Rutgers and animal rights - stopping cowards

For those of you who read my posts about the Rutgers basketball coach this week, calling for him to be fired, you might have been surprised to read about sports in one of my blog posts. With such violence and anti-gay slurs coming from a person in power, I felt I had to write about it.

But what we saw in the videos from Rutgers we have seen before.

If, like us, you support all of the groups out there who do undercover work to give animals in factory farms and in labs a voice, the actions and abuse of power coming from a coward is nothing new.

Recently Mercy for Animals has made headlines with their undercover work. I decided not to show a video (Mercy For Animals is linked on our main page if you'd like to take a look). Their videos have a lot in common with the Rutgers video: people in power doing unspeakable things to those they are charged to care for. In the MFA videos we see, time after time, terrified animals being kicked, thrown, tortured and sometimes killed. By cowards.

In some stats, legislators are talking about passing bills to stop undercover investigations. In Iowa this is now law. These so called "ag gag" bills are meant to keep people who care about animals away, to keep profit up, and to be able to treat their product as they see fit.

I think "ag gag" is going easy on them. I prefer calling them "coward protection" laws.

Whether it is a group of factory farm workers beating a piglet with a shovel, teens bulling a perceived gay student or a basketball coach who makes $700,000 a year to perpetrate violence and fear on young players, cowards exist among us.

They can be stopped, which is why I felt the need to write about the Rutgers coach. He was fired. And then the athletic director resigned.

We have the power to be a voice for the voiceless and we have the power to stop these cowards.

Sometimes I may sound like a broken record when I write about getting involved, in connecting with your state legislator, in writing a letter to the editor or visiting your local chief of police.

These actions make a huge difference to those affected by the cowards.

Our silence strengthens the cowards. Our voices and actions can stop the cowards.

Thank you for reading!