While the authors encourage each blogger to edit the post to better reflect her blog’s focus, I’ll admit that I haven’t had a chance to remix it, not as fully as I would have liked, anyhow. I have included a few notes here and there, though, in brackets for clarity.

Besides, with a little bit of creativity of reinterpretation, each of the ten tips can easily be applied to animal advocacy efforts!

——————–

This post is a collaboration between Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser and Max Gladwell‘s “10 Ways” series. The post is being simultaneously published across more than 100 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

[If daily blogging sounds like too much of a hassle, you can also volunteer to guest post at a larger group blog. If you have a certain area of expertise - say, managing feral cat populations - offer to share your knowledge in a series of narrowly focused posts.

Whether you author your own blog or not, consider joining the community as a regular reader and commenter. Many of the larger blogs have active and thriving readerships, taking discussions to the next level. If you regularly read non-AR blogs, this can be an excellent opportunity to inject your animal activism into other areas of your life. For example, don't be afraid to call out a blogger you otherwise respect for engaging in speciesism. - Kelly]

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

[Don't forget to count me as one of those friends - I'm easyvegan on Twitter and Facebook, smiteme on Flickr, and kgarbato on YouTube! You can also use my friends/followers lists to locate other vegan abolitionists and AR organizations. - Kelly]

3. Follow Charities on Social Networks

In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you’re increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it.

Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it’s a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers.

You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:

Oxfam America (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube)
The Humane Society (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr)
LIVESTRONG (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr)
WWF (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

[I recommend the following organizations:

Farm Sanctuary: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube

Best Friends: Twitter (and again), Facebook (and again), YouTube

Woodstock FAS: Facebook, Flickr, YouTube

Wildlife SOS: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

United Poultry Concerns: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Soi Dog Foundation: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Liberation BC: Twitter (and again), Facebook, YouTube

Sistah Vegan Project: Twitter, Facebook

Mercy for Animals: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

The Animals and Society Institute: Twitter, Facebook

No-Kill Advocacy Center: Twitter (Nathan Winograd)

And really, this is only a partial list, culled from the first few pages of accounts I follow on Twitter. Take an hour to browse around and no doubt you'll find many, many more organizations and individuals! - Kelly]

4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs

Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.

It’s important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they’re another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you’ll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.

5. Find Volunteer Opportunities

Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers.

For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.

[Or find Jobs for Change; Stephanie explains Change.org's new-ish feature here. - Kelly]

6. Embed a Widget on Your Site

Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money.

Mashable’s Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.

7. Organize a Tweetup

You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that’s important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized.

8. Express Yourself Using Video

As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message.

Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac — the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports.

If you’re more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.

[Step-by-step vegan food vlogging is a good place to start, particularly if you've no idea what to talk about! Show us how to make your favorite vegan brownies or the best way to press tofu, for example. - Kelly]

9. Sign or Start a Petition

There aren’t many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years.

Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.

10. Organize an Online Event

Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized “tweet-a-thon” like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.

In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.

Bonus: Think Outside the Box

Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew’s Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew’s cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease.

Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.

The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments.

Special thanks to VPS.net

A special thanks to VPS.net, who are donating $100 to the Summer of Social Good for every signup they receive this week.

Sign up at VPS.net and use the coupon code “SOSG”to receive 3 Months of FREE hosting on top of your purchased term. VPS.net honors a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so there’s no risk.

About the “10 Ways” Series

The “10 Ways” Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter.

This content was originally written by Mashable’s Josh Catone.

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts everyday activism social media 10 Ways to Support Charity Through Social Media blog for action day Summer of Social Good twitter facebook flickr youtube the internets

Trick or Treat for DDB!

If you and your children will be out “trick or treating” this year, have the kids create a donation box or bucket for Dogs Deserve Better. When knocking on doors ask the homeowner if he/she would like to donate to help dogs as you hold up the bucket and hand them a brochure.

Whoever raises the most money and sends it in will be the lucky recipient of a “Puddles Pak” for their own “Puddle’s Party”! Whether you knock on doors, have a party at school, visit relatives, have an alternative to trick or treating party at church, it’s a fun way to raise money and get brochures into the hands of people. Or just create your own donation bucket and ask the local gas station or convenience store if you can place it on the counter through the month of October.

If you are interested, please email kim [at] dogsdeservebetter.org and tell her how many brochures you will need along with your address. When donations are raised, send them to

DDB,
PO Box 23,
Tipton, PA 16684

with the amount raised and a picture/letter.

Now my mind is reeling with ideas I can put a costume on my dogs and take them “trick or treating” for donations! Be inventive and help raise money for the dogs.

Of course, this is also a great strategy to raise money for your favorite animal advocacy organization: dress up your dog or cat in her evening best (important note: only if she is amenable, and only if) to solicit donations for a local animal shelter or rescue group, or go full Halloween and dress her up as “farmed animal” in order to raise money for a farm animal sanctuary such as Farm Sanctuary or Woodstock FAS. Get creative – who can resist a cute mutt, hmmmm?

If you’ll be the one handing out candy this Hallow’s Eve, here’s another idea: order some vegetarian starter kits or recipe booklets to hand out to trick-or-treaters with your (vegan) Halloween candy. That way, the little ones are happy, and you get to distribute some free swag – from the comfort of your own home, even. Win/win!

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts Dogs Deserve Better ddb halloween trick or treat vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism starter kit everyday activism

I’m been a bad, busy blogger lately, and for that I apologize. Between the DNC, the RNC, the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the hovering hurricane Gustav (and Hannah and Ike and Josephine), and the seemingly neverending rise in police repression and brutality, I am burnt. out. So I went on a bit of a staycation last week, and took in some local sights that I’ve been wanting to for awhile (staycation photos galore!).

Anyway, I thought I’d share this awesome ad campaign from Animals Australia. The series depicts photos of “mouth-watering” (*gag*) meat dishes along with their recipes. Instead of twelve ounces of pork and a cup of red wine vinegar, however, AA’s recipes call for gestation crates and animal cruelty.

I love the juxtaposition of beautiful gourmet food photography and graphic descriptions of factory farming practices. At first glance, the layout looks as though it might be straight out of a meat-worshipping cookbook a la Anthony Bourdain. But once the reader leans in closer, wham! Truth in advertising, baby. Genius.

As an added bonus, the ads are perfect for some stealth activism. Simply print out a few (hundred?) copies and insert them in the animal-unfriendly cookbooks in your local Barnes & Noble store. Or, heck, a friend or relative’s own cookbook collection, if you want to be doubly snarky.

The rest of the series is after the jump. (Click through to each pic’s Flickr page to read the full text.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts everday activism animals australia meat factory farming farmed animals pigs pork animal abuse animal cruelty cruelty to animals recipes flickr photos

vegan chocolate…drool

Good thing my mother doesn’t read my blog, otherwise she’d find out that she’s getting some yummy vegan peanut butter-filled chocolates for Mother’s Day. She loves Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, but you know, they’re tainted by the suffering of dairy cows. So instead of spending my money on useless baubles and knickknacks she’ll never use, or on non-vegan foods that run contrary to my own personal ethics, I’m going to spring for some gourmet vegan candy. Not only can I sleep easy, knowing that my Mother’s Day gift is helping to support an ethical company, but my gift will also go a long way towards showing my mother how good vegan foods can be.

Of course, you need not limit this idea to Mother’s Day. A vegan food item, given to a non-vegan friend or family member, can help counteract the stereotype that all vegan food is made of broccoli or granola and tastes like dirt. It can be anything: chocolate, candy, baked goods, jerky, ice cream. If the commercial items are too pricey for your budget, make your own dessert and hand deliver it! (I found a mouthwatering vegan peanut butter cup recipe on vegfamily.com – maybe a certain libertarian douchebag would like this make this for my birthday, hmmm?)

PETA is even giving away a vegan chocolate assortment for Mother’s Day – you can enter the drawing here.

Some of my favorite vegan companies are listed in the sidebar, under “Veg*n Vendors (Online)”. If you’ve got a link you’d like to see up there, leave it in the comments!

(Photo: Valentine’s Day gift box from Rose City Chocolatier – thnx, Shane!)

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Tagged: everyday activism vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism chocolate mother’s day shopping gifts sweets

awwwwwwwz, lookit teh dawgy, iz sooooo cuuuute!

The Cuteness. Must. Fight. It.

Ahem.

As silly as LOLDoggeh is, he (she?) comes bearing an important message today: think outside the box, veg*ns!

In this vein, tonight’s Everyday Activism tip is a fun one that I picked up from Mark Hawthorne’s Striking at the Roots. It’s so simple and so cute that I was really quite surprised that I’d never thought of it.

Here’s Mark:

Many activists create a special signature at the end of their emails, appended automatically each time they hit the send button, asking readers to take a specific action for animals or including a link to a video.

Thanks to email, digital media has the ability to go viral. Viral marketing is word of mouth for the twenty-first century, but rather than telling one person at a time, you can spread the word (or photo or video or Web link) to thousands of people, all over the world. The emails with the most viral potential are those you can’t wait to share with your friends – the “you’ve got to see this” email that can take on a life of its own. [...]

You can create your own viral email with an animal-rights angle. Site like www.cuteoverload.com feature countless images and video clips of animals. Pick any of them [...] and blast it out with a brief note explaining that this is just one example of the sentience of animals, and direct readers to a link with more information.”

People love the fuzzy wuzzies, and that goes double for fuzzy wuzzies spouting lolspeak. Sites such as Cute Overload not only post pics of super-cute animals, they also often encourage readers to pay the cuteness forward. Many have a built-in email function, wherein readers can email the pic to their friends, along with a brief message. So find a cute photo, attach a relevant animal rights message or link, and get viral! This can be anything: a link to a news story, fact sheet, video, or website; a personal message; an eloquent animal rights quote – you get the idea. If you’ve got extra time to burn, search around for a photo with an explicitly animal rights message – you might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

For example, I posted this photo a few weeks back (the lolz, we needs ‘em):

It’s just crying out for a link to www.torturedbytyson.com or www.goveg.com/ui_chickens.asp, dontcha think?

If you’d like to give it a try, here are some of my daily fixes:

icanhascheezburger.com

ihasahotdog.com

www.stuffonmycat.com

www.cuteoverload.com

lolcats.com is another popular one, but they don’t seem to have an email option (oh noes!). www.macrocats.com, on the other paw, allows for email but doesn’t have a field for personal messages.

Got a favorite site? Share your lolz in the comments!

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts everyday activism viral viral email email cute lol lolz lolcats loldogs mark hawthorne striking at the roots armchair activism cute overload activism

Doh! My post was flagged and deleted. Methinks it sounded “too commercial”. Guess I’ll try again tomorrow. By the by, here’s their moderation policy and TOS. It’s kind of iffy re: links to free starter kits, but I bet we can find a way around it. Leave a note in the comments if you find a format that makes it past the Craigslist censors!

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So as y’all know, I’m currently reading Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism. Well, that’s only half true – I finished it yesterday, and should have a review up soon. ‘Twas a great book, so if you were already kinda sorta thinking about maybe buying a copy, go ahead and do it already. You won’t regret it.

Even your uber-geeky blogger found some shiny new ideas for activism on the internets. Enter Craigslist – and today’s Everyday Activism post. (A category which, by the way, I plan to stop neglecting from this point forward. Pinky swear!)

The short of it: log on to Craigslist (you’ll need to create an account if you don’t already have one) and post an ad for a FREE VEG STARTER KIT, with a link to any one of the dozens of animal org’s that offer them.

The long of it, from Striking at the Roots:

Leafleting in Cyberspace

Activist Nora Kramer suggests posting an ad for a “Free Vegetarian Starter Guide” on Craigslist.org:

1. Go to www.craigslist.org

2. Click on your (or any) city on the right-hand side.

3. Click on the section titled “free” in the “for sale” section.

4. Click on the links titled “post” (in the upper right-hand corner).

5. Type out and submit your message explaining where they can get a Free Vegetarian Starter Guide, using as a link www.veganoutreach.org/starterpack/free-vsp.html or a similar veggie guide link from PETA, Mercy for Animals, etc.

6. Click “post” and follow the final directions, then repeat once a week, as the posts get removed.

Before blogging this idea, I went ahead an “offered” a starter kit on Craigslist myself. It hasn’t appeared on the site yet, but this is where it would/will/should be. All in all, it was a painless process, so says this newbie.

(Under the “free” category, there’s a little blurb about how they don’t allow “intangible/digital items”, so I guess we’ll wait and see whether the vegetarian starter kits get blocked on these grounds. That would really be splitting hairs on their part though, especially considering that the kits are technically physical items. So says this KC Freecycle moderator, who’s quite good at splitting hairs herself!)

Anyway, if you’d like to give it a try, I suggest picking a city and re-posting every few weeks. Better yet, pick a few cities and rotate between them so that whoever is minding the store, so to speak, doesn’t get sick of your repeat ads (which other members and/or the admins may see as spam). Try offering kits from a few different org’s, and play around with the wording in your ads. Allow fellow Craigslisters to email you (don’t worry, they don’t display your real email addy!) and see what kind of feedback you get. Maybe some copy works better than others.

Also, at the risk of sounding cynical, if you’re a regular participant on Craigslist, create a second account just for this purpose so that your main account isn’t penalized in any way, just in case they think you’re a spammer or otherwise misusing the site.

And, by all means, post your success stories here!

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts activism everyday activism craigslist veg starter kits vegetarian starter kits striking at the roots mark hawthorne books free stuff

And while we’re at it, I’d like an Invisible Pink Unicorn, too!

OK, so I’ve been slacking on these “Everyday Activism” posts. Big time. Which is sad, because I’m brimming with them. Plus, they’re generally really simple, easy actions that you diy in no time. Not to mention…people have packed books full of these tips!

So, my tip for today: write/call/email/otherwise harass (but politely) food companies, and ask them to provide more veg*n options. This can be a general request, for example, to Kraft Foods, requesting that they make more veg*n food choices available overall. However, my feeling is that it would be better still to target a specific brand. Think of a veg*n product that you enjoy, but that might be the only veg*n item in that line. Or perhaps a mostly-veg*n line that, despite the manufacturer’s overall animal- or eco-friendly stance, still includes a few non-veg*n items. Write the manufacturer and lay out your case.

For example, I sent the following email to Near East. Love their couscous; wish there were more flavors I could actually eat.

I used to enjoy your Tomato Lentil CousCous immensely. I went through a case of the stuff every few weeks when I lived in New York, but was unable to find it once relocated to the Midwest. So I was delighted to see the Tomato Lentil CousCous in a Whole Foods store last month! However, I transitioned from vegetarianism to veganism a few years ago, and was shocked when I read the label – just in case! – and found that the Tomato Lentil contains honey, an animal product.

Please, please consider using substitutes when possible to make your vegetarian items 100% vegan. It’s so disappointing for new vegans to find that their favorite products are off-limits. Going vegan when possible will help to widen your customer base AND foster loyalty with those customers who are limited by various dietary restrictions. I will continue to enjoy your vegan items, such your Roasted Garlic & Olive Oil CousCous, but would greatly appreciate it if you would consider making more of your vegetarian items all-vegan.

Thanks for reading!

It’s usually all about the money, so stress how much they can expand their customer base by making omni items vegetarian, or vegetarian items vegan. Throw in some stats if you’re feeling math-y. Tell them that you used to love their products before you went veg, and miss them terribly. And so do all your veg*n comrades! If only they’d ditch the whey…

And if the company isn’t all about the money, but also professes to care about animals or the environment, appeal to their ideals: explain why an eco-conscious company can’t, in good faith, sell products laced with factory-farmed eggs. (And cage free eggs are no better.) If you’re especially offended by their non-veg wares, threaten a boycott (but only if you mean it!). Unlike the Kraft Foods conglomerate, a smaller, tree-hugging company might actually care about losing your business – doubly so since you’re more likely to fall in their target demographic.

Got an almost-veg*n vendor who needs a good talking to? Leave the details in the comments. Maybe we can get a letter-writing campaign going!

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts everyday activism easyvegan vegan veganism vegetarian vegetarianism food capitalism animal-friendly eco-friendly food options food choices prepackaged food packaged food meals brands lines

Over the next year, presidential candidates will be crisscrossing the country to try to gain your support. But how will you know where they stand on the issues that are most important to you? As president, will they protect our health, safety, and environment? You won;t know unless you ask.

The 2008 presidential election provides a great opportunity to ask the candidates questions about global warming, nuclear weapons, censorship of government science–anything that you’re concerned about. This is your chance to educate and engage the candidates and other voters on the issues you care about most!

There are many ways to express your views. You can attend candidate events, advocate for policy solutions to be included in the party platforms, ask convention delegates or other local elected officials to communicate your views to the candidates, let candidate staff and volunteers know your views when they contact you, or you can write letters to your local paper.

Entering the dialogue is easier than you think. Click any of the links below to access the online resources we have developed to
help you along the way.

:: Sample questions you can ask the candidates: www.ucsusa.org/link-redirect.jsp?domain=ucsaction&itemID=34507168

:: Policy solutions UCS is asking the candidates to support: www.ucsusa.org/link-redirect.jsp?domain=ucsaction&itemID=34552284

:: Contact information for the 2008 presidential candidates: www.ucsusa.org/link-redirect.jsp?domain=ucsaction&itemID=34293523

:: Report back form to let us know how the candidates are responding: ucsaction.org/campaign/candidate_engagement_report_back/

We need your help to ensure that the issues we all care about most are front and center this election cycle. We encourage you
to engage the candidates, demand answers and specific policy solutions, and let us know how they are responding.

Sincerely,

The UCS Outreach Team
Kate Abend, Climate Program
Michael Halpern, Scientific Integrity Program
Ben Larson, Clean Energy Program
Sean Meyer, Global Security Program
Scott Nathanson, Clean Vehicles Program
Jennifer Palembas, Food and Environment Program
Erin Rogers, California Climate Program
Jean Sideris, Climate Program

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts ucs Union of Concerned Scientists environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist 2008 elections candidates nuclear weapons censorship cloning science global warming climate change

Because I try not to swamp people with mail, I rarely forward animal friendly letters to the editor that I have come across. Please know, however, that it is well worth writing — animal friendly letters are generally published in response to alerts. I find it particularly gratifying when I see animal friendly letters published in response to articles about which I have sent out or seen alerts. Lately I have been overwhelmed with other projects (particularly with a book to be published by Harper Collins early next year, which I look forward to sharing more about later) and have not been able to cover everything I would have liked. How wonderful to know that compassionate people everywhere are keeping their own eyes on their local media and responding on behalf of the animals.

Occasionally I see a letter that I just have to share. Last Sunday, the Los Angeles Time published a lovely piece in which Roseanne Barr shared her interest in making the world a better place. You’ll find the article it on line here. In response to that article, yesterday’s, March 25, Los Angeles Times carried the following letter:

Praising the Barr
Pg. E2

WOW. Roseanne is beautiful in and out ["It's Not Just Lip Service," March 18]. Now if only she were vegetarian!

RACHEL ROSENTHAL

Thank you Rachel, for exemplifying how easy it is to write an animal friendly letter. With two lines, which probably took her sixty seconds to send, she has responded to an article that did not appear to have animal relevance, and reminded Los Angeles that kindness to animals is part of the picture of compassion. I forward her letter in the hope that she will inspire animal advocates to take a moment to respond to the media whenever possible. Legislators look to the letters pages as barometers of public opinion. And readers seeing animal friendly letters are reminded that animal issues are increasingly relevant to mainstream conversations about social issues.

I send a huge thank you to all who write regularly. Even if your letters are not often published, your letters tell the editors that animal issues matter to their readers and they influence all of the content published on the editorial pages.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

To discontinue DawnWatch alerts go to www.DawnWatch.com/nothanks.php

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: DawnWatch – news [at] dawnwatch.com
Date: Mar 26, 2007 5:05 PM
Subject: DawnWatch: Little DawnWatch correction… 3/26/07

Now, really at the risk of swamping people with email, just for this one day, I have to send out a little correction. As I read over my last alert before sending, and changed a couple of words, apparently I inadvertently deleted the word “not” from the following sentence: ” I find it particularly gratifying when I see animal friendly letters published in response to articles about which I have sent out or seen alerts.” It should have been “have NOT sent out or seen alerts.” While I love seeing letters in response to alerts, it is even better to know that everybody is out there doing it on there own!

Thanks for bearing with the occasional DawnWatch slip-ups.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

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Tagged: animals animal rights animal welfare action alerts dawnwatch activism everyday activism letters to the editor Roseanne Barr

Ninety-five percent say they wash their hands after using a public toilet, yet the American Society for Microbiology published a survey of almost 8,000 people across five U.S. cities and found the true number to be only about two-thirds. Chicago topped the list at 83%; in New York City, the actual number fell to less than half.

are a wee bit problematic.

The experts say that:

Proper hand washing, according to the director of clinical microbiology at Mount Sinai, involves lathering with plenty of soap for 20 to 30 seconds (about the time it takes to sing the “alphabet song” three times at a fast tempo), rinsing, and then repeating for another 20 to 30 seconds. CDC guidelines are similar, with additional reminders to wash between fingers and under the nails, and to soap into the creases around knuckles.

and:

At a minimum, experts advise, hands should be washed after every cough, every sneeze, and every time we shake hands with anyone. These simple recommendations may decrease the number of colds we get every year, the number of work days we miss, and the number of days we are laid up in bed. During a pandemic, they may even save your life.

As a true-green enviro, that strikes me as a crazy amount of water to be running through every day.

According to the EPA, standard faucets use 3 to 5 gallons of water per minute, while more efficient kitchen and bathroom faucets get as low as 2 gallons/minute. Using the best-case “standard” numbers, that amounts to 3 gallons of water every time you wash your hands correctly. Now multiple that by x (the number of times you use the restroom per day + the number of hands you shake + the number of times you sneeze and/or cough + the number of times you handle food), and….let’s just say, that’s quite a bit of washing. The average Jane visits the Womyns room around six to eight times a day; add to that the bare minimum of three meals handled a day, and you’ve got 27 to 33 gallons and counting.

Aside from water usage (waste-age?), handwashing with soap and water is also less effective than OTC hand sanitizers – and is rougher on your skin:

Products containing between 60% and 80% alcohol were found more effective than soap in every scientific study available for review. Enveloped viruses such as influenza are especially susceptible to topical alcohol sanitizers. Alcohol solutions not only were found to be more effective at eliminating germs, but require less time and cause less irritation than hand washing. Hand washing still has a place when hands are dirty or visibly contaminated with bodily fluids like respiratory secretions or blood, but for routine decontamination, alcohol-based products are the preferred method for hand sanitation.

Which brings me to the crux of today’s Everyday Activism tip. When possible, forgo traditional soap and water handwashing in favor of hand sanitizer. It uses less water (good for the environment!) and is actually more effective in cleaning your hands (good for you!).

Though you can purchase ready-made sanitizers (such as Purell) at most any grocery store, DIY can save you money and eliminate all that extra packaging.

Dr. Greger, a huge fan of homemade sanitizers and general cleanliness, offers this recipe for concerned citizens:

Recipe for Alcohol Sanitizer Rub

4 cups 70% rubbing (isopropyl) alcohol
4 teaspoons of glycerin

Mix to make approximately one quart (liter).

The glycerin acts as a humectant, or moisturizer.2665 Other moisturizers can be used, but glycerin is nontoxic, cheap, nonallergenic, and widely available. Vegetable glycerin can typically be found in natural food stores or online, and bulk rubbing alcohol can be found in drug stores in convenient 32-ounce (4-cup) bottles.

An added bonus: in the event of a pandemic, you’re not totally shit outta luck when Walgreens flies through their Purell stock in 24 hours flat.

Even better bonus:

Instead of using isopropyl alcohol, which can be acutely toxic if ingested, one can substitute a 140-proof scotch whisky. An additional advantage to using booze is that stockpiled liquor, along with cigarettes, gasoline, water, guns, canned vegetables and, oddly, cosmetics, has historically been among the most highly valued barter items in crisis situations.

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.

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Tagged: bird flu avian influenza Michael Greger recipe DIY hand sanitizer pandemic everyday activism environment environmental environmentalism environmentalist water conservation