The IDA Team & Table!

The Animal Rights 2011 National Conference, the world’s largest and oldest animal rights gathering, was held July 21 – 25 in Los Angeles, California at the Westin LAX Hotel. This annual conference sponsored by Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM) and co-sponsored by In Defense of Animals (IDA) offered sessions on combating animal abuse, organizing, tactics, animal protection issues, and key campaigns. IDA enlightened newcomers and seasoned activists about our programs through extensive participation on panels. Our table in the main hall was brimming with information on IDA campaigns, plus fun t-shirts, buttons, travel mugs, and other animal-related merchandise.

Catherine Doyle, IDA’s Elephant Campaign Director, spoke on three panels, including Animals in Entertainment. She gave an overview of IDA’s work for elephants in zoos and circuses and described the welfare problems associations with each, and showed footage of abuse in circuses and a video about elephants in zoos. Catherine also spoke on the panel Animal Rescues about the unique nature of the elephant rescues IDA has facilitated.

At the Saturday night banquet, Catherine introduced the winner of the Young Animal Rights Activist Award, Juliette West, a “youth ambassador” for elephants in captivity and in the wild. She is featured in the documentary How I Became An Elephant, which tells the story of her efforts to rescue an elephant from the streets of Thailand. She uses the film to reach young audiences around the country and teach them about elephants in captivity.

Hope Animal Sanctuary's Doll Stanley

Our Hope Animal Sanctuary’s Director Doll Stanley introduced IDA at the opening plenary session. Doll also spoke on four panels: Vivisection, Companion Animal Campaigns, Running a Sanctuary, and Enforcing Protective Laws.

Hope Bohanec, IDA’s Grassroots Campaigns Director, offered her power point presentation Eco-Eating: A Cool Diet for a Hot Planet about environmental impacts of animal agriculture. She also spoke on the panel International Activism about IDA Africa, our chimpanzee sanctuary in Cameroon; IDA India, where we spay, neuter and offer emergency medical care for street animals in Mumbai; and our South Korean Dog and Cat campaign, exposing the horrors of dogs tortured and slaughtered for their meat and cats boiled for “medicinal elixirs” in South Korea. Hope also spoke on Language and Labels, introducing people to IDA’s unique Guardian Campaign, which encourages the use of non-objectifying and more accurate words when we discuss animals, such as “guardian” instead of “owner” and “he” or “she” instead of “it.”

We were even able to participate in the world’s biggest circus demo ever with 500 hundred protesters educating Ringling Bros. circus goers about the cruel and sad life of circus animals. We had a great time and I hope you can join us in Washington DC next July for the AR 2012 National Conference!

Grady, a Mastiff mix, spent months in the Winona Animal Shelter, in Winona, Mississippi, a prisoner of a five-run outdoor facility, with one barrel in each run and constantly running water, leaving him and the rest of his kennel mates always cold and wet—a purgatory for captive dogs. He had mange, a bacterial infection, and was undernourished. Doll Stanley had seen the miserable dog on a number of occasions, but there was no room for him at the Project Hope sanctuary, and she had to stay focused on getting the mothers and puppies out so the puppies wouldn’t die. And, finally, the day came when she was able to take Grady, and then immediately boarded him at Veterinary Associates in Grenada, where the staff fell in love with him and revivified his physical state and spirit to the point where he was able to go the sanctuary. “Rescue takes time. Unlike ‘Animal Planet,’ there are months of rehab, expenses, and the search for a home worthy of them.”

After Doll started to work with the City Council in Winona, the newspaper editor founded a humane society of which she will be president and is raising money for the new shelter. In the meantime, before there is a more humane facility, Doll does the best she can to help out. In the last year, she saved dozens of dogs from that wretched place. The animal control officer, Charlie Brown—who possesses the heart and, unfortunately, bad luck of the legendary cartoon character—is required to pick up animals all over the area and he doesn’t want to kill them so Project Hope steps in. Grady is one of the chosen.

Doll called me and asked if I knew anyone who might want this well-balanced and handsome prince of a dog, with his now shiny, thick, dark brindle coat. Everyone who asked about him down South wanted to put him on a chain and make him a guard dog. One man wanted to chain him on a property he didn’t even live on to keep coyotes and burglars away. Doll says it so commonplace. “Every animal is unique. There are different circumstances. When you have chosen to help them, you go the extra mile.” And that meant Grady moving elsewhere.

An ad on Any Dog Rescue’s site led to interest from Judy Appel and Alison Bernstein, residents of Berkeley, California, who were attracted to Grady’s noble look and heart-seizing story. Until recently, the couple lived with Sharpie, a Pit Bull mix, who died a few months ago, and were ready to save another life. Plans happened quickly: Continental Airlines was selected as Grady’s ride in the sky because it boasts the best safety record—the airlines moves 110,000 animals per year, and 80 percent go though Houston, which is the connecting flight from New Orleans, Grady’s departure point. Houston operates 14 dedicated PetSafe vans with staffing/runners who specifically bid those shifts because they are animal-besotted and want to make sure everything is perfect for their guests. It is all they do—pick up, drop off, care the animals. Doll drove Grady the six hours from Project Hope to New Orleans (he pouted a little on the way—all the animals pout a little leaving Doll), where he boarded the plane for Houston, connected for his flight to San Francisco, and arrived a little after 8 PM, exhausted and groggy.  Judy and Alison brought their two kids, son Kobi, eleven, and daughter Talia, eight, for the big homecoming. Grady needed a little coaxing to emerge from his crate—the cargo facility at SFO didn’t look like the South anymore, and suddenly in the grip of a thrilling and wild elsewhere, he walked out to the rapturous joy of the family and a huge gushing of oohs and aahs. Within a few days of his arrival, he’s been to all the best East Bay parks. He’s also fallen for the kids’ stuffed animals and is particularly enamored of a gray elephant. He’s been sleeping on a bed downstairs where he can sprawl out just because he can.

The striking image by Sanaga-Yong volunteer Monica Szczupider that first appeared in the November, 2009, issue of National Geographic captures exquisitely the personal and ideal sharing of the fate among nonhumans brought together by a common purpose and who form extraordinary bonds of friendship. The photo subsequently appeared on “Inside edition,” “ABC News,” the New York Post, London Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and a variety of other newspapers and Web sites around the world.

The writer Susan Sontag in On photography wrote that “photographs do not explain; they acknowledge.” When looking at the photo, one immediately feels the magnitude and closeness of the family of chimpanzees and seeing their view of things. In all the marvel of their chimpanzee nature and sophisticated minds, our closest genetic kin possess their own dialects, cultures, they teach their young, use tools, and are self-aware, conscious of themselves and their futures. And as evident in the photo, they feel sorrow and mourn the deaths of loved ones.

Orphaned by a hunter who killed her mother, Dorothy was sold as a “mascot” to an amusement park-hotel, where she was chained by her neck.  Somewhere between 25 and 40 dark years, she endured the endless mocking and jeering of visitors to the park, as she was taught to drink beer and beg for cigarettes to the great delight of onlookers. People laughed mercilessly at Dorothy, but no one came near enough to touch her. She was labeled vicious by the hotel staff. Once at the sanctuary, she made fast friends with many of the chimpanzees, even experiencing mother love by adopting a baby orphan named Bouboule, whom she adored until the end of her life. Dorothy and Nama, another amusement part refugee and soul mate, lived in alpha male Jacky’s group of 27 chimpanzees. Dorothy was at the center of it all—a beloved mother figure to many of the younger chimpanzees—a luminous presence everyone at Sanaga-Yong felt like a nimbus.

When Dorothy passed away, on September 22, 2008, from what appeared to be heart failure, Dr. Speede said “many people from the villages, including the high chief of our seven villages, came to pay their respects. No one seemed to wonder for a second whether a funeral service was appropriate for a chimpanzee. They walked to the camp from their villages after learning of Dorothy’s death, without being invited.

“We buried Dorothy beside the enclosure where she lived and beside the tomb of her friend Becky. All the chimpanzees in her family came to watch and mourn with us. When we brought her to the gravesite, they asked to see her again, so I took her body close for them to see her a final time. None of them left until the burial was finished.”