Chapter Sections
1. Steven Best
2. John Lawrence
3. Andrew Linzey
4. Richard Martin
5. The McLibel Two
6. Ingrid Newkirk
7. Jill Phipps
8. Henry Salt
9. Henry Spira
10. Peter Singer
11. Tom Regan
12. Richard D Ryder
How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals
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"Their suffering is intense, widespread, expanding, systematic and socially sanctioned. And the victims are unable to organize in defence of their own interests." Henry Spira (1) |
His friend and colleague, Peter Singer (see Chapter 6: Peter Singer), said of him, "Henry Spira was the most effective activist of the modern animal rights movement" and wrote a biography of him, Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the animal rights movement (2), as a tribute to Spira and to show people how to action animal liberation.
Henry Spira is celebrated for his animal liberation campaigns and winning strategies. He was born in Belgium and his family settled in New York City when he was 13 to escape Nazi persecution of Jews. He served in the American army, worked on a car assembly line, and taught at a New York college. But his main occupation was seafaring, from age 16, in the American merchant marine. As a seaman he fought for human rights against the then crooked and ruthless American maritime union and was thrown out of the navy for his troubles. While active in civil rights he even crossed the FBI, who put him under surveillance.
Only when Spira reached his forties did he become animal-oriented. Someone gave him a cat to look after; that prompted him to ask himself why people take care of some animals and stick a fork in others. Just then, in 1973, he happened on an article, Animal Liberation, in the New York Review of Books. It was written by Peter Singer, a philosopher and animal rights writer Spira had never heard of, and inspired Spira to attend his lectures. As Spira later wrote, "Singer made an enormous impression on me because his concern for other animals was rational and defensible in public debate. It did not depend on sentimentality..." (1).
Spira was more pragmatic than philosophical, so getting things done came foremost. His tactics were to set a relatively small feasible goal, assemble activists with diverse contributing expertise, study the problem from all angles, especially from his opponent's point of view, and enter into constructive discussion with his adversary whenever possible. Then, when Spira was prepared, he submitted his target to a sustained campaign until he won.
Spira was a highly effective animal liberation activist yet personally modest. He did not seek status or money for himself and worked for animals from his cluttered New York City flat. He elected to go without the staffing and finances of the big regular animal protection organisations. Although honoured by prestigious organisations he shut away all his awards in a cupboard.
Spira's first big battle for animals started in 1976 with New York City's Museum of Natural History. The Museum's laboratory was experimenting on cats, apparently to learn about sexual behaviour, but according to Spira it was simply mutilating them. His group kept up a campaign of pressure on the Museum to stop the research. Finally, a year later and after much publicity, the laboratory closed. The campaign was acclaimed as the first American victory for animals against vivisection.
Building on that experience he took on Revlon, the cosmetic industry's giant, and their Draize Test. The test supposedly evaluates the safety of commercial preparations for humans by dripping drops of the substances onto the eyes of rabbits held down in racks. A highlight of the campaign was a full-page newspaper advert, one of many in Spira's animal liberation career, placed in the New York Times exclaiming "How Many Rabbits Does Revlon Blind for Beauty's Sake?" Eventually Revlon admitted their error and opened a fund of hundreds of thousands of dollars to explore alternatives to the Draze test. Other cosmetics companies chipped in so as to look good. Thanks to Spira, the better cosmetics companies now print "not tested on animals" on their products.
Spira took on other seemingly inflexible corporations, including Avon, Procter & Gamble, and the poultry and fast food industries. He also attacked the United States Department of Agriculture, exposing their branding of cattle's' faces with red hot irons; the Department dropped its branding soon afterwards. And he took on the slaughter houses, ending the practice of hoisting conscious cattle into the air by a leg to await slaughter.
Spira's campaigns put cosmetic testing and cruelty to food-animals on the political agenda. His victories were the first big successes of the American animal rights movement to reduce the suffering humans inflict on animals.
References
(1) Spira, Henry. Fighting to Win, In In Defense of Animals, ed Peter Singer. 1985:194 - 208.
(2) Singer, Peter. Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the animal rights movement. Rowman and Littlefield. 1998.
| How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals. © Roger (Ben) Panaman, April 2008. All rights reserved. |