(Cross-posted at www.HERE.am)
Last week some people gathered outside my work building to voice their dissatisfaction with some of Mayor Bloomberg's budget priorities. One of their gripes: Millions of dollars for a new scoreboard at Yankee Stadium, but zero for some select programs that assist the poor. That kind of thing.
They were raucous and loud. They chanted. They marched. They often blocked the sidewalk. Not a police officer or law enforcement monitor in sight. And that's fine.
Today there was another protest outside my work building. Only this time, it was extremely quiet, not blocking the sidewalk, 100% peaceful and orderly. Not a single disruptive action to speak of.
But something else was different too: Less than ten feet away and directly facing the protesters, a few police officers stood silently and menacingly.
The message was clear for this group of protesters:
We're watching. Just give us an excuse.
You see, today's protest was about animal welfare. Today's protest called for an end to the Mayor Bloomberg-authorized gassing of thousands of geese, to be paid for with $100K of NYC taxpayer money. (Shame on those geese for reacting to civilization's onslaught by gathering on airport runways from time to time. They really ought to be more considerate towards the agents of their doom.)
Animal welfare advocates are different, of course. We're morally dangerous to the actually dangerous -- those who profit socially, financially, and powerfully by the torturing and killing of billions of non-human animals each year. Our moral struggle chafes right up against basic power structures and rote conventions. Between the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (apparently animal welfare advocates need special rules), and the routine profiling of "vegans," and the typical knee-jerk hateful reactions of the mind-numbed population at large, vegans and other animal welfare advocates are the subject of various persecutions.
But these persecutions are nothing compared to those perpetrated against non-human animals every day, nor do we defer to popularity when choosing which principles to defend and when to defend them. And so we will continue to stand and protest, to think and feel, to expose the truth of factory farms and vivisection labs and the gassing of geese merely for existing, and to demonstrate the superiority of our arguments.
See you on the protest line.
(Cross-posted at www.HERE.am)