[skip navigation]
Nine animal rights activists at Cornell University were recently arrested for trespassing during a demonstration outside a biology laboratory. A press release by two of the activists said one of the arrested students is being charged with harassment, "a charge which violated a restraining order placed on him by the campus Judicial Administrator after an effigy-torching of the Animal Welfare Committee chairman last week."
This is what animal rights activists must mean when they talk about having compassion for all living creatures. What is more reprehensible is that, according to the justifications offered by some activists in favor of "direct action," this isn’t really violence because, as in raids on laboratories and fur farms, all that is being destroyed is property.
Sure, and when the KKK burns a cross on some black family’s lawn or paints swastikas on a synagogue, all they’re really doing is harming property in a peaceful, non-violent way.
Sources:
Activists attempt to view animal mutilation. Cornell Students for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Press Release, November 2, 1998.