Someone said ANIMALS 24-7 should not exist. Help us prove him wrong!

Merritt & Beth Clifton

Dear friends & readers:

Beth & I listen to you when you ask us to investigate and report about urgent animal issues, usually issues that no one else is covering in comparable depth. We stay up very late, very often, to make sure we live up to your expectations in a timely manner.

Every now and then, though, people who don’t care whether you are accurately informed, whether animals’ needs and suffering are adequately aired, or even if ANIMALS 24-7 exists, tries to tell us what we should do, or not do –– and today someone put it especially bluntly.

“Publications that can’t pay someone’s salary+benefits should not exist,” this occupant of an ivory tower told us. “If they can’t make a case for their clients, supporters, investors, etc. they are just bad at their jobs.”

Beth & I know you don’t think we are bad at our jobs. In fact, your avid reading has raised our average daily readership higher than it has ever been before. ANIMALS 24-7 in five and a half years has reached more than 2.5 million readers, who read on average two articles each time they come to www.ANIMALS24-7.org.

(Beth Clifton photo)

But it is a constant struggle just to keep our most essential bills paid. Beth & I asked, back in January 2019, Why did the ASPCA pres get $852,231, while we got $9.70 an hour? We still don’t have an answer that makes any sense, relative to who actually does what work that benefits animals, and has been doing it for how long.

In some ways, though, January 2019 looks like the good old days, since we have not even been able to pay ourselves $9.70 an hour––or anything––since mid-July. We sent out our August 2019 appeal, unfortunately, one day before the stock market took a record slide and––although some of you did respond, and we are deeply grateful for that––we went 14 days at one point between receiving any donations at all, even as daily readership soared.

ANIMALS 24-7 is absolutely not giving up. But there is no one else to turn to for help when we need it –– just you, our much appreciated readers. We could not expect any help, and do not ask for any, from alleged animal charities that pay their chief executives more than the total annual budget of most local humane societies. We do not have any big corporate sponsors, or any celebrity donors. We don’t even have a foundation under our home, let alone foundation support.

We care about all animals, not just a favored few. (Beth Clifton photo)

We do, however, have legions of enemies in high places, who hate our frequent exposés of the lethal consequences of pit bull advocacy. Horrifying as are the mauling deaths of tens of thousands of other animals and dozens of humans per year, and the frequent payouts of millions of donated dollars to victims whose survivors successfully sue for damages, the worst outcome of all is erosion of public confidence in humane work itself.

We also have legions of critics who dislike our disruptions of their often racist fantasy that throwing money at paramilitary private militias who promise to shoot poachers is somehow saving elephants and rhinos, among other species.

In truth, poaching (then called “market hunting”) was just as much out of control in the U.S. a little over a century ago, close to costing us most of our large, iconic, charismatic species––bison, grizzly bears, and any birds with bright plumage, among others. Hired guns didn’t stop it, but introducing free universal public education (including humane education, now much neglected) did, giving our rural grandparents and great grandparents a much surer, safer, compassionate way out of poverty.

(Beth Clifton photo)

Well, some ask, if ANIMALS 24-7 is so smart, why are we not rich?

The answer is that Beth & I have not devoted our lives to getting rich. We have devoted our lives to informing you –– people who care deeply about animals –– about who is really helping to alleviate and prevent animal suffering, and who isn’t.

All we ask of you, besides your concerned and attentive reading, is to help us keep on investigating and reporting the news about animals and animal protection that the $850,000-a-year crowd might otherwise manage to sweep under the rug.

Your $10, $25, $50, $100, $500, or even $1,000 or more will be deeply appreciated, and will be stretched just as far as we can stretch it to keep getting the word out on behalf of animals.

Merritt & Beth Clifton

With appreciation,

P.S.––There are many other ways you can help us, too! Share our articles on social media. Suggest to your friends that they should also sign up at www.ANIMALS24-7.org for a free subscription. And let them know, too, that we use each $10, $25, $50, $100, $500, or even $1,000 or more you send us with the care that your hard-earned trust deserves.

www.Animals24-7.org/donate

Anthony Marr says

October 1, 2019 at 12:36 am

I totally understand and sympathize completely, since I’m in about the same position. Being a grassroots activist, meaning, by definition, not one employed by an org, I have no salary at all. I do have a meagre pension and I just work off that. Like you, I would work 25/8 if the calendar allows, and, based on their feedback, people do seem to appreciate what we do. In turns of my activism, my time is usually well spent, since I do achieve most goals I set for myself. Except one – fundraising. I have always been an abysmal failure when it comes to achieving financial goals, and, really, they aren’t set all that high. I guess, at any given moment, I’d rather be doing something that directly benefit animals than something else that directly benefits me. So, my heart is not totally in it. The result is that I constantly teeter on the financial brink, and fly on empty complete with forced landings. But I’m still 75 getting on 57, and will carry on till 58 flips into 85.

One suggestion that might help us both. You haven’t done an article on wild horses for quite a while, and have NEVER written a single word about the MARR PLAN, which has since its inception in February gained great traction on the grassroots level, and has garnered over 10,000 signatures to congress, is well circulated in some 20 horse advocacy groups, and is in fact going to Washington DC next month. You don’t have to agree with the MARR PLAN, but you may agree that it is now news worthy, and, since the HSUS-ASPCA is being rushed into policy, people should know about the MARR PLAN so that they may have an alternative in their deliberations in the coming heated months. We ought to know that just negative protesting with a “bunch of gripes” won’t win the wild horse war. The MARR PLAN, or something identical to it in principle, is required as a positive alternative. And, in closing, the point of this paragraph is that a good article on the subject, and we may both get some needed donations, and the wild horses will stand to benefit.

Keep writing and collaging, you two! I do read too.

Comments

Anthony Marr says
October 1, 2019 at 12:36 am
I totally understand and sympathize completely, since I’m in about the same position. Being a grassroots activist, meaning, by definition, not one employed by an org, I have no salary at all. I do have a meagre pension and I just work off that. Like you, I would work 25/8 if the calendar allows, and, based on their feedback, people do seem to appreciate what we do. In turns of my activism, my time is usually well spent, since I do achieve most goals I set for myself. Except one – fundraising. I have always been an abysmal failure when it comes to achieving financial goals, and, really, they aren’t set all that high. I guess, at any given moment, I’d rather be doing something that directly benefit animals than something else that directly benefits me. So, my heart is not totally in it. The result is that I constantly teeter on the financial brink, and fly on empty complete with forced landings. But I’m still 75 getting on 57, and will carry on till 58 flips into 85.
One suggestion that might help us both. You haven’t done an article on wild horses for quite a while, and have NEVER written a single word about the MARR PLAN, which has since its inception in February gained great traction on the grassroots level, and has garnered over 10,000 signatures to congress, is well circulated in some 20 horse advocacy groups, and is in fact going to Washington DC next month. You don’t have to agree with the MARR PLAN, but you may agree that it is now news worthy, and, since the HSUS-ASPCA is being rushed into policy, people should know about the MARR PLAN so that they may have an alternative in their deliberations in the coming heated months. We ought to know that just negative protesting with a “bunch of gripes” won’t win the wild horse war. The MARR PLAN, or something identical to it in principle, is required as a positive alternative. And, in closing, the point of this paragraph is that a good article on the subject, and we may both get some needed donations, and the wild horses will stand to benefit.
Keep writing and collaging, you two! I do read too.
- Merritt Clifton says
  October 1, 2019 at 3:00 am
  Actually we did report extensively about the “Marr plan”; see Four schemes to save 70,000 wild horses from a BLM Apocalypse, published on April 19, 2019.
  - Anthony Marr says
    October 1, 2019 at 7:14 pm
    With all due appreciation for that article, The Marr Plan has advanced by a great measure since April 19. I, and other volunteers of the Marr Plan Action Committee, have been posting on it on a daily basis to thousands of people every day for months. Its petition to Congress has garnered over 10,000 signatures. We are planning a major media event in Washington DC next month… All in all, I think that the Marr Plan has earned some respect, or should have, from publications of Animal 24/7’s caliber. I would be happy to be questioned on the proposal to any editor’s satisfaction. The HSUS-ASPCA Plan now has succeeded in grabbing $35 million for the BLM for large-scale roundups. Soon, it will become full blown BLM policy. The Marr Plan is the only weapon that can defeat it. This is my firm belief, and that of thousands of people on the grassroots level as well, i.e. not on the corporate level, including major orgs, yet. Animals 24/7 is a premium grassroots level publication. If it won’t touch the Marr Plan at this critical juncture, well, it can report on how the HSUS-ASPCA won the wild horse war before Christmas. Please consider this a compliment.