Steve Hindi. (Beth Clifton collage)
The animal cause needs an oil change & new spark plugs
When I first read the title of Does guilt have a place in animal rights activism?, the most recent ANIMALS 24-7 guest column by United Poultry Concerns founder Karen Davis, I hoped it referenced the faults and failures of our side.
Then I started reading, and realized that is not the case. We are once again taking aim at those who are not “us.” We are fine; the problem is with everyone else.
This is no strike against Karen Davis, but I think we’re focusing a bit much on the faults of others when we have so much of our own disfunction to repair. We are akin to an eight cylinder engine with only two cylinders firing: that engine accesses very little of its potential power.
The absence of a strong, honest animal rights movement necessarily translates into more and continued animal suffering on a global scale. Given that reality, we should be more than willing to critique ourselves. Sadly, that is not the case.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Money-hoarding, laziness, incompetence, fraud and corruption
There are so many issues in what was once a movement, but has now become an industry. Money-hoarding, laziness, incompetence, fraud and corruption are among the former movement’s now most notable and ever-present traits. We could clean things up. We could at least make an effort, but precious few want to even discuss that, much less take action.
Lies, or at the minimum intentionally misleading claims, are routinely made about what issues groups are working on, or the methods they are using, or the results of their efforts.
Credit is regularly stolen to grab financial support following the hard work of others.
A group may work a campaign only long enough to draw off the easy money from gullible donors, and then abandon the campaign to find more easy money from gullible donors, leaving the animals from one abandoned campaign after another to continue suffering and dying.
(Beth Clifton collage)
When scams become business as usual
When a home improvement company pulls that with a remodeling job, it is called a scam, or a flimflam operation. The company can be sued and be put out of business. When an animal rights organization does basically the same thing, it is called standard operating procedure.
There are the straight-out frauds, who just outright lie about their supposed campaigns. Alex Pacheco and Will Potter come to mind, but they are just the very tip of a very large iceberg.
Anyone with active brain cells should be able to see what is going on, but it is considered a violation of manners or protocol to openly discuss the crooked dealings. Those who do are branded as troublemakers.
(See Spay/neuter popcorn? It’s as real as Alex Pacheco’s s/n cookies! and Idaho ag-gag falls, AETA does nothing, & Will Potter’s drone allegedly flew away)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Driving 800 miles to do what locals won’t
The so-called movement has proven to be very proficient at selective ignorance. Veteran campaigners will remember when the Hegins pigeon shoot was a standout cause. A few groups and individuals made quite a name for themselves from those suffering pigeons, “nonprofit” status be damned. Then those same people shamelessly abandoned the pigeons.
Today, Hegins is gone, but pigeon shoots continue, and SHARK continues to deal with them, in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. Those shoots combined kill far, far more than the number of pigeons slaughtered in Hegins. Nevertheless, we find very few organizations work on this issue. None of those are the ones that made so much money before, and swore they would not abandon the victims.
SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness [SHARK] drives 800 miles on average to document each Pennsylvania pigeon shoot. Groups in Pennsylvania, like the 60+ organizations belonging to the Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania, and those in the Washington, DC area, like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Humane Society of the United States are far closer. All of these organizations have far more resources, but they do nothing. They act as if they never heard of pigeon shoots.
Steve Hindi. (Beth Clifton collage)
Rodeos & cockfighting
It is much the same with rodeos and cockfighting. Larger groups raised fortunes making noise, and then quietly disappeared with their fortunes, abandoning the animals. Before we try to run a guilt trip on everyone else on this planet, should we not make at least some half-hearted effort to clean up our own house, and make a foundation for our own credibility?
In return for openly speaking out about the abomination that the former movement has become, SHARK has been ostracized, marginalized, and branded as outliers. Beth and Merritt Clifton of ANIMALS 24-7 know what I am talking about, I would guess, because they are in much the same boat. Given the state of this movement, I’ve come to consider that criticism to be a compliment.
It is similar to the relationship we have with our opponents in animal abuse. Just as we do not want to be popular with cockfighters, pigeon shooters, rodeo thugs, etc,, we also do not want to be popular with those who are responsible for turning the “animal protection movement” into the profiteering sleaze pit it has largely become.
Animals continue to suffer and die by the billions due to the profiteers and fraudsters of the animal movement, the complicity of those worried about upsetting their status if they speak out, and the resulting blissful ignorance of many donors.
Until we acknowledge and deal with that reality, we are in no position to point our fingers at anyone else.
Rat used in B.F. Skinner experiment circa 1950.
Editors’ note:
The crux of the problem that Steve Hindi, above, has addressed both via ANIMALS 24-7 and via Showing Animals Respect & Kindness videos on multiple occasions, is that donor psychology tends to differ remarkably little from the behavior of slot machine gamblers, or of rats and pigeons in a Skinner box, as the psychology researcher B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) discovered and documented through animal experiments early in the history of direct mail fundraising.
The fundraising industry knows that most donors decide whether to donate to a direct mail or online appeal even before opening it, based largely on the emotive appeal of the first image and caption they see.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Crime & Punishment
The strength of the begging letter inside the appeal mailing or the “ask” that pops up in response to a mouse click matters most in persuading donors to increase the sum they might plan to give.
The emotional reward that the donor gets from giving is immediate, not at all contingent on whatever the donation actually accomplishes.
The decision to give is triggered chiefly by donor recognition and response to the appeal itself, not to reasoned analysis.
Thus donors often continue to give generously to organizations and causes which long since ceased to have much relevance to present conditions, and derive a rewarding feeling of goodness from making the donation, while new and dynamic charities addressing the issues of today are left to starve.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Established donors rarely change their minds
A further verity that has carried over from the direct mail era to the online era is that once a donor has established a pattern of response, it seldom changes.
Thus, if a donor decides that a charity is “good” or “bad” before making a first donation, the donor may form a different impression of the charity later. Rarely, however, will a donor change opinions of a charity after beginning to give to it, even if the charity is embroiled in scandals of a major magnitude.
Also, reversals of opinions about charities tend to be linked to scale. Donors change their minds much more easily about small and specialized organizations, such as local dog rescues, than about organizations that are large and diverse, able to bury catastrophic management mistakes beneath a blizzard of appeals about different things they are doing––or claiming to do.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Far from the madding crowd
Beyond the immediate feeling of goodness that rewards a donor, regardless of the use or non-use of the donation, a further reward tends to come from a donor receiving the impression that he/she is part of a larger socially approved and accepted cause. Thus the more people display or wear the images and slogans associated with any given charity, the more donors will feel rewarded for having given to the charity, even if it is a complete scam.
Conversely, donors to a less well-known charity will get much less emotional reinforcement from others for their giving choices.
ANIMALS 24-7 learned years ago that our readers and donors tend to be among the small, often contrarian minority who are the most inclined to think critically and take the long view of issues.
Janet Enoch & Steve Hindi of SHARK at an animal rights conference.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Judgement Day
Our donors are extremely loyal to animal advocacy as a cause, but much less loyal than most in support of organizations that fail to deliver results and individual leaders who prove to be charlatans.
The same is probably also true of donors to Showing Animals Respect & Kindness. But donors to either ANIMALS 24-7 or Showing Animals Respect & Kindness are among the very small minority of all animal advocacy donors who do not follow the rules of behavior observed by most.
Commercial fundraisers write appeals for the majority; organization directors tend to do whatever succeeds most, in terms of funds raised relative to expenditure, when expressed in appeal form.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
Aspiring to reform animal advocacy as a whole requires reforming animal charity behavior, which in turn requires reforming animal donor behavior, which requires somehow persuading the majority of donors to contradict the verities established by B.F. Skinner through animal experiments and sold, long ago, to the fundraising industry, for whom appealing to those verities continues to pay off.
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Yes, indeed, the animal advocacy community could probably be more self-critical than it is if time permitted adding this task to others in a day’s work, although Steve Hindi would shoot back that the “work” is nonexistent. Steve has always, since joining the animal advocacy movement, castigated animal organizations for fraud and laziness and betrayal of both donors and animals. I do not dispute his claims, not having done the research required for an informed conclusion.
In addition to blaming animal advocacy organizations for sloth and lies, donors themselves could be said to share the blame, since most donors do not take the time, or don’t have the time and doggedness, to dig up the true facts of how an organization spends donors’ money. How many people have the time and resources to investigate the organizations to which they give money in the hope of helping animals thereby? Many donors give to multiple organizations that include animal advocacy groups as well as environmental organizations and other nonprofits as well.
In my article published Dec. 6 by Animals 24-7, I raise the question of guilt-inducement as a way to get more people involved in helping animals: Is guilt-inducement an efficacious strategy along with other strategies? I don’t have the answer, practically speaking, although I believe we all are guilty to a degree more or less of passively and/or actively making this world a miserable place for our fellow animals. I experience guilt as a given, since given the human-inflicted global holocaust on a daily basis for nonhuman animals, I cannot and do not do enough to stem the tide or even a trickle of the blood and suffering. Still, I get up every day and get to work. The work of United Poultry Concerns may, to Steve Hindi’s mind, be “too comfortable,” but it is dedicated work and, I think, it is not in vain. There are other organizations, including sanctuaries and rescuers, that work tirelessly and could hardly be accused of misusing the funds they receive to help animals directly and maintain their public education programs.
There are others, as Hindi rightly says, that not only don’t help animals progressively but actually hinder progress for animals overall. A notable example is the American Humane Association, which functions basically as an arm of animal agribusiness and other animal-abusing industries. The president of AHA published a sleazy letter in a New York-based newspaper in November promoting AHA’s “humane certified” turkey farms. Another example is the so-called humane societies and shelters across the U.S. that continue to serve chickens and other animals for their fundraising dinners.
I appreciate the opportunity Animals 24-7 provides to air these issues.
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
In my recent commentary, I tried to make it clear that I wasn’t criticizing Karen Davis, whom I consider to be a friend, but clearly I failed If Karen knows anything about me, she should know that if I was talking about her, I would have used her name, clearly, and more than once. Nonetheless, my failure resulted in Karen raising interesting points.
Karen claims: “Steve has always, since joining the animal advocacy movement, castigated animal organizations for fraud and laziness and betrayal of both donors and animals.”
That’s not accurate. I think it was about twenty years before I really started challenging the laziness, incompetence and fraud in the movement. I wish I had started much earlier.
Karen argued that the movement could be more self-critical if time permitted. I argue that every leader in the movement (and Karen would certainly be considered one of them) has a duty to partake in movement self-criticism. And with nothing but love in my heart for what she does for birds, I will point out that if she can put together her initial piece pointing the finger at everyone who’s not us, and if she can respond to what I wrote, and if she can author all the other writings she’s very thoughtfully put together, and if she can attend all those conferences she has attended, I am confident she can provide the occasional moral guidance to a movement that has gone badly astray.
If Karen feels I was downgrading her daily work with her nonhuman charges, that certainly was not the case. I realize the enormous time required for anyone who directly cares for animals, just as we at SHARK spend enormous amounts of time preparing for, and traveling to and from our long-range, front line efforts, and then spend more time preparing and disseminating our documentation to make positive change. Those efforts include in large part fowl, which both UPC and SHARK work diligently to protect.
As for donors sharing the blame for movement disfunction, I couldn’t agree more. Ignorant donors are as worthless as tits on a bull. Donors to a scam artist like Alex Pacheco (he is just one of dozens of ripoffs) should not list themselves as “animal advocates,” but rather just “suckers,” because they’re not accomplishing squat for animals.
Donors have in many cases allowed themselves to be manipulated to such an embarrassing degree as to become worthless. I was once one of those donors. Donors need to educate themselves, instead of just responding to what are often times just appeals for funds based mostly on fiction, motivated by pure greed. Let’s face it – a lot of donors spend more time considering which galas and potlucks to attend, then where their money can do the most good for animals.
Those who are really serious in the movement spend practically every waking moment in those efforts. My grievance is with the manipulators, the scammers, the lazy incompetents, and the partiers. Those parasites divert untold millions of dollars away from the cause. They suck the oxygen out of the room for those who are doing the real work, and in many cases, then those parasites turn around and steal the credit for gains made by others.
How much more funding would UPC have if millions and millions weren’t being siphoned and wasted by others who claim to do things they don’t actually do? This is the question to ask in issue after issue.
C’mon, Karen – c’mon people – if you are going to feed your lives into the machinery of the cause in a dedicated, desperate effort to make this world a better place for animals, don’t you at least want to get some return on your investment? Why allow scam artists and fraudsters to squander your sacrifice?
Imagine for just a moment a movement that ran on all eight cylinders, instead of just one or two. What a wonderful world it would, and could be.
I understand the issues Steve raises and do not dispute that a ton of the donor money to animal “protection” organizations is wasted and worse. This being said, neither I nor UPC are going to devote time to exposing fraudulence in other organizations. The mission of UPC is to promote the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. It is not to police and expose other groups, although in my comment I cited the American Humane Association as an example of an organization that I find deeply offensive.
In past years, I have publicly criticized HSUS and some other groups for refusing to take an unequivocal stand on behalf of farmed animals, for devoting resources and media outreach to working with and touting “humane” farmers and “cruelty-free” farmed animal legislation couched in terms that belie the grim truths. I disagree with organizations that profess dedication to farmed animal (any animal) welfare that fail to promote or even practice animal-free culinary behavior by people who claim to “love” animals while making an exception for the animals they eat, whose milk and eggs they consume.
While it’s great that the Humane Farming Association has in recent years provided financial backing for SHARK’S investigative work, HFA might otherwise serve as an example of a well-funded organization (assuming this is true) that falls short of vigorous activism for farmed animals including not uttering a peep, to my knowledge, on behalf of an animal-free diet.
I believe that many donors to well-funded organizations are motivated to write checks in part because these organization do not ask them to take any personal responsibility for helping animals other than writing the checks and maybe writing a letter to USDA or other government or corporate agency to treat the animals “more humanely.” But why, when you think about it, should we expect institutionalized animal exploiters to change their behavior when, meanwhile, we, who claim to care about animals, will not even go so far as to take them off the dinner plate?
Karen Davis, PhD, President, United Poultry Concerns. http://www.upc-online.org
Excellent analysis by Steve and Merritt and Beth – appreciate the irony of Animal-protection donors being manipulated by fund-raising approaches that were developed by research on rats negotiating Skinner boxes. When will we wake up to the corruption and manipulation that surrounds us? Keep up the terrific work and thanks for caring and acting!!
Really well written and thoughtful article, thank you!
“…Money-hoarding, laziness, incompetence, fraud and corruption” pretty much sums it up. Egos, temptation, and greed take precedence over the needs of the innocent. It’s disgusting. And it’s human nature. Especially in these times, when so many try to spin, bend the rules, and throw the rules out altogether to suit their own self-absorption.
Sharing, with gratitude to you both, and to all who ARE faithful and true to those whose lives depend on it.
Animals are the ones who suffer most in the end, unfortunately. It’s imperative that we utilize critical thinking skills and conduct due diligence before deciding who gets our support. . .and holding them to the standards we’d expect of those who receive that support. As an advocate and founder of a (self-funded) grassroots organization, it’s frustrating and annoying to observe the heavy focus on competition for attention, credit or funding. While those are important to organizations that rely upon donor support, animals are often the ones who take a back seat, especially when there is deception or incompetence involved.
Good article…….but afraid the truth will continue to be ignored…….not sure if the change will come from the top or the bottom….the top continues to be the loud voice that the bottom follows….was that way in the 1950’s when Phyllis Wright was the loud voice…..