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In a recent release the Humane Society of the United States complained about some of the tactics taken by cockfighting supporters in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Coalition Against Cockfighting is trying to restore Oklahoma's ban on cockfighting.
The HSUS release describes a variety of illegal and unethical actions taken by pro-cockfighting forces including:
Along with these obviously wrong actions, the HSUS release complained that pro-cockfighting forces decided to make their views known at venues where the anti-cockfighting groups were trying to collect signatures to get their measure on the ballot. HSUS quotes from a pro-cockfighting newsletter that read in part:
... to execute the plan. . . HSUS will be at Arts & Crafts events, etc. in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and we need to have our people there to work against the gathering of signatures.
HSUS calls this a "plan to interfere with our democratic rights" but it reads more like a group exercising its free speech rights to counter HSUS' plan. This seems to be the sort of normal behavior everyone has to tolerate in a democracy. As long as the cockfighting supporters didn't physically interfere with HSUS' collection of signatures but only exercised their right to freely speak and assemble, its hard to understand what HSUS finds so objectionable here (unless the group is so inarticulate it can't even make a decent argument against cockfighting).
HSUS goes on to complain that:
It became routine that we would be met by people demanding to see our voter registration card, drivers license, and permit to be wherever we were. Sometimes circulators would be surrounded and cut off from the public. More frequently, circulators would face cockfighters who yelled at potential signers and told them that the petition would ban hunting and fishing and other animal-related activities.
Again, though, nothing here seems to violate anyone's rights.
HSUS also maintains that pro-cockfighting forces intentionally filed frivolous lawsuits to dissuade the anti-cockfighting forces, though the courts will have to decide whether that is indeed the case.
Cockfighting is completely incompatible with the animal welfare view as far as I'm concerned and I won't lose any sleep if and when Oklahoma restores its ban on cockfighting. The fascinating thing about the harassment HSUS and others are facing, however, is that the animal rights community itself provided the model over the last decade for precisely what the pro-cockfighting forces are doing.
Death threats? We've seen the Justice Department and the Animal Rights Militia do that on numerous occasions with nary a peep from most of the established animal rights organizations.
Illegal phone blockades? In a typical month five or six e-mail messages go across the various animal rights mailing lists setting up times and giving phone numbers for animal rights activists to call and attempt to jam up the phone system of the target of the month, whether that be Macy's or Nieman Marcus or McDonald's.
Demands to obtain personal information for seemingly legitimate purposes only to use that information for harassment? Animal rights activists have been trying for years to get the government to release sensitive details about medical researchers. Animal Liberation Front supporters have used publicly available documents to create terrorist guides of fur farms in North America.
A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution profile of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was eye opening in the insight it gives on those who advocate violence. As this newsletter has mentioned before, PETA's Bruce Friedrich is a wholehearted supporter of "direct action" and PETA's Ingrid Newkirk recently responded to the Justice Department's mailing of razor blades to researchers by writing, "Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time."
So what has PETA reaped from this record? Apparently a well-founded fear that others not so friendly to the animal rights movement may choose to carry out a little "direct action" of their own. According to the Journal-Constitution's description, PETA's new headquarters is a veritable fortress:
The cameras weren't put up to catch meat-sneakers, but to protect PETAns, who must punch in a code to enter or exit the building, from their many foes.
That is, protect PETA from doing exactly what it openly admires and advocates that animal rights activists do to research labs and farms.
One of the big differences between the animal rights movement and the animal welfare movement is that a reporter would have a lot of difficulty finding a spokesperson in a mainstream animal welfare group who would defend those who might vandalize PETA's office. One only has to get Newkirk or Friedrich on the phone to talk with people comfortable defending acts of violence.
References:
Oklahoma Cockfighters Try a Campaign of Terror, Humane Society of the United States press release, December 3, 1999
"Meet The Meat-Haters: Virginia-Based Peta Will Do Almost Anything To Get Its Animal Rights Message Out" by Bill Hendrick, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 12, 1999.