Please Do Not Tap On the Glass

Here’s the latest alert from DawnWatch. BTW, if you’re in the National Capital Area next weekend you can meet Karen at Poplar Springs Animal Sanctuary (where I’ll be a volunteer starting next month!)

Poplar Springs Animal Sanctuary
15200 Mt. Nebo Road, Poolesville, MD 20837
Just 25 miles west of Washington DC
Directions to the Sanctuary
Sanctuary Tour 5 p.m. Reading, vegan snacks and wine 7 p.m.
All book sale proceeds will go the sanctuary

If you are in DC for the National Animal Rights Conference, August 14-18, please make sure you stay around for a lovely event on Monday the 18th. The next Thanking the Monkey book reading/signing is at the gorgeous Poplar Springs Animal Sanctuary just 25 miles west of DC.

The August Edition of Men’s Journal includes a fantastic article about the efforts of HSUS’s John Goodwin, headed “Crackdown on the Dog Torturers.” (p 130.) The article, by Mary Fischer, has the subheading, “Michael Vick was just the beginning. The dog fighting world is bigger and sicker than you can imagine. Meet the man who wants to wipe it out for good.”

Fischer writes,
“In his job as manager of the Humane Society of the United State’s animal fighting campaign, nothing so far has deterred Goodwin from his crusade to put the country’s leading dog and cock fighters out of business.”

She tells us:
“Though dogfighting has been illegal in most states for ages, until recently most local officials didn’t take the crime seriously and dogfighters grew accustomed to operating under the radar. Things started to change in 2005, when the HSUS launched its national animal fighting campaign, with Goodwin as its chief. A 35-year-old native of Memphis, Goodwin is a former animal rights radical with a string of vandalism and civil disobedience arrests, who’s as tenacious and aggressive as the pitbulls he rescues. To his colleagues in the animal protection community, “JP,” as they call him, is a visionary — equal parts strategist, lobbyist, and crusader. Goodwin himself sees his fight as a modern civil rights movement for a powerless, underrepresented constituency.

The article goes into Goodwin’s radical past, and his transformation to law enforcer and lobbyist. It describes his work monitoring dogfighting chatrooms and participating in busts. And it tells us that Goodwin “played a crucial role” in the Michael Vick case.

The story is a few pages long and it is fascinating. I highly recommend picking up a copy of Men’s Journal and giving it a read. And please make sure (especially you men) to thank Men’s Journal for this coverage. If you are a guy who is thrilled that Men’s Journal is covering animal protection issues, please make sure the magazine learns that.

Men’s Journal takes letters to the editor at letters@mensjournal.com

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Remember that shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals’,
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. You may forward or reprint DawnWatch alerts if you do so unedited — leave DawnWatch in the title and include this parenthesized tag line. If somebody forwards DawnWatch alerts to you, which you enjoy, please help the list grow by signing up. It is free.)

Please go to www.ThankingtheMonkey.com to read reviews of Karen Dawn’s new book, “Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way we Treat Animals” and watch the fun celebrity studded promo video.

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