... Shannon pointed out the use of celebrities - like ex-professional basketball player Dennis Rodman - on PETA's website ... Steve stated the need to get credibility so that agents for celebrities would be willing to lend their names in support of our cause. Further, he stated that development of a web site and registration as a bona fide nonprofit would help us get the credibility we need ... Bob mentioned that Richard Pryor has a great web site that is pro animal rights. Bob was communicating by e-mail with Jennifer Lee Pryor (wife of R. Pryor) last year but dropped communication as he was busy working on issue re dogs at UCSF. FYI, Richard Pryor suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS); however, he is totally opposed to use of animals to study MS. NOTE: UCSF researchers have used monkeys in several research projects in recent years to study MS. Loretta mentioned we currently have a pro-animal board of supervisors in San Francisco. Supervisor Bevan Duffy, for example, was quite instrumental in passing some pro-elephant legislation [limiting ability of SF Zoo to acquire elephants - unless it follows strict guidelines] ... Bob agreed and added that Bevan Duffy was recently helpful in getting UCSF to release protocols regarding research projects involving dogs to Dennis Lewenthal, of German Shepherd of Northern California. Bob added that we need to contact legislators at all levels of government - local, state, and federal. He also committed to contacting Supervisor Jake McGoldrick regarding UCSF's (ab)use of animals. Shannon emphasized the value of publicizing UCSF's violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) - especially valuable in that if we can point to the USDA's continual citing of UCSF for violations of the AWA, we can significantly hurt UCSF's credibility as a research institute. By publicizing the violations of the AWA, it could cause people to question how efficient can a university be that has been cited so many times. Bob agreed we should publicize the violations - but not lose sight of the subtle violations of the AWA in UCSF researchers' bogus search for alternatives to the use of animals. Further, we must look at the big picture: a massive complex of institutions throughout the country - funded to a great extent by the corrupt NIH through research grants for research projects, all too often of poor scientific merit. Loretta said we should get more persons in other professions involved in our campaign to stop experiments on animals; e.g., groups of lawyers, doctors, etc. ... Shannon mentioned that there is an organization called "Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine" - with Dr. Moamar Fidali (author of ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION, A HARVEST OF SHAME) as the president. Further, she brought up the need to impress upon the public that animals have their own purpose, an intrinsic value in being their own entity that is too often ignored in our society. ... Loretta articulated that the overwhelming majority of people believe that we have to harm/kill animals to further human health or save human lives. Thus we must educate the public about the scientific fallacies regarding vivisection ... Bob said we have a massive public education problem on our hands. Steve stated we are all driving at the same goal - it's just a question of how we want to get there; i.e., what do we want to focus on? ... The group came to a consensus on vigiling/protesting on March 17, Thursday, around noon hour - but made it tentative pending the outcome of Bob's scoping out of the area.* ___________________ * I have been scoping out UCSF's Mission Bay campus for the past 2 Thursdays. What I've found is about ten buildings (some in varying stages of construction), very little foot traffic (less than 10% of that of the Parnassus campus), some recently created landscaping and "artsy" lawn furniture. Anyhow, it's worth a look if you get a chance - especially Genentech Hall at 600 - 16th Street (near 3rd St). Genentech Hall has labs for small animals like mice and rats (and frogs, I think). However, I have been told - though I cannot document - that housing/laboratories for monkeys are being (or already have been) built at MB. Originally, I had felt that vigiling/protesting at Mission Bay (MB) would be a waste of time - because of the sparse foot traffic. However, several activists have advised me to the contrary. Thus I am partially convinced to stage a vigil-protest there - but it will need some planning - and strong participation. Currently, I have no updated leaflets - and I will be working (for money) on this coming Thursday, March 17th, when we had tentatively planned to vigil at MB. So, as I am very busy with "paid" work for the rest of the month, I think we should wait till a later date (perhaps April) to stage vigil-protest at MB. ~ Bob ------------------------ 3 EASY STEPS TO JOIN VIGIL FOR ANIMALS : You can join Vigil for Animals in 3 easy steps: 1) Just below - vigilforanimals/ 2) Then click on "Join This Group" in upper right-hand corner; 3) Then follow the instructions to join the group. *** e n d *** Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.