Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World

A map showing the locations of communities saving at least 90% of the homeless pets entering their shelters. Click to enlarge.

Remember the wonderful positive energy and message expressed in the “Take a Chance on Me” video form the SPCA of Wake County a while back? Although it has since been pulled due to objections from the record company, it showed that an animal shelter could be a place of joy if it was committed to lifesaving. By contrast, a ‘shelter’ that squanders the lives of animals squanders the hearts and goodwill of volunteers. It’s either win-win or lose-lose. Two shelters in the same county, worlds apart.

Back in August, Mike Fry of Animal Ark in Minnesota wrote an article entitled “A Tale of Four Cities” that began:

Geographically, they are widely distributed. Demographically, they have little in common. Yet this strange collection of communities have something very much in common: The old-school “catch and kill” style animal shelters in them are experiencing tremendous upheaval, brought about by a growing and passionate group of no kill advocates.

Perhaps more important is the fact that the dramatic shifts currently underway in Miami-Dade County, Florida; Harris County (Houston), Texas and the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota come on the heels of seismic shifts that have occurred in other communities, like Austin, Texas; Washoe County (Reno), Nevada and others. Collectively, the tales unfolding in these communities prove that the no kill movement is continuing to gain in strength and momentum, and could likely bring about the most important shift within the animal welfare movement ever.

Four “shelters,” far apart, yet with much in common.

Almost ten years ago, when it finally began to sink in that we were really saving all the healthy and treatable pets in Tompkins County, really, actually doing it, I began to think that the logical next thing would be that Tompkins would send ripples locally, that adjacent counties would see what we were accomplishing and would do it too, and that pebble tossed in the water, that Big Bang,  would send out ever-widening circles, extending compassion and continued life to homeless pets as it went.  I was wrong, and there is still only one No Kill community in the state of New York.*

It seemed to make logical sense, so why didn’t it happen?   Why didn’t the spread of No Kill communities follow Waldo Tobler’s First Law of Geography?

Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.

I’ve been wondering about this for a while.  Early in the movement, the No Kill philosophy didn’t travel to nearby communities so much as it leapfrogged across great distances.  It spread, not by diffusion, but by jump dispersal, to put it in the terms of biogeography.  Like windblown seeds, like birds caught in a storm, this extraordinary idea—that we could save them all, that we could leave killing in the dark and distant past—floated hundreds or even thousands of miles, to be taken up by one extraordinary person after another who would work for it, who would fight for it.  It’s a tough little idea with the ability to fly.  It has to be to survive the onslaught it still faces wherever it goes.  Like life itself, it is not easy, but full of inspiration.

It is people, not proximity.  People who are at once ordinary and extraordinary.

No Kill is an idea, and thanks to the internet, ideas can leap across continents in an instant.  More and more people are ‘getting it’.  It is as simple as the Golden Rule–even young children can understand it, yet the current killing paradigm is ensconced in such a morass of excuses, lies and obfuscations that it persists, at least for now.  No Kill communities aren’t correlated with economics—why are wealthy communities not already No Kill whereas less well-to-do ones are? It takes a decision and hard work, often in the form of a fight.

Every No Kill community was once a killing one.  Every single one looked impossible until it was done.  They didn’t “try” for years, they made a decision, and they carried it out immediately.

The No Kill movement has recently begun getting some of the national-level, mainstream press coverage that it deserves, and I expect we’ll see more and more of it in 2012 as we continue to gain traction.  That little document-leaking episode last month was the sputtering of a faltering regime.  I just hope that they read the writing on the wall–that Extremist Agenda graffiti that says we can save 90+% of all animals entering open-admission municipal animal control facilities—and get with the program sooner, rather than later.

Last week, Forbes magazine gave it this mention:

Most people assume that the ASPCA, one of the largest and most well-funded animal-rights groups in the world, who profess to prevent cruelty to animals, would be all for advocating that homeless cats and dogs not be killed at animal shelters. Not so. A big eye opener: The ASPCA has actively fought to prevent cities from establishing no-kill shelters and aggressively fights bills proposed in local city councils that aim to reduce the number of innocent animals being killed. Another shocker? PETA, does too. The true protectors of animals are not the bureaucracy-rich animal rights organizations, but smaller groups and individuals. Nathan Winograd, author of Redemption, and Stanford-law-educated ex-criminal prosecutor and corporate attorney, is the founder of a growing no-kill-shelter movement—and gets my vote for most important intellectual this year. His no-kill actions challenge the status quo by thinking beyond the box. He’s developed a creative and realistic plan that many cities are successfully using to save most of their homeless animals. New York City’s ACC, who murders hundreds of cats and dogs each week needs to reform and implement his ideas.

And, presumably, the checkbooks of a wealthy animal-lover or two accustomed to donating to the ASPCA or PETA, were slammed shut.   Money talks.

A couple of months ago, the Christian Science Monitor profiled Ryan Clinton and the work of Fix Austin and Austin Pets Alive! in making Austin the nation’s largest No Kill community.  It mentioned how they recently formed American Pets Alive! to support grassroots No Kill efforts elsewhere and quoted Clinton, “I really think we are at the tipping point nationally and this is going to happen all over the country very quickly.”

We’ve gone from exactly one No Kill community ten years ago to over 25 now, with several communities poised to join the “90% Club” and many more reform efforts underway.  Still, that amounts to less than 1% of the estimated 3500 animal shelters in the country.  It may not seem like much, but the number is increasing at an increasing rate–most of these were announced within the past year or so.  No Kill Houston and the No Kill Communities blog have been keeping lists of these communities as they pop up, but a visual representation helps to put things in a spatial context.  Cathy Habas of No Kill Louisville put No Kill communities on the map –literally, a Google Map, and that gives us another way of looking at where we are and where we’re going.    There’s a lot of blank space in the Southwest, Southeast, New England, Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands, but there’s a nice cluster developing in and around Virginia and some interesting things happening in Texas.   How impossible can it be if it is all over the map?

If we’re at the tipping point, and it looks like we may well be, then this map and the landscape of animal sheltering in this country will be looking very different very soon, but this isn’t a passive process–it doesn’t just happen by diffusion.  Not yet, and maybe not ever.  It happens by jump dispersal.

A determined leap.

A decision.

A marker is something to celebrate.  A blank space is an opportunity.

*New York City has been “trying” to go No Kill for years, missing deadline after deadline.  If the ASPCA were to throw its considerable heft behind making New York City No Kill and ending the rampant abuses at NYCACC, rather than blocking No Kill efforts there and elsewhere, the Big Apple would be the biggest No Kill community in the country tomorrow.

UPDATE  12/20/11 From Cathy Habas:  “The “Map of No Kill” just got more impressive. Because it was shared extensively yesterday (600 views in a day! Wow!) I’ve gotten some feedback regarding even more No Kill communities! Seagoville, TX; Brown County, IN; Chippewa County, MI; Allegany County, MD; Ivins, UT; and Vancouver, BC all joined the map.”

UPDATE 12/21/11 Healdsburg, CA joins the map with a 93% save rate in 2010 and a 95% save rate in 2011, bringing the current number of No Kill communities in North America to 34!  Still think it’s impossible?

Click here to see the updated map.

Dog shaking dry. Carli Davidson Photography.

One thing that I find very striking/puzzling about the whole “but, but, but…they do so much good” argument is how it only seems to apply to animal “protection” groups.  I have yet to see anyone dare to defend Sandusky by saying that he “did so much good” with his youth group, so lets all look the other way about his being a child molester.  I don’t recall anyone defending the Catholic church along similar lines.  Both have been universally condemned, and deservedly so.  And, although I can’t think of an instance where this has happened, if an environmental group wiped out an endangered species or engaged in toxic dumping, I doubt we’d hear about how much other good they did.  Why do people, and those who like to be seen as animal lovers, no less, defend animal organizations in this way?  It is bizarre.

The perspective of abuse survivors is generally hidden and overlooked.  Whether or not any form of justice is served, the aftermath of abuse lasts and lasts.

Abuse itself is generally hidden, and often in plain sight.  An interesting article in the New York Times looks at the social dimensions of ethical and unethical behavior.

Professor Zimbardo has classified evil activity in three categories: individual (a few bad apples), situational (a bad barrel of apples) or systemic (bad barrel makers).

I’d describe the broken animal “sheltering” system we have today as a classic example of the latter category, and large national groups such as HSUS and the ASPCA as the “bad barrel makers.”  The article concludes:

“The majority of people can get seduced across the line of good and evil in a very short period of time by a variety of circumstances that they’re usually not aware of — coercion, anonymity, dehumanization,” he said. “We don’t want to accept the notion because it attacks our concept of the dignity of human nature.”

While it may be easy to give up in the face of such discouraging findings, the point, Professor Zimbardo and others say, is to make people conscious of what is known about how and why people are so willing to behave badly — and then use that information to create an environment for good.

…Although no one thinks it’s an easy task, Professor Zimbardo is not alone in his faith that people can be taught, and even induced, to do the right thing.

“I am a true believer that we can create environments to act ethically,” Professor Gino said. “It just might take a heavier hand.”

I’d never looked at a dog in quite this way.

And photography revealed these fascinating and comical views of animals doing something they do every day–shake themselves dry.  Sometimes you can’t really see what’s right in front of you.

No Kill News

The ASPCA debacles continue and include shipping dogs from one kill “shelter” to another, apparently for the publicity.  Scratch the surface…

In case you still think that “shelters” are full of hardworking people who love animals and hate killing them, there’s Memphis, TN and  McCracken County, KY for you to attempt to explain away.

Whose voice are they?

Two years ago, the ASPCA killed Oreo, the abused ‘miracle dog’ whose survival story had inspired so many people to get out their checkbooks and send in donations.  Last week, they gave us a glimpse of what they do for an encore by posting some rather incriminating documents in the worst hiding place ever invented.

Two documents in particular precipitated responses from Extremists here, there, and everywhere.   In case you missed it, “The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda” and “Engaging Public Officials” appeared briefly on the ASPCAPro website, the mission of which is:

To provide tools and resources for animal welfare professionals.

Once again caught with their pants down, they have proceeded to ignore some very fundamental issues.  There has been no apology, no press release, only a lame reply on Facebook.  In the interests of burying this issue and in appearing to respond while not substantively responding, the ASPCA did not issue the reply as its own free-standing post, much less a press release, but relegated it to a comment on another post, hiding it from most potential donors.  Pertinent questions from advocates remain unanswered.

I guess there is such a thing as bad publicity.

What passes for an official response, part 1. Click to enlarge.

What passes for an official response, part 2. Click to enlarge.

What passes for an official response, part 3. Click to enlarge.

What passes for an official response, part 4. Click to enlarge.

What passes for an official response, part 5. Click to enlarge.

‘Round and ‘round it goes…

I used to live near the ASPCA’s home turf of New York City, and I’ve known the ugly reality hidden behind the cute calendars for many years—since the early-mid 1980s, to be more precise, when I first heard the parable of the accountant and the veterinarian*, which I recounted in a previous article about the ASPCA’s opposition to Oreo’s Law.

The ASPCA has long been a nice comfortable killing machine.  It’s really quite amazing how times have changed and not changed…

An accountant was visiting his client, a veterinarian who worked for the ASPCA in addition to his private practice. In fact, he seemed to spend a lot more hours at the ASPCA than he devoted to his private practice, even though they weren’t paying him all that much. The accountant was at the vet’s office wrestling the books into some semblance of order and a very friendly dog with a badly scarred and misshapen head came galumphing over to be petted, and the accountant obliged him. The dog was friendly to the point of making a pest of himself by attempting to be an oversized lap dog. The accountant shooed him away so that he could get some work done. He could hear the clop-clop of the dog’s paws on the floor as he went down the hall, around a corner, and back up another hall to reappear at the opposite door of the office he was working in, with a look on his scarred face that said “Hi, I’m a different dog than the one that was just here a minute ago, pet me too”.

The dog had come to reside temporarily at the vet’s office as a result of the vet’s work for the ASPCA. He’d come in as a badly injured stray. Someone had apparently beaten him and he had multiple fractures to his skull, which the vet, who is well-respected for his considerable skills as a surgeon, had spent hours in surgery wiring back together. He practically donated some very fancy surgery to them because that’s the kind of person he is. They wanted to kill the dog after all that–”a friendly dog who wouldn’t win any beauty contests”, as the accountant described him. The vet removed the dog from their custody instead. The accountant told the vet that while he admired the work he did on behalf of this dog and other animals at the ASPCA, it was his responsibility as accountant to advise him to leave the ASPCA and concentrate on his private practice, and frankly, he couldn’t understand why he took that kind of abuse from them, and for so little money. The vet’s reply was impossible to argue with: 

“The animals need me.”

One protector in the killing machine was better than nothing at all. I can’t imagine how he did it for as long as he did. The tradition of killing animals for being there and abusing those who would do otherwise is a long one there. I am perpetually amazed at people who see it as a benevolent place. Apparently their marketing has done its job, but it would take a lot more than some nice packaging to remove the image of that dog my father described so vividly and what the ASPCA wanted to do to him, and to the vet.

I hadn’t thought of that dog in years, but recent events have made him restless. He’s been making his circuit down the hall, around the corner, and up the other hall, to reappear at the opposite door. Always the same question:

“Will it be different this time?”

When will it ever be different?

How long can a stagnant and retrograde organization maintain a positive public image (and a steady stream of donations) held together by cognitive dissonance and an aggressive ad campaign, in the face of rapidly changing times?

The last picture of Oreo.

*Shortly after the events described therein took place.  At that time, the ASPCA held the animal control contracts for New York City.  The contracts have been held by the NYCACC since its creation in 1995 by then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The ASPCAPro webpage as it appeared before certain extremely embarrassing documents were made to disappear. Click to enlarge.

Until Tompkins County became the first No Kill community in U.S. history, No Kill was said to be impossible. When other communities followed suit, it became probable. When we cross the tipping point, it will become inevitable. 

~Nathan Winograd, from “On Leadership”

Yesterday morning, a friend emailed me a couple of links that she’d seen the ASPCA was promoting on Facebook and in email blasts.  Of particular note was a document entitled “The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda.”  I am so taken with it that I will quote it in its entirety, in addition to linking to a pdf.

Here it is:

The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda
Step 1: Establishing a Proxy

A member of a community will begin to adopt the talking points of the Extremist Agenda, using aggressive and divisive language to describe the state of that community’s animal welfare organizations.

Step 2: Creating a Local Organization

The proxy forms an organization (i.e. “No Kill Austin/Louisville/Houston/Philly) that will act as the local brand for the Extremist Agenda and begin to use social networking to expand.

Step 3: Engaging in Local Politics

The no-kill organization lobbies local public officials and candidates regarding the existing euthanasia rates at the municipal shelter. In most cases, there does exist public attention to the need to reform the sheltering system to increase lifesaving.

• The proxy organization will get involved in local elections, providing questionnaires and financial support to candidates perceived as sympathetic to the Extremist Agenda.

Step 4: Slandering Existing Animal Welfare

The Extremist Agenda slanders the existing shelter director and any local humane organization that is deemed to be sympathetic to the status quo. The aim of the slander is to put enough pressure on the director to step down (which is often achieved).

Step 5: Installing a Puppet Regime

A new “compassionate” director sympathetic to the Extremist Agenda is put in place through effective lobbying. The Extremist Agenda organization will often advocate a candidate with little or no experience who will essentially do as they are told.

Step 6: Saving Face when the Agenda Fails

The Extremist Agenda displaces blame when the program becomes unsustainable by blaming either their own director or local public officials for not backing them sufficiently.

Step 7: Slandering Media

Attacking unfavorable media is commonplace for the Extremist Agenda when a story runs that questions any component of implementing overnight solutions while demonizing hardworking animal welfare organizations.

I am nonplussed once again.  I didn’t think I could be, but I am.  I love the First Amendment.  It’s my favorite.  Why are they trying to make it seem so–dirty?  And, holy crap!  Somebody figured out how to channel Senator Joe McCarthy!

Are you a citizen concerned about abuse and killing at your local animal shelter (paid for with your tax dollars and/or donations)?  The ASPCA calls you a ‘proxy’.  Do you believe that shelters should implement the No Kill Equation, saving 90+% of all homeless pets in the community?  According to the ASPCA, you are a proponent of the dreaded “Extremist Agenda.”  Do you speak the truth about the abuse and killing at your local “shelter”?  Do you call out killing apologists?  According to the ASPCA, you are committing slander, being divisive, and demonizing.  According to the ASPCA, a compassionate shelter director committed to the No Kill Equation is a puppet and needs to be corralled within scare quotes.

According to the ASPCA, “In most cases, there does exist public attention to the need to reform the sheltering system to increase lifesaving.”  So, what’s the bigger problem to them—the fact that so-called shelters kill needlessly and spitefully (as when rescue is en route) and abuse animals in the process, or the fact that this reckless irresponsibility and malice is making its way into the public eye?

Plus, all of their name-calling combined with their admonitions against slander and divisiveness would be comical if they didn’t perpetuate tragedy after tragedy.

I noticed that the ASPCA name and logo were conspicuously absent from these documents.  Why would they leave that stuff off?  Deniability?  The document properties for “The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda” indicate that it was created on October 4, 2010, so apparently, it has been making the rounds behind the scenes for over a year prior to yesterday’s little indiscretion.  Another disappearing document, “Engaging Public Officials” was created on October 5, 2010.

Before the day was out, the ASPCA realized that it had done something extremely stupid and pulled two of the more incriminating documents from its website.   The link that led to “The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda,” now yields only  an error message.

All that is left of the Extremist Agenda" and "Engaging Public Officials" on the ASPCAPro website.

But the internet being what it is, once the proverbial lolcat is out of the bag, it’s on more hard drives than you can count and it ain’t going back in.

Mission Orange kitteh wants you to STFU

When I first saw these webpages, I had a feeling that they might not be long for this world, so I took the screenshot at the top of this post for posterity and downloaded “The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda” and “The Psychology of Attacks and Attackers”  (I got a particular charge out of their effort to create a perception of a ‘slippery slope’ whereby the presentation of legitimate concerns becomes a verbal ‘attack’ and segues into ‘violence’.  Smarmy, smarmy, smarmy.   Never mind that these people commit actual violence every time they kill an animal.)  I also downloaded “Engaging Public Officials.” I wasn’t the only Extremist No Kill advocate  who did.  John Sibley also preserved “The Tactics of the Extremist Agenda”  and “Engaging Public Officials” for your entertainment.  He’s an extremely civic-minded dude.

It’s worth having a look at the remaining links on the “Tools for Humane Discourse” page while they last.  Try not to get whiplash from all the irony.

“Let’s Get It Done” contains the telling statement, “We stand to lose something even more valuable than votes – the public’s money and time.”  I thought I’d highlight that statement because it is one of the only ones in the whole lot that is both honest and truthful.  I’m extremely helpful that way.

If your sense of humor is sufficiently warped, you might enjoy the “Pledge for Humane Discourse” almost as much as I did.  Upon scanning the list of signatories who pledged:

We the undersigned individuals and organizations, in conjunction with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), reject and condemn verbal abuse, threats, and acts of violence directed against animal welfare personnel. There is no place in the humane movement for physical or verbal intimidation, violence, or acts of terrorism.

Such behavior is wholly inconsistent with a core ethic of promoting compassion and respect, and undermines the credibility of the entire animal welfare movement. Our goal must be to affirm the value and integrity of all life, whether animal or human, and to encourage others to do likewise. Verbal attacks, threats, harassment, defamation, and acts of violence, moreover, do not ultimately help animals. Instead, they eliminate opportunities for dialogue, collaboration and cooperation, making our shared goals, including that of ending the euthanasia of healthy, adoptable animals, harder to achieve. A free and respectful exchange of views in the ongoing national conversation about animal welfare practices, including animal sheltering practices, is the standard to which humane organizations and communities should aspire and adhere.

We call on every animal welfare group and advocate to join us in actively promoting compassion and respect not just for animals but for those people who work tirelessly on their behalf. Please pledge your commitment by adding your name below.

A few names jumped out at me—

• The Humane Society of Berks County, Reading, PA, whose director, recently told an anti-gassing advocate to “go f*** yourself” in an email.
• Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control, Charlotte, NC , with a long list of documented abuse of animals and intimidation of advocates.
• Miami-Dade Animal Services Department, Miami, FL, which was recently exposed for extreme cat abuse and killing caught on camera.  No Kill advocatesExtremists spoke out, endured attacks,  and now there’s hope.
• Gaston County Animal Control, Dallas, NC.  Apparently it is so named because, at least until recently, it gassed tons of animals.
• Houston SPCA, Houston, TX, which has a very high kill rate and tries to take in still more animals, even from places where they are safe.

Killing apologists find plenty of room “in the humane movement for physical or verbal intimidation, violence, or acts of terrorism” when they are the ones doing the intimidating, which is one reason why we have National Animal Shelter Reform Week.  I’d like to thank the ASPCA for inadvertently adding to this week’s revelry.

Proponents of the Extremist Agenda  Animal-lovers and No Kill advocates should, most of all, view this episode as a sign that we have gained enough ground that killing apologists  (even those with literally over $100 million at their disposal) regard the current situation as a crisis and are starting to (pardon the non-vegan metaphor) run around like a bunch of chickens with their heads chopped off.  A crisis is, by definition, a dynamic situation—danger mixed with opportunity.  (They’re in danger of being exposed for what they are—people and organizations who value money and power over the lives of animals; and we have the opportunity to make “shelters” into real shelters.   They have the opportunity to change and get on board with the Extremist Agenda lifesaving; and we are in danger of being labeled “extremists” and subjected to various and sundry other nastiness.)  It is heady, exciting, exhausting and the time when real leaders emerge.  It means we are at, or very near, the tipping point.

The old ‘catch and kill’ monolith is showing its cracks.   It’s up to us to replace it with a new, extremely life-affirming paradigm.

“I don’t think these documents make our job harder; I think they make our job easier,” said Ryan Clinton of Fix Austin, one of the groups the disappearing ASPCA documents referred to specifically as ‘extremist’.    “Any time you get a hold of the other side’s ‘talking points,’ it destroys their credibility with public officials and media.  I particularly love the line that says “Public officials who are leaning in the Extremist direction need to be handled cautiously.””

I am extremely grateful for that.

Owney was a USPS mascot in the late 19th century.

The Southeast Pet Rescue Railroad has this handy guide to making effective use of twitter for animal rescuers and advocates.  Learn how to use twitter to get the word out about adoptions, events, fundraisers, advocacy campaigns and more.  There’s more on social media in general in this older post by Mike Fry.  Getting the word out with social media increases the pace of change exponentially.

A biological anthropologist writes about grief in animals for NPR.  That animals such as cats can experience grief is not news to animal lovers, but for a scientist to write about it in the media is a sign of changing times.  And the more you think about it, the more tragic our broken “sheltering” system looks.

Not exactly breaking news, but the US Post Office has issued commemorative stamps of Owney the postal dog.  The story of Owney illustrates how attitudes towards dogs have and have not changed over the past 100+ years.

The Christian Science Monitor profiled Ryan Clinton in its People Making a Difference feature.  This terrific piece is further evidence that the No Kill movement is arriving at its tipping point.  There’s a lot to love about this article.  I particularly liked how Dr. Ellen Jefferson talked about how participating in the No Kill movement changed her thinking about how to prevent shelter deaths.  In a short piece the article manages to show what happens when you act on a simple principle:

“Everyone needs an advocate,” he says of his animal welfare work, in a modest and lawyerly way. “And this was a solvable problem.”

This post from the New York Times makes me think of how the plight of shelter animals has long been an orphaned issue, an embarrassment to be defensive about, in animal welfare.  I’d like to juxtapose it with this classic by Ed Duvin.  Are elements of the attitudes described in the Times article part of why groups like PeTA are anti-pet (or part of their internal self-justification process)?

And there’s this exciting news from Florida.

And a court ruling in Texas allows for ‘sentimental damages’ in the case of a dog wrongfully killed by a “shelter”.

Classic Posts

Not new, but worth reading (or re-reading):

“The Butterfly Effect” is a wonderful story of an amazing encounter between a Washington Post reporter and a Red Admiral.  There is more to the universe than we know.

All pets would grin like this if they lived in No Kill communities. Photo from the Christian Science Monitor.

UPDATE:  It turns out that Owney, despite  being dead for over 100 years, has a very active twitter feed.

This is the first in a weekly series in which I will highlight blog posts, articles and such in keeping with the theme of this blog.