Give It Away #17 Between Ridicule & Acceptance The hour-and-a-half-long documentary Earthlings starts off with a statement of fact that will resonate with anyone who has ever taken an active role in a social justice movement. There are three stages in the response to Truth: At first, Ridicule. Then, Violent Opposition. And finally, Acceptance. That's the way it always is with the fight for civil liberties, and that's the way it was exactly fifty years ago when four Black students sat down at a cafeteria in North Carolina and ordered food, expecting to be served just like anybody else. Racism isn't over, not in the United States, and not anywhere else in the world, not by a long shot. But at least the most obvious and obscene manifestations of it, the Jim Crow laws, have been obliterated for good. The struggle for legal equality and human dignity would take four more years until the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. But only a month and a half after the original 1960 sit-in, President Eisenhower voiced his support for the Greensboro Four, publicly announcing that he was "deeply sympathetic with efforts of any group to enjoy the rights of equality". Take careful note of the course of events: a group of people openly act in contravention to the law of the land -- in a non-violent manner -- because they believe that the law itself is unjust; and the Chief Executive Officer commissioned to uphold and enforce those laws lends ideological support to said lawbreakers. This is why a national holiday was established to honor Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: to honor the all-American acts of civil disobedience in the face of injustice. As time passes, we continue to realize the existence of other oppressions that we are partially responsible for, and one by one, the most altruistic among us fight alongside the oppressed class to secure their welfare and equal rights. In time-honored tradition, social conservatives resist the demands for full equality, and social progressives advocate for it. Eventually, there is a critical mass of social liberals in the middle that are converted to the cause, and the tide turns. But ever since 9/11, the status quo has started to pole-shift in the opposite direction. Dr. King's legacy has been appropriated and whitewashed; nowadays, nobody remembers his support for labor struggles and his public opposition to the war in Vietnam. Francis Fukuyama would have us believe that we have reached the end of history: America is perfect, and there are no more inequalities to uncover, no more injustices to rail against. This is why animal-rights activists are now being criminalized by the corporations with the help of the politicians that are in their pockets. In March of 2009, Will Potter of GreenIsTheNewRed.com wrote: "With just six members of Congress in the room, just hours after lawmakers and celebrities were on hand to break ground for the new memorial honoring... Martin Luther King Jr., the House of Representatives passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law so vague and broad that the non-violent tactics of MLK and Gandhi are now 'terrorism'." Free speech in defense of non-human animals -- the kind that was previously protected under the First Amendment -- was made illegal with the stroke of a pen. Animal-rights activists that have never physically harmed another human are being legally labeled full-on terrorists by the federal government. Why is this happening? Because we're winning. High-tech spy cameras now allow investigative journalists to infiltrate the factories where the worst abuses are perpetrated and shine a light on the atrocities. When ethical individuals learn of the crimes that are committed in their names behind closed doors, they become morally outraged and demand an end to the inhumanity. But treating animals as anything other than non-sentient raw materials for the money machine would cut into the industry's annual profit margins. So to stem the spread of anti-meat sentiment, the corporations of carnage ridiculously rebrand the Humane Society as the new Al-Qaida (link potentially NSFW). But there are two sides to this propaganda battle. As Jewish Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevitz Singer said on more than one occasion, "In relation to animals, all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka". This issue isn't about humans eating animals for sustenance. Jewish people bury their dead in simple caskets that can be bored through in no time. In Israel, Jews are laid to rest under the ground with nothing but a simple shroud. Within weeks, the worms start to eat away at our flesh, and birds eventually eat those worms. It would be inconsistent to proclaim that all animal meat is off-limits to humans, when our own molecules are funneled right back into the food chain. We can commend people who choose not to eat any animal products altogether, but not every animal-rights activist is a seventh-level vegan; it is possible to eat animal meat, and still do so respectfully. But conventional animal farms and industrial abattoirs treat living beings, our animal brothers and sisters, like inanimate objects with no holy soul. Cosmetic laboratories and fur farms occupy an even lower rung on the ladder of human cruelty. It is quite likely that in another fifty years time -- if our civilization is still standing! -- we will have added speciesism (discrimination against other species) to sexism, racism, and the rest of the long list of isms that we righteously vilify. If that day comes, we will look back upon this battle as just one more stepping stone towards the liberation of all living beings, the fullest realization of the phrase Tikkun Olam. But in this day and age, it has become risky business to make a public appeal to support the actions of animal-rights activists. So I will simply direct your attention to an organization whose activities are still considered to be completely legal, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. If you care for the animal kingdom, and if you believe that one measure of our own divinity is the way in which we treat other species, then please do what you can to support their struggle.