IDA eNews: 10/17/07

IDA ACTION ALERTS
1. Elephants Tina and Jewel Still Suffering
2. Canadian Cormorants Face Slaughter
3. Killer Party: Host's Cat Bludgeoned, then Burned to Death

NEWS & CAMPAIGN UPDATES
1. Help Air IDA's "Veganism: The Power of Compassion" Ad on TV
2. Puerto Rico Animal Control Workers Accused of Throwing Dogs and Cats from Bridge
3. Halloween Horror: On Humankind's Monstrous Cruelty to Animals

IDA ACTION ALERTS

1. Send Elephants Tina and Jewel to a Sanctuary
Former circus performers still living in squalid Texas pen

In our September eNews ( http://helpelephantsinzoos.org/feature_070905b.html ), we reported that we had located two former Cole Bros. Circus elephants, Tina and Jewel, who had vanished from public view after the USDA ordered them taken off the road for health reasons. We eventually located them, and provided video evidence that their housing consisted of a dilapidated tin barn and a tiny outdoor yard surrounded by an electric fence perimeter. After we brought this to light, the elephants' "owner," animal trainer Will Davenport, made minor improvements to comply with bare minimum USDA requirements, but the elephants remain in a cramped and inadequate facility where their health continues to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, The Elephant Sanctuary (TES) ( http://www.elephants.com ) has offered to take both Tina and Jewel at no cost to Davenport. Both elephants have endured a life of hardship with the circus, and now they desperately need to be someplace where they can recover from the damage to their bodies. The condition that is causing them to lose weight remains undiagnosed and untreated, so they need our immediate help to avoid meeting the same tragic fate as five other elephants "retired" from Cole Bros. Circus: a premature and avoidable death.

What You Can Do:

1) Please Take Action to demand that the USDA immediately confiscate these two elephants and send them to TES ( http://ga0.org/campaign/tina_and_jewel_usda ). To have the most impact, edit the sample letter to express your personal point of view and print it out as a letter to mail.

The Honorable Mike Johanns
Secretary of Agriculture
U.S. Department of Agriculture
1400 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, DC 20250
Tel: (202) 720-3631
Email: Mike.Johanns [at] usda.gov

2) Please also Take Action to urge your federal representative to ask the USDA to intervene on Tina and Jewel's behalf ( http://ga0.org/campaign/tinajewel-house ). You can also contact your elected officials by phone and postal mail ( http://ga0.org/indefenseofanimals/leg-lookup/search.html ).

3) Watch or read "Two elephants and a ton of controversy," (http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/khou071004_ac_elephants.13a4a2d89.html#)
an article about Tina and Jewel, then thank reporter Brad Woodard with a polite letter or phone call for doing such a good job.

Brad Woodard
1945 Allen Pkwy
Houston, TX 77019
Tel: (713) 526-1111

Learn more about what Tina and Jewel have suffered at the hands of the circus industry ( http://helpelephantsinzoos.org/feature_070905.html ).


2. Canadian Cormorants Face Slaughter
Urge wildlife officials not to cull native colonial water bird

The Parks Canada agency is about to start killing thousands of nesting cormorants on Middle Island in Point Pelee National Park in Western Lake Erie. Administrators claim the birds are "hyper-abundant" and may pose a threat to plants if they are left to nest on the island, but they have provided no scientific proof that they are damaging the environment. In fact, cormorants are native to the area, so any effect they may be having is part of a natural evolutionary process, and one that should be welcomed rather than disrupted.

During the past few years, tens of thousands of Double-crested Cormorants have been slaughtered in both Canada and the U.S., mostly at the behest of a small but influential special interest group: sport anglers. They claim, again without evidence, that cormorants are eating all the fish they want to catch, and are pressuring the Canadian government to step up the slaughter under the banner of wildlife management. Parks Canada seems only too willing to oblige, because many wildlife officials erroneously blame cormorants for destroying plant life.

There is no humane way to kill nesting cormorants, but that is irrelevant anyway because there is absolutely no reason to target them in the first place. The species was nearly wiped out by hunting and pollution, but they are making a recovery, which is why there are now more of them. Nature is coming back into balance, but the Canadian government would prefer to force the island ecosystem into an artificial "balance" of plants and animals by thinning cormorant numbers considerably.

IDA is a member of Cormorant Defenders International ( http://www.zoocheck.com/cormorant/?id=14 ), a coalition of organizations dedicated to advocating on behalf of cormorants and educating the public about this amazing species. These stunningly beautiful birds with a wingspan of four feet nest in colonies, sometimes with other wading birds, and care for their helpless hatchlings until they too can fly. We need to protect them now before these innocent young creatures are massacred to make a few fishermen happy.

What You Can Do:

Please Take Action to urge Point Pelee National Park and Canada's Minister of the Environment not to kill the cormorants ( %takeaction-pelee% ). For best results, edit the sample letter before sending, and print it out for mailing. Also follow up with a polite letter, phone call, fax, or email.

Point Pelee National Park of Canada
407 Monarch Lane, RR 1
Leamington, Ontario N8H 3V4
Canada
Tel: (888) 773-8888 (toll free)
Fax: (519) 322-1277
Email: pelee.info [at] pc.gc.ca

John Baird, Minister of the Environment
Les Terrasses de la Chaudiere
10 Wellington Street, 28th Floor
Gatineau, QC K1A 0H3
Canada
Fax: (819) 953-0279
Email: John.Baird [at] ec.gc.ca


3. Killer Party: Host's Cat Bludgeoned, then Burned to Death
Urge maximum prosecution under the law for the accused

A going away party for a friend on Long Island became the scene of a brutal slaying when three guests deliberately murdered the host's cat by repeatedly smashing the animal's head with a cinder block, then setting the body on fire. Police arrested three suspects in connection with the crime: Christopher Tabor-Finne, 20; Tyler Pendergrass, 16; and Porschia Poteet, 18. Several partygoers witnessed the slaying, but the cat's guardian was not told about it until weeks later, when she filed a police report.

At least one of the accused has been in trouble with the law before. Tabor-Finne was also charged and convicted of burglary and criminal mischief in 2005 after breaking almost 100 windows at Southold Junior/Senior High School following his suspension. The fact that he has already committed two offenses, one involving property damage and the next the taking of a life, may indicate the escalation of this young man's violent tendencies -- and that perhaps his future victims could be human.

Research by F.B.I. and U.S. Department of Justice criminal profilers has shown a clear connection between animal abuse and other acts of aggression, which can lead to victimizing humans if left unaddressed. Many of the world's most notorious mass-murderers -- including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Eric Harris, and Dylan Klebold -- are known to have tortured and killed animals before moving on to humans. Cruelty to animals is a symptom of a disturbed mind, and can be the sign of a serial killer in the making.

What You Can Do:

Please Take Action to respectfully ask the office of Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota to prosecute all three defendants in this case to the fullest extent of the law ( %takeaction-spota% ). For best results, edit the sample letter before sending, and print it out for mailing. Also follow up with a polite letter or email.

The Honorable Thomas Spota
Suffolk County District Attorney
725 Veterans Memorial Hwy.
Bldg. 77, N. County Complex
Hauppauge, NY 11787
Email: infoda [at] co.suffolk.ny.us


NEWS & CAMPAIGN UPDATES


1. Help Air IDA's "Veganism: The Power of Compassion" Ad on TV
Expose factory farming during World GO VEGAN Days, Oct. 26 - 28

The 3rd annual World GO VEGAN Days ( http://www.idausa.org/worldgovegandays.html ) presented by The American Vegan Society, Animal Acres, Animal Place, Compassion Over Killing (COK), Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), Friends of Animals (FOA), Go Vegan Radio, In Defense of Animals (IDA), Mercy for Animals, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), United Poultry Concerns, Veg News magazine, Vegan Bean, and Vegan Outreach will take place this year from October 26th to 28th, providing vegans an excellent opportunity to help family, friends and co-workers learn more about how a plant-based diet can improve their health, alleviate animal suffering and preserve the environment. World GO VEGAN Days allows vegans to share their most deeply held values with others -- whether family, friends, co-workers, or the general public -- by making personal connections and taking action.

Animal advocates around the globe will observe World GO VEGAN Days by holding potluck dinners, restaurant outings, cooking demonstrations, feed-ins, public lectures, leafleting, tabling and library exhibits.

Leading up to World GO VEGAN Days, IDA will run our "Veganism: The Power of Compassion" ad ( http://www.idausa.org/psas/vid_ken1.html ), featuring champion vegan bodybuilder Kenneth G. Williams, on television. In the ad, Williams makes a powerful case for compassion while viewers see shocking footage of abused pigs, chickens and other animals in slaughterhouses and factory farms. "Being vegan is not only healthy," Williams states in the spot, "it's the key to a compassionate way of life."

Choosing not to kill animals for food says something important about you as a person: that you care deeply about your impact on others and the world. Many people admire vegans for living out the positive values and ideals they themselves aspire to. World GO VEGAN Days is a time to show people -- through sharing food and other forms of advocacy -- that saving animals' lives with a peaceful diet allows us to live more fully and meaningfully.

What You Can Do:

Sponsor the airing of IDA's critically important educational TV ad! Airing one spot costs roughly $50 and reaches hundreds of thousands of viewers, making it a cost-effective and strategic way to expose factory farming abuse. All contributions are tax deductible, and can be made payable and sent to: In Defense of Animals, 3010 Kerner Blvd San Rafael, CA 94901 (note "Vegan PSA" in the Memo section of the check). Or donate online using your credit card ( https://secure.ga0.org/02/WGVD ).


2. Puerto Rico Animal Control Workers Accused of Throwing Dogs and Cats from Bridge
Take Action to urge officials to identify and prosecute those responsible and initiate animal policy reforms

In Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, an animal control company contracted by the city has been accused of seizing dozens of dogs and cats from housing project residents and throwing them 50 feet to their deaths from a nearby bridge. Mayor Sol Luis Fontanez admits his administration hired the company to confiscate the animals to enforce a no-pet policy in the government-sponsored housing complexes, but claims they were supposed to take the animals to a shelter for destruction. The company hired for the job, Animal Control Solution, denies the allegations and claims the dead animals aren't the same ones workers gathered, but several witnesses claim otherwise.

Early last week, Animal Control Solutions raided three housing projects under government orders, surrounding the neighborhoods and forbidding anyone to leave with a companion animal. Workers forced residents to hand their cats and dogs over under threat of eviction, taking them away in front of crying children. Witnesses say the workers injected the animals with what they claim was a sedative to calm them for the ride to a shelter, but they apparently never made it there.

Jose Manuel Rivera, who lives right next to the bridge in neighboring Vega Baja, claims that just before dawn, workers threw more than 50 animals from the structure, and that some were still alive during the fall. He left his home to investigate after hearing the cries of survivors, and managed to rescue six injured dogs, all of them with broken legs, who were reunited with their guardians after a story was broadcast on television. The dozens of dead animals were buried in a mass grave and covered in lime to control the stench of death pervading the area.

Animal Control Solution owner Julio Diaz maintains that his company did what they were paid to do -- confiscate animals and take them to a shelter for euthanization -- and that housing project residents threw the animals from the bridge themselves in order to exact revenge on animal control officers for previous raids. While Diaz says he has evidence to prove his case, Mayor Fontanez has already decided to cancel the city's contract with the company and may file a lawsuit against them. Meanwhile, the Police Department and the Justice Department have initiated an investigation into the matter. Whoever is found guilty of the crime could be slapped with cruelty charges for every dead animal, with each charge potentially carrying between six months and three years in prison.

Fontanez has condemned the dropping of animals from the bridge, calling it "an irresponsible, inhumane and shameful act." Yet by ordering the seizure of animals from the housing projects for euthanization at a shelter, he insists that his government "acted according to the law." However, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington, D.C. said the agency does not endorse a no-pet policy, and that they do not give local governments the authority to conduct mass animal seizures for this reason.

Many of the dogs and cats killed were taken in by residents as strays, which are all too common in Puerto Rico due to the absence of registration laws and precious few government-sponsored spay/neuter programs. On Monday, October 15th, guardians gathered with animal activists at a demonstration outside of a northern Puerto Rico town hall in an unsuccessful bid to meet with Mayor Fontanez. Shouts of "murderer" were heard as protesters expressed their outrage not only over the incident at the bridge, but also because of the Draconian manner in which the animals were seized in order to be euthanized. Several Puerto Rico-based animal protection groups have also committed to helping grieving guardians take legal action to combat the deaths of their animals and violations of their civil rights.

What You Can Do:

While it is still unclear who exactly is responsible for committing this heinous crime, one thing is certain: these animals didn't leap to their own deaths. Whoever threw them from the bridge must be swiftly identified and brought to justice. Please contact the following individuals and organizations representing Puerto Rico to ensure effective action is taken to find and prosecute the guilty party.

1) Please Take Action ( %takeaction-prjd% ) to urge Puerto Rico Attorney General Roberto J. Sanchez-Ramos of the Justice Department to make investigation of this case a top priority, and to aggressively pursue whatever legal action is possible against the perpetrators to hold them accountable. Feel free to edit the sample letter, and to follow up with a polite letter, phone call, email.

Attorney General Roberto J. Sanchez-Ramos
Justice Department
GPO Box 902192
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-0192
Tel: (787) 721-2900
Email: rsanchez [at] justicia.gobierno.pr

2) Also Take Action ( %takeaction-prgov% ) to urge Puerto Rico's Governor, Secretary of State, and Congressional leaders to address the widespread problems of animal overpopulation, abuse, and abandonment in the Commonwealth by initiating programs for spaying and neutering of cats and dogs and education of the public. Reinforce your message with a polite letter, phone call, fax, or personal email.

Governor Anibal Acevedo-Vila
Governor's Office
Po Box 9020082
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00909
Tel: (787) 721-7000 (ask for Vivian Nieves, Administrative Assistant for the Governor)
Fax: (787) 725-4569
Email webform ( http://www.fortaleza.gobierno.pr/anibal04.htm )

Secretary of State Fernando J. Bonilla
P.O. Box 9023271
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-3271
Tel: (787) 722-2122
Fax: (787) 725-7303

Kenneth McClintock Hernandez
Presidente Senado-El Capitolio
P.O. Box 9023431
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-3431
Tel: (787) 724-2030, ext. 3003, 3004
Email: senator_mcclintock [at] yahoo.com

Jose F. Aponte Hernandez
Presidente Camara de Representantes de Puerto Rico
P.O. Box 9022228
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-2228
Tel: (787) 721.6040, (787) 721.6030
Email: japonte [at] camaraderepresentantes.org

3) Puerto Rico's official tourism company has already issued a statement denouncing the crime, and is concerned that people may no longer wish to vacation on the island due to this atrocity. Please Take Action (%takeaction-prtc%) to thank them for condemning the slaughter, but also let them know that you cannot visit Puerto Rico until justice is done, and that they should urge government officials to take appropriate action. You can also contact the company's Executive Director by mail, phone, or webmail.

Terestella Gonzalez Denton, Executive Director
Puerto Rico Tourism Company
P.O. Box 902-3960
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902-3960
Tel: (800) 866-7827
Email: tgonzalez [at] prtourism.com

4) Urge Mayor Fontanez to end his government's policy of mass confiscation and euthanization of animals in housing projects, to revise no-pet policies so that people can keep their animal companions, and to work with animal welfare groups to initiate a municipal spay/neuter program in Barceloneta. Feel free to edit the sample letter, and to follow up with a polite letter, phone call, fax, or webmail.

Mayor Sol Luis Fontanez Olivo
P.O. Box 2049
Barceloneta, Puerto Rico 00617-2049
Tel: (787) 846-3400
Fax: (787) 846-0089
Email webform: ( http://www.gobierno.pr/GenericAgencyPortal/contactenos.aspx )


3. Halloween Horror: On Humankind's Monstrous Cruelty to Animals
Harrowing holiday provides unique opportunities for reflection, advocacy, and tasty vegan treats

Warning: The following contains blood-curdling accounts of terror that may not be suitable for the faint of heart. Read on -- if you dare!

Every Halloween, millions of people celebrate by dressing up in costumes, trick-or-treating for candy, adorning their homes with festive decorations, and partying their hearts out. While this is all well and good, we must not forget that while we enjoy ourselves during this frightfully fun holiday, billions of animals are actually living out our worst fears in slaughterhouses, vivisection labs, and other hellish houses of horror. As the scariest night of the year, Halloween is an especially fitting time to cultivate compassion for those who endure such unremitting torture.

Start by trying to imagine, if only for a moment, the torment of a single animal in a slaughterhouse. Visualize yourself being herded down a metal chute towards a man in a red-spattered apron. He puts a retractable bolt gun to your head and pulls the trigger right between your eyes, but the blast doesn't damage the right part of your brain, so you remain conscious as you are shackled by the ankle and hoisted upside-down, then pulled along on a ceiling-mounted conveyer track. As you move down the line, looming ahead you see the sticker: a slaughterhouse worker wielding a large knife. Even though you are still alive and kicking, he slits your throat anyway, blood spurting and pooling on the floor. You flail wildly in pain, but another worker down the line nonetheless proceeds to chop off your hands and feet with a giant hydraulic clipper until finally you are beheaded, your body left in pieces for people to eat.

Sounds like a scene from a scary movie, right? Yet that is just one example of many, as billions of animals all over the world are killed in similarly horrific ways in fur farms and other dungeons of industry, the wild, and the privacy of people's homes. For instance, there are demented sexual deviants who make animal snuff films and post them on the Internet ( http://animalrighter.org/animalabuseinternet.html ) as an unusually perverted form of pornography. Yet it's obvious that animal abuse is not confined to a few random sickos breaking the law in their bedrooms: it's deeply embedded in our culture and society, which systematically normalize torture and terror by packaging and marketing the products of death.

People eat animals' bodies and wear clothing made from their skins every day. From the animals' point of view, this is utterly horrifying. What if someone decided to eat us, wear our skin and hair, or experiment on us? Such questions get right to the heart of what most terrifies us, and our disconnection, as one species among millions, from the unmitigated misery our actions cause others to suffer.

Monster Mash

Judging from recurrent themes in horror movies and books, it is clear that what we do to animals is a reflection of our most primal fears as humans. For instance, the psychotic mass-murderer in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas_Chain_Saw_Massacre ), aptly named Leatherface, is a cannibal who treats his human victims like cattle in a slaughterhouse, hanging them from meathooks before chopping off their limbs. Such brutality has its real life parallels in the crimes of notorious serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, who is known to have tortured animals to death before he started killing and eating human beings.

Some of the most ghastly monsters are unholy cross-species abominations from the laboratories of mad scientists. In H.G. Wells' prescient 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau ( http://www.bartleby.com/1001/ ), an idealistic but power-mad vivisector sews together human-animal hybrids who turn out to be vicious killers. In recent years, scientists have actually begun to create transmutated chimeras ( http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0125_050125_chimeras.html ) who are genetically part animal and part human. Such "progress" could signal the birth of Moreau's monsters at this moment in history.

These experimental lifeforms are primarily used as research subjects and to harvest organs for human transplants, so their creators try to make them as humanlike as possible to close the species gap that has always plagued animal research. While such organisms don't usually survive for very long because they are biologically flawed, contemplating what they experience while alive can make your spine tingle. Researchers have already bioengineered mice with part-human brains, and it is not outside the realm of possibility that these modified rodents might inherit from us some degree of self-awareness, and perhaps eventually even a hideous knowledge of what they are.

Such thoughts bring to mind another perennial horror classic, Frankenstein ( http://home-1.worldonline.nl/~hamberg/ ). In the 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly and many subsequent film adaptations, Dr. Victor Frankenstein creates a man from parts of human and animal cadavers. "The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials," he says of his experiments. Of course, after bringing him to life with a lightning bolt, the horrified scientist rejects his creation, who thus becomes bitter and homicidal and gradually murders Victor's loved ones. A fictional warning from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, Frankenstein's "monster" serves as a dire prediction of the untold horrors that science and technology may yet unleash upon the world.

The Hunter Becomes the Haunted

Other works in the horror genre explore the "animal" nature that lurks deep within the human soul. Many of these stories have their origins in ancient tales that have been told for centuries, with variations occurring in different parts of the world. A werewolf, for instance, is a bloodthirsty beast that transforms from a human into a wolf during the full moon and preys on people. Vampires (who can change into bats) use their sharp fangs to feast on their host's blood, turning them into vampires as well. Legend has it that some witches are able to transform themselves into black cats to roam the night undetected. These supernatural shapeshifters out of folklore have not only terrorized our imaginations down the ages, but also raise serious questions about human nature: that is, whether our tendency towards violence is innate or symptomatic of our alienation from nature and ourselves.

Such primeval mythological figures may also symbolize our fear that animals will someday take revenge for the horrors we inflict on them, as movies like Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birds_(film) ) and Stephen King's Pet Cemetery ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sematary ) suggest. Most people remain in willful denial of the bloody killing rituals that occur every day behind closed doors, so the fear that animals will somehow return to give us a taste of our own lethal medicine is largely subconscious. Yet it is brought more directly to the surface by another increasingly popular monster: the flesh-eating zombie.

George Romero invented the zombie movie subgenre in the late 1960s with his groundbreaking film Night of the Living Dead ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Living_Dead ), an allegorical tale of the undead that remains almost 40 years later a scathing social critique of violence and racism. Since then, hundreds of other films have explored the theme of cannibalism from beyond the grave, reminding us that our bodies are made of meat, too, and that there may be those out there who want to eat us alive. This metaphor for meat eating opens the potential for people to identify more closely with the non-human victims of our carnivorous consumer culture, as is the intention of Internet cartoon character Tofu the Vegan Zombie ( http://www.tofutheveganzombie.com/about ).

Alone in the Dark

When the nighttime comes creeping in, you may recall that as a child you often hid beneath the covers in frozen terror from the monsters in your closet, under your bed, and in your head. If we remember what it was like to be that scared, we can understand some of what animals feel, and that the most frightening "monsters" aren't just lurking in our nightmares: they exist in the real world. They are on slaughterhouse disassembly lines, in high-security buildings on college campuses wearing white lab coats, and and on the sales floors of fur salons selling the very skins off of animals' backs.

If by chance the tens of billions of animals being killed every year are able to understand who is responsible for their enslavement, then human beings must seem like rapacious monsters who show little mercy for their victims and no remorse for their devilish deeds. Mechanized assembly line production methods have made the scale of death so massive and so brutally surreal that it is difficult to comprehend, much less communicate to others. But we must continue to try, for the sake of the animals, by taking advantage of the special possibilities for positive and effective outreach that Halloween offers.

What You Can Do:

Have a scary good time!

It's simple to give people a taste of the vegan lifestyle during Halloween without frightening them away. Try these easy ways of making compassion an integral part of your holiday celebration:

- First, be sure to keep plenty of vegan candy ( http://www.petakids.com/candy.html ) handy for those cute little trick-or-treaters who show up at your door.

- If you're dressing up, go as your favorite animal. Your costume could be something scary like a tiger or cute like a kitten, but make sure it isn't made with leather, wool, fur, or feathers. If you think your canine friend would like get in on the fun too, buy or make a Halloween costume for your dog ( http://www.costumecraze.com/Traditional-Costumes-Halloween-Costumes-Halloween-Costumes-for-Pets.html ). Just be sure they're comfortable with what they're wearing, and that costumes don't interfere with their normal motions.

- Host a vegan Halloween party for your friends and serve a scrumptious spread that didn't cost any animals their lives. Try some ghoulish recipes for healthy holiday fare ( http://www.vegparadise.com/cookingwith510.html ) such as Devilish Dip, Vampire's Blood, and the Warlock's Special. You can also cook seasonal favorites like Harvest-stuffed Acorn Squash and Pumpkin Pie with Pecans ( http://compassionatecooks.com/thanksgiving_recipes.htm ) to go along with them.

Show some real horror films!

If you have friends who are horror buffs, Halloween is the perfect time to expose them to the horrors of factory farming, vivisection, and other terrifying realities by inviting them to watch an animal rights video with you. Your average meat eater might turn their eyes away in disgust from graphic documentaries like Earthlings ( http://isawearthlings.com/ ) and The Animals Film ( http://www.petacatalog.org/prodinfo.asp?number=VP555 ), but horror aficionados who appreciate spooky cinema may be receptive to the method and message of such movies. Films are a gateway for many to greater empathy for animals and humane lifestyle changes, but only if people actually see them, so order your DVDs today to have them in time for Halloween!

Reach the People!

Towns throughout the western world host Halloween festivals and parades, which in the largest cities are attended by thousands of people. These make great places to leaflet, especially dressed as your favorite animal, and being in the Halloween spirit might make people more open to the information you have to offer. To get started, order ( http://www.idausa.org/shop-ida/lit8.html ) or print ( http://www.idausa.org/pdfs/070808.pdf ) copies of IDA's new flyer on meat eating and the environment to hand out.

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