Ruffling feathers
ONCE VIEWED AS CRAZIES, ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS SAY THEIR MESSAGE ISSTARTING TO GET THROUGH

One recent Saturday, a dozen people gathered at Diversey Avenue and HalstedStreet near a KFC restaurant whose windows proclaimed the week’s specials: “12PC LEGS THIGHS $8.99 / 12 PC CHICKEN $10.99.” The Lakeview location is busyand loud, and if it weren’t for the signs the group held aloft–“Boycott KFC,”“KFC Tortures Animals” and “Scalded Alive”–it would not have been clear thata demonstration was under way. Helen Pollock, a singer/dance instructor fromChicago, moved into the street to hand leaflets to pedestrians and driverswaiting at the light. The leaflets, produced by People for the EthicalTreatment of Animals, declared that PETA was boycotting KFC because, accordingto PETA, the chain’s suppliers abuse chickens–routinely breaking their legs,cutting off their beaks and scalding them alive before they’re slaughtered forfood.
KFC responds that the hundreds of millions of chickens slaughtered for itsrestaurants each year are bought from the same companies that supply chickensto groceries across the country. And, it says, these suppliers followguidelines recommended by KFC’s own animal welfare advisory council.
The protesters dismissed these denials. The fliers quoted Rev. Al Sharpton(“I’m calling on people to boycott KFC until they adopt animal welfare systemsrecommended by PETA”), the Dalai Lama (“I have been particularly concernedwith the sufferings of chickens for many years”) and actress Pamela Anderson(“If people knew how KFC treats their chickens, they’d never eat anotherdrumstick”) and featured a photo of a bloody chicken carcass.
Several cars honked in support, and a passenger in one raised his fist insolidarity. Then two younger guys, probably in their mid-20s, reluctantlyaccepted Pollock’s offer of a leaflet. Glancing at it, one of them remarkedloudly, “I can’t wait to get a chicken sandwich!”
Pollock shrugged off the comment. A regular volunteer for PETA as well asMercy for Animals, the Chicago-based group that had organized thedemonstration, Pollock said she’s heard snickers and smart alec remarksbefore. “But I very seldom hear anything negative,” she said.
As if to prove her point, three kids ran toward her, ahead of a womanpushing a stroller. All wanted a flier. Pollock happily set them up–they’rethe future of the animal rights movement, she says–and the mother, stuffingthe leaflet in her purse, thanked her.
Animal rights activism is associated with outlandish tactics. But as mostanimal liberationists will tell you, it’s the polite efforts at persuasion,like those on display that Saturday, that ultimately win hearts and minds.
“If you do it enough, you’ll get more and more people understanding,” saidDeborah Uhlman, a Chicago real estate agent and avid animal rights activistwho was leafleting with Pollock.
It seems undeniable that, over the past two decades, the ethical argumentsof the animal rights movement have caught on with a broader public. Even manyskeptics now agree that animals feel pain, should not suffer unnecessarily andshould not be subject to every human whim. Their lives, on some level, clearlymatter.
Examples of the change abound: Mary Kay, Revlon and other cosmetics firmsno longer test products on animals; many school systems offer alternatives todissection in science classes; companies like MasterCard, Visa and Sears havestopped sponsoring the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus because ofconcerns about animal treatment; clothing-makers Tommy Hilfiger, J. Crew andRalph Lauren have gone “fur-free”; several states have restricted use of”battery” cages–so restrictive that animals cannot move–to house pigs andchickens; Chicago and other cities have banned foie gras; zoos in severalcities, including Chicago, have stopped housing elephants; two of the lastthree horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. –were recently shuttered by courtorder, and a third, near DeKalb, is on the bubble; many law schools, fromHarvard to Chicago-Kent, now offer programs in animal law; animal crueltycharges have been filed against factory farms and furriers after PETAinvestigations; and most restaurants now offer some sort of vegetarian fare.
Thirty years ago, when the modern animal rights movement was in itsinfancy, its leaders were largely dismissed as oddballs and extremists. Theirchallenges to agribusiness, human dietary practices and the use of animals inclothing and scientific research inspired defensiveness and anger. In 1989,after some 600 people marched on Michigan Avenue in what was then Chicago’slargest anti-fur protest, a Tribune reporter described the loud but nonviolentgroup as “jeering throngs” who’d spent hours lobbing “catcalls,” “insults” and”verbal abuse” on passersby wearing fur and leather. A Trib columnist warnedthat the animal rights movement “proposes to turn human society upside down byplacing animals on the same moral plane as people.”
To be sure, the movement’s more radical and aggressive members provokedthis backlash. At demonstrations around the country in the 1980s and ’90s,protesters paraded nude to protest fur; others sprayed paint and hurled eggsat fur-wearers. Research labs were broken into. Farms, including several inthe Chicago suburbs, were vandalized and their animals freed. The federalgovernment still lists the Animal Liberation Front, once accused of settingfire to two Chicago fur salons, among the nation’s domestic terrorist groups.
Even advertising campaigns, such as PETA’s 1999 ad portraying RonaldMcDonald as a mass murderer, have engendered a negative reaction.
But the image of animal rights activists was always a distortion, accordingto the movement’s original theoretician.
“A tiny minority of more obnoxious types were simply played up by the mediaand opponents of the movement,” says Peter Singer, whose 1975 book “AnimalLiberation” is credited with launching the modern movement.
In an e-mailed response to questions, Singer, professor of bioethics atPrinceton, said more people are rejecting the idea that humans have rightsother species don’t have. “But I also think,” he wrote, “there is growingawareness of the cruelty we routinely inflict on animals, especially infarming, and more people are turning away from that cruelty.”
Movement leaders acknowledge that part of the reason animal rights doctrineis becoming more accepted is that the focus now is on education. “We’veshifted,” says RaeLeann Smith, PETA’s national organizer on circus issues.”We’re putting a different face on what we do. Standing and handing outleaflets and talking to people is different from standing on a corner naked.”
Ringling Bros. came to town last November. The night of its first show atthe United Center, several dozen protesters gathered across from the mainentrance to demand that elephant handlers stop using bullhooks, long trainingguides tipped with metal prods and hooks. PETA and others say bullhooks leaveelephants with painful gashes. Ringling Bros. says its elephants are treatedwell and that the bullhook is an “extension of the handler’s arm” that’s nomore harmful than a dog leash.
Bruce Read, vice president of animal stewardship for Feld Entertainment,the circus’ parent, says the tool is necessary because handlers’ arms aren’tlong enough to direct elephants that stand 8 feet tall. “If the tool is usedinappropriately, the animal will stop responding,” he argued. “You cannot havelong-term repetitive behaviors with negative reinforcement.”
On this night, the activists occupied much of the block. “THERE’S NO EXCUSEFOR ELEPHANT ABUSE!” a banner declared. Two people wearing elephant suitswalked around on stilts, and Mike Brazell, a PETA activist, led the group inchanting: “BAN BULLHOOKS!”
“You’re doing great!” Brazell told the demonstrators. “Now make it loud sothe elephants can hear you. Let the elephants inside the arena know you aretheir voice.” Some cars honked in support as they drove by. A couple ofdrivers gave them the finger.
A boy hurrying into the arena with his parents shouted: “You’ve got to quitthat protest!” No one appeared to hear him.
To get people out, Smith sent mass e-mails to PETA supporters, includingmembers of PETA Z, an outreach arm aimed at 13-to-24-year-olds. Now she waseying nearby police. Already, the group had been told to move away from theUnited Center entrance.
The demonstrators were a mix of veteran activists and first-timers. Highschool students who’d learned about the event on MySpace.com were there, aswere a college professor and a manager of a financial services firm.
The group included Elaine Carlson, a desktop publisher for a Chicagomerchandising firm who’d come with her daughters Sydney, 12, and Olivia, 10,because the older girl is a PETA member. Carlson said she hasn’t always beencomfortable with PETA’s more theatrical demonstrations. “But I don’t thinktorturing animals for entertainment is the way to go,” she said.
A few feet away, Daniel Haugh was checking in with the people in his group,Mercy for Animals. Haugh, 30, quit a career in marketing last year to workfull-time on research and outreach for Mercy, which is focused on ending”factory farming” and promoting veganism.
“We live in a society where we learn to dissociate our pets and ourselvesfrom what we eat, but those animals suffer,” he said. “The most compassionateway people can make a difference immediately is by taking on a vegetariandiet. Every vegetarian saves 95 to 100 lives a year.”
Members of Humans Out Promoting Empathy, an animal rights group fromHinsdale Central High School, were trying to put fliers into the hands offamilies headed into the show. Often they ran to intercept people, whichstartled a few parents. But the students had a sense of humor about theirmission. Blake Wilson, who was waving a replica of a bullhook, joked:”Sometimes I wish I could use it on some of these people. But that would stillbe cruelty to animals.”
In the 18th Century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham applied his concept ofutilitarianism–in which ethical behavior consists of doing the greatest goodfor the greatest number–to the animal kingdom, asking: “The question is not’Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’ ” Bentham’sanswer was yes, meaning that humans needed to consider the good of animalsthey interact with.
Bentham provided the philosophical framework for the animal welfaremovements in Britain and, later, the U.S. The American abolitionist movementestablished a social context, as the spirit of reform spread after the CivilWar to issues beyond slavery. In 1866, former diplomat Henry Bergh formed theAmerican Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York City asa response to abuse he witnessed against horses, donkeys and livestock.Bergh’s leadership was seminal in other ways: He was known for attractingpress coverage through public protest and theater, such as bringing traffic toa halt by getting freight and transport drivers to unhitch overworked horses.
Over subsequent decades, other activists–including Thomas Edison, JackLondon and Albert Einstein–were concerned with a range of issues, includingthe plight of strays, the treatment of circus animals, fur production, animalexperimentation and slaughterhouse conditions. Many were also vegetarians,notes historian Diane Beers, author of the book, “For the Prevention ofCruelty.”
“Today’s activists inherited a legacy of diverse activism from theirpredecessors going all the way back to the movement’s start,” Beers said in arecent e-mail. “A diverse agenda makes their cause more appealing to more ofthe public–a something-for-everyone kind of movement.”
Like many of their successors, early animal advocates were mistakenlycharacterized as off-center. Female activists were even “diagnosed” with amysterious mental illness known as zoophil-psychosis. “Actually humorous bytoday’s standards, but it was a characterization that stuck,” Beers noted.
Singer’s 1975 book emphasized that animals, like humans, are “sentient,”and vividly described laboratories and farms that subjected animals togratuitous suffering. Referencing Bentham, Gandhi and the Rev. Martin LutherKing Jr., Singer urged readers to stop practicing “speciesism,” the view thatone sentient species is “sacrosanct” and others subordinate to it.
Singer conceded that all sentient creatures do not have the same abilitiesor rights: “Concern for the well-being of children growing up in America wouldrequire that we teach them to read; concern for the well-being of pigs mayrequire no more than that we leave them with other pigs in a place where thereis adequate food and room to run freely.”
Inspired by Singer’s work and the civil rights, women’s and environmentalmovements, another wave of activists began organizing to highlight the plightof animals. PETA was one. Formed in Maryland in 1980, it now counts more than1.6 million members worldwide.
In the U.S., at least, the movement has been predominantly white andmiddle- and upper-class–one reason critics object to comparing the animalrights cause to the civil rights movement.
“I don’t say that speciesism and racism are exactly the same,” respondsSinger. But “in all these cases, a dominant group has developed an ideologythat allows it to use those it considers inferior as a means to its ends.”
Two days after the United Center protest, Smith and Brazell were back atthe arena. The circus had a matinee performance aimed at schoolchildren, butthe activists were there to hand out comic books, not to harangue them.
“An Elephant’s Life” tells the story of Daisy the elephant, who has beencaptured and made to perform in a circus. Daisy’s handlers keep her in chains,whip her and poke her with a sharp hook. But after the circus is fined formistreating animals, Daisy is set free to live with her family again in thewild. “Speak up for elephants!” the comic book tells its readers. “Tell yourfamily and friends why animal-free circuses are better!”
A school bus from Indiana pulled up, and Smith approached the first adultshe saw. “You guys want comic books?” she said. She was instantly swarmed bykids; within minutes, she and Brazell, a former Navy SEAL, had given awaytheir entire supply.
As they walked toward Brazell’s car–he had driven from PETA headquartersin Norfolk, Va., to help Smith–he gestured toward the sky. “Those clouds lookmenacing,” he said.
“As long as it doesn’t rain,” Smith said. “This weather is bad for theelephants,” she said, pointing to a tent just west of the arena where theelephants were housed.
The two stopped at Starbucks for hot drinks–Smith made sure her hot ciderdidn’t include any dairy–and then drove to her Pilsen apartment, located in aformer sausage factory. Smith and Brazell began
reviewing a video of elephants taken by PETA members who’d been followingthe circus around the country. “See these things on the side of their faces?”Smith said. “Those are pressure wounds from lying down on concrete.”
Last summer, Smith traveled to Kenya to study the behavior of wildelephants, and now she spends hours each week documenting what shecharacterizes as abuse of circus animals. When necessary, she filescomplaints, often accompanied by videos, with the U.S. Department ofAgriculture. Few complaints are sustained, though Smith was recently heartenedwhen the department opened a new investigation into Ringling Bros.
“People don’t want to believe it,” Smith says. “They say the circus hasbeen going on for years, but that’s not a good excuse. We’ve had lots ofhideous things happen in this country, like slavery and child labor.” Sheadds: “Just because we grew up with it, just because it’s a tradition, doesn’tmean it’s right.”
Smith grew up in a small Kansas town, one of two daughters of a bowlingalley manager and a cleaning woman. Her mother and her aunt, she says, wereanimal lovers who sent the girls on missions of rescuing stray cats and dogs.At one point, her family was taking care of six cats her mother had broughthome.
Still, as a teenager, Smith wore leather and worked part-time at BurgerKing. “I used to love bacon cheeseburgers,” she says. She moved to Chicago in1990 to enroll at DePaul University, where she attended her first animalrights meeting. She showed up in a full-length leather coat. “And they askedme, ‘Do you eat meat?’ And I said, ‘Of course. Doesn’t everybody?’ But withina week I stopped.”
After graduating, Smith worked for a law firm, then an investment firm.Some people would wear furs to work, she said, and she had to refrain fromchallenging them. “Finally I decided I didn’t want to keep my mouth shutanymore,” she says. She quit and took a job with PETA, organizing highlypublicized demonstrations against fur and leather in which women appeared onstreet corners nude.
“People don’t want to sit down and talk about a USDA complaint,” Smithsays. “Sexy is what sells stories.”
Both Smith and Brazell say the organization is more interested now ininformation and outreach than over-the-top demonstrations, but the old imagesstill shape the way many people think about the animal rights movement. Smithrealized this a couple of years ago, when she was interviewed for a magazinearticle. When a photographer got ready to take her picture, he asked her ifshe could look more like “an angry activist.”
Leaving the apartment, Smith and Brazell headed for Macy’s in the Loop,where Brazell strapped a 50-pound flat video screen onto his chest and showedclips of an elephant being beaten by a circus handler. People looked pained asthey slowed to watch. Though a few wondered aloud if the incident was somehowtaken out of context, they agreed that no living creature should be treatedthat way.
Surveys have found that few Americans are comfortable with the idea ofanimals being abused or neglected, yet they also struggle with theimplications: Dogs should be walked regularly, so shouldn’t cows be allowed tograze? Do tigers at the zoo really have enough room? Should shampoos be testedon animals before they’re sold to people? Is it right to eat veal? Wearleather?
“When I first started here, I thought, ‘It’s a no-brainer, because peoplelove Muffy the cat, and they wouldn’t want Muffy tested on,’” says ClareHaggerty, director of communications and programs at the NationalAnti-Vivisection Society. Since 1929, the Chicago-based organization has wagededucational and legislative campaigns against product testing and scientificexperimentation that use animals. “But people don’t want to know or thinkabout animals in research.”
And many have a hard time thinking about animals that end up as theirdinner. “I think people are really defensive about their food,” says OmniaIbrahim, the Chicago-area events coordinator for Mercy for Animals. “I thinkit’s hard to think something is wrong that you’ve done your whole life.”
Hal Herzog, a psychology professor at Western Carolina University, hasstudied animal rights activism for more than 20 years. He argues that themovement has a mixed record of achieving its goals. For example, he says,activists are partly responsible for Americans eating less red meat. Butinstead people are eating more chicken. Chickens, he said, don’t provoke thesame empathy as other animals, and when people buy chicken meat at the grocerystore, they’re less likely to connect it with a living bird. “Chicken hasbecome a kind of vegetable,” Herzog says.
Though he doesn’t agree with some of their positions, Herzog says herespects the moral commitment of animal rights activists. Often, though, thissense of responsibility “comes at a personal cost,” he says, because themovement can take over their lives and lead to burnout. “The healthiest animalrights activists are those who draw lines. They say, ‘There are things I cando and things I can’t.’ ”
Ibrahim, the Mercy for Animals coordinator, says the movement has, indeed,become the central focus of her life. But she also says she’s pretty clearabout what’s right and wrong, and about what part she can play.
Now 25, Ibrahim was born in Egypt and moved to the Chicago suburbs when shewas 4. Though her family ate meat, Ibrahim says she was never comfortable withit. At 17, she started researching animal agriculture. “Horrified” by what shesaw, she says she became a vegetarian. After five years, she became a vegan,shunning all animal products.
Ibrahim started volunteering to distribute leaflets on college campuses. Atan educational event, she met Haugh, Mercy’s director of campaigns, and wasdrawn to the organization’s focus on veganism. Soon she became Mercy’s chiefevents organizer in Chicago. Despite a full-time job–she’s in the informationtechnology department at Harper College in Palatine–Ibrahim spends 20 hours aweek scheduling outreach and demonstrations.
People often ask why she spends time on animal rights when so many otherissues could use her attention. “There are a lot of horrible issues in theworld, but to me they’re all connected: It’s about looking out for life,” shesays.
Most of her friends are also animal rights activists. Time she used tospend going out she now devotes to the movement. “Polls have found that 95percent of people are against abuse of animals like cats and dogs,” she says.”So to me, this is not about changing people’s minds as much as making theiractions consistent with the values they already have.”
In February, Don Gordon, a candidate for alderman of the 49th Ward, held a”freedom of choice dinner” at Cyrano’s Bistro in River North. The event wasscheduled as a fundraiser for Gordon’s race against Ald. Joe Moore, chiefsponsor of an ordinance that banned the sale of foie gras, which is made fromthe fattened liver of force-fed geese and ducks. As Gordon and his supportersgot ready for dinner inside, Ibrahim, Haugh and 30 other protesters marchedoutside with signs showing ducks with feeding tubes down their throats.
“If we were walking down the street and saw someone doing this–shoving apipe down some creature’s throat–we’d call the police,” said Dani Nichols,holding a banner that said, “FOIE GRAS–HOW MUCH CRUELTY CAN YOU SWALLOW?”
“We’re not standing in front of a Chinese restaurant protesting kung paochicken,” Nichols said. “My preference would be that people not eat meat, butI’m not asking that. I’m just saying that before you kill animals to eat, youtreat them humanely.”
Out of the doorway stepped Didier Durand, the bistro’s chef and owner,wearing his tall white hat and matching apron. “Do you want some foie grastonight?” he asked the protesters. No one laughed. A few minutes later, Durandbrought out a tray of hot chocolate; none of the protesters took any.
One of the demonstrators, psychologist Jana Kohl, told Durand it wasoutrageous that he was serving food produced through cruelty to ducks andgeese.
Durand shrugged. “They are not human,” he said.
“You know, you’d be more successful and have a lot more customers if youdid the right thing,” Kohl said. “You’re sad. You’re pathetic.”
“The horse is built to be ridden and the greyhound is built for racing,”Durand said as he headed inside. “Humans are the top of the food chain–not tobe confused with ducks.”
In March, protesters stood outside the opera house door on nights that TheLyric Opera of Chicago had performances. They were handing out pamphlets onhow animals are killed for fur coats.
“They can’t ignore the issue when they’re wearing fur,” J. Johnson, anorganizer for the Animal Defense League, said one night as anotherdemonstrator held up a photo of a half-skinned mink.
Ibrahim tried to put a pamphlet in the hand of a woman in a short, dark furcoat. The woman refused, but slowed and looked at Ibrahim. “Sorry, but this is40 years old,” she said. “It was my mother’s. Do you know what it’s like towear your mother’s fur?”
Ibrahim shrugged. “It’s still a dead animal,” she said calmly.
“But it was shot 40 years ago!” the woman said irritably. She hurriedinside.
“Stop the insanity!” the protesters began chanting. “No blood for vanity!”
Wayne Hsiung, a Northwestern University law professor, was directlyaddressing people as he tried to hand them leaflets. “You should read aboutfur before you wear it,” he said to a woman with a thick, narrow fur over hershoulders.
“I love fur!” she sneered.
“Do you like to torture and abuse animals, ma’am?” he asked. She didn’tanswer.
The chants became more vivid: “How do animals die on fur farms today?Gassing, trapping or anal electrocution!”
An older woman in a long fur coat came around the corner and, seeing thedemonstrators, blanched and cringed; a couple who appeared to be her daughterand son-in-law quickly formed a shield around her and escorted her toward theopera house. Before they went inside, the mother spun around and gave theprotesters the finger.