Last year, Nathan Winograd and the No Kill Advocacy Center offered up free copies of Winograd’s book Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America to any elected official who requested one. Since then, Winograd has released Irreconcilable Differences: The Battle for the Heart & Soul of America’s Animal Shelters, an anthology of essays related to animal rescue and the no-kill movement. As with Redemption, elected officials can receive a copy, free of charge.

The details and fine print:

The No Kill Advocacy Center is offering free copies of Irreconcilable Differences: The Battle for the Heart & Soul of America’s Animal Shelters to any elected official.

We need to change the way shelters operate and our director is willing to pay for it! He has generously donated “as many copies as it takes” of his award-winning book to get City Council Members, Members of the Board of Supervisors, Mayors, Assemblymen, Senators, County Commissioners, or any elected official to read it. All they have to do is ask for it.

If we receive a letter on official stationary from them asking for a copy, we’ll send it free, no strings attached.

Limitations:

1. Letter must be postmarked by April 30, 2010 and sent to our address.
2. Request must be on official stationary (No e-mails, telephone calls, or third-party requests).
3. One book per letter and per elected official.
4. This offer is only valid for elected officials in the U.S.
5. There are no exceptions or extensions.

Please let your elected officials know about this opportunity. A leader in the no-kill movement and a vegan, Winograd is a fierce and outspoken champion of nonhuman animals – of all species.

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My cynical, misanthropic, impatient, stick-in-the-mud thoughts on Earth Day: “Meat’s Not Green. Save the Planet – GoVeganNow.com”

Graphic shamelessly appropriated and repurposed from PETA2.
(Hey, what’s good for the goose…)

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Woman and pig: PETA says that neither of us is meat.
So kindly stop treating us ladies that way, mkay PETA?
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Okay, in all truth, the following ranks fairly low on the Misogo-meter, particularly where PETA’s concerned. But – catchy title, etc. Surely you understand.

Anyhow, in reporting on the reaction to KFC’s newest “culinary” creation – the Double Down, i.e., a couple of slabs each of bacon and cheese, crammed between two pieces of fried chicken(s), and slathered in “The Colonel’s Sauce” – in the Twitterverse, PETA singled out two celebritweets.

First up, Asher Roth, who writes: “Well, at least were making strides towards food quality and portion control – bravo colonel”

All fine and good, yes? Nothing jaw-droppingly witty, but Asher Roth (um, who?) seems to capture the popular consensus re: a “sandwich” made entirely of animal products and containing a reported 32 grams of fat and 1380 mg of sodium. Namely: yuck! and wtf!.

Next, PETA offers up a screenshot of Bow Wow’s KFC themed tweet: “I don’t know what’s more hideous, a girl with a hard fake booty with dimples in it or KFC’s new doubled down chicken sandwich.”

Hyperbole aside (e.g., clearly an unattractive ass is not nearly as hideous as are the corpses of several animals, lathered in the secretions of many others, all cobbled together to form a gluttonous, heart attack-inducing foodstuff), I hope I don’t need 140 characters to explain to you what’s wrong with this quip. Mocking a woman’s physical appearance? Not cool. (48, bitches! 68 if you factor in a bit.ly link!)

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Mars, Inc. wants you to know that a bitch is a bitch is a bitch – and, whether she be digging for gold or for bones, that bitch ain’t shit.

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Eight of Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary’s sixty-two Signature Billboards, all from the “We Know Our Victims Well” series. Clockwise from the top left:
They long to live as much as we do.
(A single white duck gazes into the camera.)
They long to be loved as much as we do.
(Hen and rooster Libbie and Louie find refuge in one another’s touch.)
They face life together like we do.
(A pair of ducks wander through the snow.)
They love their children as much as we do.
(An adult llama and his child smile together.)
They need their mothers as much as we do.
(A cow nuzzles his mother.)
They protect their children as fiercely as we do.
(A cow and her calf stare defiantly ahead.)
They raise families like we do.
(A duck family – complete with five youngsters – strolls along in harmony.)
They fall in love like we do.
(One cow licks another with obvious affection.)
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A few weeks ago, the always-awesome Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary unveiled a new campaign to aid activists in combating speciesism – and all the oppressions it sanctions – specifically that directed towards “food” animals. With its Signature Billboards, Peaceful Prairie gives faces, individualities, life stories, and emotions to the many animals we call “food” – cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, sheep, lambs, goats and fishes:

They speak for themselves…

We don’t always have the opportunity to raise awareness of the animals’ plight during daily email correspondence but now, with Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary’s latest campaign, we’ve made it easy and effective for anyone to learn how their actions can save the lives of other animals, lives that matter to them as much our lives matter to us.

The graphics – each of which pictures one or more nonhuman animals, as well as a brief but powerful statement about her life experiences, relationships with/to other nonhumans, and/or personhood – are organized around four main themes:

• We Know Our Victims Well;
• 55 Billion Reasons to Live Vegan;
• Humane Farming, An Oxymoron; and
• Subjects of a Life

Designed for use as email signatures, you can also display these graphics on your blog or website, or share them on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

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It’s been several – well, okay, seven – weeks since I posted Breeze Harper’s video introduction to Sistah Vegan, her newly released anthology on race, gender and (vegan) food from Lantern Books. An increased workload, mild-but-chronic health problems (me) and unexpected and urgent health scares (Kaylee and Ralphie), an utter lack of inspiration and motivation – all have conspired to keep me from blogging in the new year. Consequently, I haven’t given this video series a fraction of the attention it deserves. It’s high time we remedy that, dontchathink?

As I said before, many of the videos are on the lengthy (10 minutes+) side, so most likely you’ll need several sittings to view each set. (Hint: many are just the right length for a midday snack break!) They’re all well worth a watch, and together provide an excellent supplement to the Sistah Vegan anthology. (Regrettably, I’m not aware of any available transcripts, nor will I be able to provide any, due to the length of the videos.)

In addition to Brief Intro to My Consciousness Formation (view Parts One and Two on YouTube), we have:

[An Introduction to The] Sistah Vegan Project – Here, Sistah Vegan project founder/anthology editor Breeze Harper discusses the genesis and development of Sistah Vegan, touches upon the project’s and book’s areas of interest, and shares some of the reactions her work has generated among vegans and people of color.

(On YouTube: Part One and Part Two.)

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