From time to time, there arises a perfect example of a point I've made countless times. Here is one such:
(LOUISVILLE) -- The prosecutor assigned to the chicken abuse case involving a KFC supplier has an FBI agent assigned to investigate numerous threats she has received from animal rights activists. The threats stem from a decision not to bring criminal charges against people seen abusing chickens on undercover video obtained by PETA. WAVE 3 Investigator Eric Flack has an update. PETA called it the smoking gun for chicken abuse at Kentucky Fried Chicken: undercover video of workers at KFC supplier Pilgrim's Pride in West Virginia captured images of chickens being kicked, stomped, and slammed against walls.
The animal rights group went public with the footage last July, and immediately sought criminal prosecution of those on the tape.
The case was handed over to West Virginia special prosecutor Ginny Conley. In January, she announced she wasn't bringing criminal charges, because the tape was too dark and grainy to identify anyone.
That's when the threats began.
"They all are very disappointed that you're not prosecuting," Conley said of the letters and emails. "Some are hopeful that I'll be reincarnated as a chicken. I've gotten several of those."
But this spring, Conley received additional paperwork that finally put names to the faces on the tape. And last month, she took the case to a grand jury in Moorefield, home to Pilgrim's Pride.
But it was an uphill battle.
"More people work at this slaughterhouse than actually live in the town of Moorefield," said PETA campaign coordinator Dan Shannon. "People don't like to indict their friends of felony charges."
Three Pilgrim's Pride employees were cleared of felony animal cruelty charges.
"The cruelties involved here were so severe, so needless and so sadistic, these people needed to go to prison," Shannon said.
While the criminal case against the Pilgrim's Pride workers has ended, intimidation of the woman in charge of the case has not. Conley gets up to 10 angry emails a day.
"There was even an FBI person provided to me to monitor it because the harassment got to such a level," Conley said.
PETA says it doesn't condone the threats.
"At the same time, you can understand how somebody would be so upset by these animals being tortured and abused, thrown against walls and torn apart," Shannon said. "They might be moved with that level of passion."
Conley says there are no federal laws protecting chickens from inhumane treatment in slaughterhouses, which is why no charges could be filed at the state level. PETA is now working to change that.
Although no charges have been brought as a result of the video, Pilgrim's Pride did fire 11 workers after the release of the video. . . .
I could clutter up the story with snarky comments, but I want to make a larger point, which I'll start to make with a question:
Is it really any surprise that Conley is being harassed?
1) PeTA has used it's remarkable and vast propaganda apparatus to recruit Animal Rights disciples amongst the very youngest, using a glitzy comic book approach that demonizes individuals and industries that PeTA tags as animal abusers, using an elixir of truths, partial truths, misleading or unrepresentative examples and outright lies. If you think that's hyperbolic, try this grotesque example on for size.
Then there is this, from a recent AMP Bulletin (not online):
Indeed, litigation, legislation, policymaking, media work and public outreach are all part of the activists’ toolkit. This weekend, scores of young animal rights enthusiasts are in Washington D.C. for a “Taking Action for Animals” conference. They are paying $150 each to be schooled in the basics of activism by staffers from PETA, the Humane Society of the United States, the American Anti -Vivisection Society, Animal Protection Institute, Doris Day Animal League and several other national animal rights groups. The conference ends Monday with a double edged practicum: lobbying on Capitol Hill and a demonstration at the USDA. That the leaders of many of these organizations, including Ingrid Newkirk and Wayne Pacelle, scheduled appearances before this group indicate the priority each places on recruiting and growing future activists. [My emphasis . . . ed]
And, if this isn't bad enough, PeTA's spreading it's propaganda through the school system. (See this, this and this.)
My point: children grow up, PeTA has been at this stuff for decades, and there's a reason that secular and religious leaders from time immemorial have tried to indoctrinate kids with their own values. It's hard to shake a value system if you learn it as a child, and a kid properly "educated" makes a powerful, committed soldier.
2) PeTA has sponsored and considers to sponsor campaigns like the odious "Holocaust on your Plate" campaign (which likens chicken farming to the Nazi death camps); their sick attempt to make eating meat the moral equivalent of the murder and disposal (into meat products) of girls in Canada in their "Neither of us is Meat" campaign; its 1991 campaign to link livestock farming to murder/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer; and its most recent campaign in which they compare the human use of animals to slavery, genocide, and a variety of other human oppressions.
If you are "hooked" to the AR ideology into believing that a human and a non-human life are equally valuable, PeTA's over-the-top propaganda will incite you to new heights of outrage. And from this large pool of personalities, there will be some few who will be so committed that they take the next step: to harass and threaten the people and institutions demonized by PeTA, if not to vandalize their property with fire, water, paint stripper or tire punch.
I believe the point of PeTA's off-putting propaganda campaigns, like those cited above, are less intended to sway normal people to Animal Rights than to incite a few anonymous useful idiots to act out on their own (link, and link).
And, I believe, we see the success of the process PeTA has perfected in the acts of harassment to prosecutor Conley, whose hands were evidently tied by the membership of the Grand Jury (for whatever reason), and perhaps the law as well.
The harassment was anonymous, perpetrated by true believers, and enough of them were threatening that the prosecutor needs some form of protection. As far as I can tell, PeTA didn't actually order the harassment of Conley, though they might have encouraged their true believers to express their opinions to her (as they actually did to the owner of Wet Seal [op cit]).
The fact that the Conley seems to have done yeoman's service in behalf of PeTA's cause means nothing: she's the obvious lightening rod for the invective bolts hurled by people who PeTA and the rest of the AR industry created, I would argue, for bolt-throwing purposes.
Even though the acts of harassment won't change the disposition of the case, they certainly remind anyone needing a reminder that PeTA can cause you to be a target, either directly or indirectly, for whatever purpose they feel might serve their ends.
Finally, you have to love PeTA's comments:
They use the classic "We don't condone ..." and "you can certainly understand their passion" escape-routes.
The former sounds good until you realize that PeTA doesn't condemn the harassment, either ("not condoning" is fundamentally different than "condemning").
And the latter "we understand their passion" argument amounts to an endorsement of harassment, or so I would argue. (If you found that the organization you revered didn't condemn an action but sympathized with the emotions that drove it, would you be encouraged or discouraged from stepping up and engaging in some similar sort of "direct action" yourself?)
I believe that PeTA could shut this harassment down in an instant if they wanted to — the fact that they won't even try tells us volumes about what they really want.
Brian