What place do animal welfare and animal rights have in a progressive political agenda?
Where do animals stand in the calculus of the Daily Kos community?
The pootie diaries are a charming and welcome diversion for many Kossacks, and they have their serious purpose, as they promote awareness and care for the many unfortunate animals in shelters across the land.
A few other contributors pay attention to nature and to wildlife, including juliewolf and dmathew1. OrangeClouds has not posted here in some time, but she and beach babe in fl both take a serious approach to diet, including the implications of consuming animals and animal products.
But these diarists are few and far between, and even among them there is little attention paid to the kinds of issues with which the Humane Society, for example, is concerned.
A recent ballot initiative in California (Proposition 2) granted a small measure of relief to millions of farm animals condemned to a life of extreme confinement from birth until violent death. Do issues of this kind belong on a progressive political agenda?
Or are such issues merely a kind of sideshow, a luxury for those who choose to promote them, instead of remaining constantly preoccupied with economics, civil rights, war and peace?
If animal welfare is not part of a progressive political agenda, why not?
If it is part of such an agenda, why is it not more conspicuous on Daily Kos?