The threat from within: will infighting weaken the animal-rights movement? - includes lists of movement leaders and organizations

Vegetarian Times, Feb, 1995 by Mark Harris, Jack Rosenberger

THESE SHOULD BE HEADY TIMES for animal-rights activists. After Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (The New York Review, 1975) brought to the United States the concept that animals are deserving of moral consideration, those who took up the banner worked in the margins of public acceptability for the better part of a decade. But in the late 1980s, as a result of the persistent efforts of those committed to the cause and assisted by the burgeoning number of American vegetarians, the movement gained a sure foothold.

Today, the champions of animal rights can be credited with changing the way we view everything from veal parmigiana to rodeos. And although many Americans are unaware of the movement or downright hostile to it, the cause has posted such big gains that its impact cannot be denied: The use of animals in laboratory tests plummeted 50 percent during the past decade; the number of fur trappers is down more than 60 percent since 1980; big cosmetic companies are phasing out animal-testing programs; and 50 percent of all Americans are opposed to wearing fur, according to a December 1993 Los Angeles Times poll.

But as the movement chalks up its achievements, resistance is coming from an unexpected source: its own rank and file. Over the past few years, a core of longtime activists has become angry because it sees the animal-rights movement going the same way as the environmental movement--co-opted by large national organizations that follow philosophically inconsistent strategies which sidetrack the cause. The rumblings are strong enough to compel animal-rights activists to take stock of their movement.

The movement comprises a wide variety of organizations across the country. There are the large, big-name, national groups like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Fund for Animals, which cover a broad range of issues and have the support of hundreds of thousands of members. Then there are more specialized national groups that focus on a particular type of animal exploitation, such as vivisection (National Anti-Vivisection Society, In Defense of Animals), factory farming (Farm Sanctuary, Farm Animal Reform Movement) or feral cats (Alley Cat Allies). There also are thousands of small grass roots groups, many focused on local issues and abuses.

Some groups are organized by gender (Feminists for Animal Rights), some by age (Student Action Corps for Animals), some by sexual orientation (Gays and Lesbians for Animal Rights) and some by religion (Buddhists Concerned for Animals). Certain groups have banded together based on common tactics: Law students at Rutgers University's Animal Rights Law Clinic work through the legal system; members of the underground Animal Liberation Front break into labs, spirit away animals, and often destroy equipment and facilities. It's a testament to the power of the idea behind animal advocacy that the movement can contain such diversity under one banner.

But the banner can't hide the inherent friction over a basic issue: whether a group works toward animal welfare or animal rights. Traditional welfare organizations such as the Humane Society work to improve the conditions of animals used for human ends, allowing for their use in research and as food as long as they are treated humanely in the process. Advocates for animal rights oppose animal exploitation of any kind. In popular rhetoric, animal welfarists work to clean cages, while animal rightists work to empty them. But if there has always been debate about approach, today's dissension runs deeper, as critics sound an alarm over the direction the movement is taking.

"The grass roots organizations--the ordinary people who made the movement--have fallen by the wayside because the national organizations have not cared to nurture them any longer," charges Gary Francione, professor of law at Rutgers Law School in New Brunswick, N.J., and founder and director of the Rutgers Animal Rights Law Clinic. Over the past 20 years, Francione has been involved in animal rights at just about every level, from picketing activist to attorney advocate. He laments the demise of the small, local groups that injected the campaigns of the early 1980s with vital energy. According to Francione, such groups have seen their funding and their spotlight diverted to the large national groups that dominate the scene with high-profile, media-grabbing campaigns and well-oiled funding mechanisms.

"I don't mean to suggest that all national groups are bad," says Francione, "but people are deluged with mailings [from the nationals] and respond to them. There are a huge number of large organizations all fighting for basically the same dollar. They don't want to develop the grass roots organizations because they're seen as competition for the funds."

Merritt Clifton, editor of the monthly magazine Animal People (circulation 15,000) shares Francione's perspective. "With a few exceptions, the big, well-funded organizations aren't putting money into the grass roots," he says. As a consequence, the small animal-rights groups are "being starved out of existence." According to Clifton's annual tabulation of the budgets of animal-rights and animal-welfare organizations, roughly three-quarters of all the money collected goest to national groups, compared with about two-thirds in 1988, the first year he gathered his information. Clifton has no evidence that this budgetary crunch is causing smaller groups to shut down, but he suspects they are being weakened and that some will eventually cease to exist if the trend continues.