Joyce Tischler

Joyce Tischler

by and | Oct 18, 2017 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“I could never have imagined how successful
animal law would be.”

Joyce Tischler. All photos by Jo-Anne McArthur except where indicated.

It’s not just because Joyce Tischler co-founded the first and only animal law organization in the United States that she has been called the mother of animal law. (Joyce founded Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) in 1979, well before animal law was a recognized field.) She’s also a mother to her own daughter and a self-described nurturer whose quintessentially female qualities of compassion and inclusivity have been credited by ALDF staffers for much of the organization’s success.  

Liberty Mulkani, ALDF’s events coordinator, says when she first started with the organization, she was away from home for the first time and missing her family. Joyce would take her and her boyfriend to lunch to ensure they felt welcome, introduce them to people and teach them about the animal rights movement. Liberty says Joyce became like a second mother. And Joyce is like that with everyone who comes through the door, Liberty says. Over a decade later, Liberty is still with ALDF because of the welcoming atmosphere she says Joyce created within the organization. 

But Joyce can’t be dismissed as a softie. ALDF’s executive director Stephen Wells describes Joyce as smart and no-nonsense. Indeed, it’s clear that she’s nobody’s fool, a courageous trailblazer who both forges ahead and pulls back when it feels right to her. As ALDF grew into a bigger organization needing more administration, she relinquished control to an executive director—Stephen—so she could continue to focus on what she loved best: developing the field of animal law.  

Carter Dillard, ALDF’s director of litigation, echoes this praise. He credits Joyce not only for founding an organization in an unheard-of field in a male-dominated world, but for also setting her ego aside and recognizing when the organization had outgrown her. She genuinely puts the interests of the animals first, he says.

Jo-Anne from the Unbound Project team sat down with Joyce to chat about the field of animal law, how animal law fits into the broader animal rights movement, and one thing she regrets.  

On the explosive growth of the field of animal law: 

“I could never have imagined how successful animal law would be. If we’d done this 50 years earlier, we might have failed miserably. But the time was right, following the 1960s and 70s, the rise of the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, farm workers, the environmental movement—all of those came before us, and so our society was really ready for the animal rights movement and animal law. There’s a culture in the legal field of being open to new, creative, controversial ideas. If you look at the history of social movements in this country, lawyers have always been a part of it. I’m fascinated by social movements and the interplay between a social movement and what’s done outside the courtroom and how that influences what happens in the courtroom because it’s really a close connection.

We can’t get good law until society is ready for that law to happen. The law and how society works are so closely connected. It’s hard to see which comes first.

It’s a chicken and egg thing. With animal law, we’ve had to be conscious of that interplay between society and the legal field. 

Joyce Tischler
Joyce Tischler

On working together and playing the long game:

No matter what you’re doing—whether you’re a photographer, or a lawyer, or a demonstrator, or an academic—nobody is working alone. We ARE part of a greater whole, and it all works together, and we need to be respectful of that. We need to understand that this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. What we’re doing will create change and we might not live to see it, or a lot of it! If you were an abolitionist in the 1700s, you were dealing with a system that was so entrenched that it wasn’t going to end in your lifetime. Did you keep working? Of course you keep working! We have to think about the long term.

On influencing the next generation of influencers:

“By moving law into the mainstream we can create allies. If you teach animal law at the law school level, you get to people who are going to graduate and go into large law firms, become judges, become prosecutors, become legislators. So if you get ‘em in law school they’ll go out into the world and create change, and that’s been far more successful than we realized when we started doing this.

We are mainstreaming animal law into our own field so that when next generation is in court they won’t get laughed at.

We were laughed at in the old days! You can do so much when you mainstream. And you might say, yeah but you’re compromising… We’re lawyers. It’s a conservative field, but you can get so much done through it.”

Joyce Tischler

On the gendered hierarchy in the U.S. animal protection movement:

“To be crass, when the money starts to show up, the men start to show up. If you look at the leaders of the organizations (including mine!) they are well paid, in positions of power. Men are more comfortable with power than women tend to be. Women tend to be the workers, men tend to be the people who tell the workers what to do. That’s such an ingrained part of culture. I think it has to do with where the money is and where the power is, and men tend to be better at grabbing that than women, and that’s what’s happening and it’s sad, it’s unfortunate.” 

On trying to get farmed animal protected and the role of the consumer:

“When we’re dealing with the biggest single issue, which is farmed animals, consumers are our biggest ally. It’s appalling and shocking that there are no—or very, very few—laws to protect farmed animals.

What do you do when you don’t have laws? It’s like being an actor with no script. You’ve got to figure out a way to get those animals protected and you’re bending yourself into pretzel shapes.

The kinds of cases that we take are consumer protection, labelling, environmental laws, clean water and clean air legislation—they don’t protect animals directly. It’s bizarre! So we have to look to consumers—they are setting the stage for what laws we will get or what case law we can possibly come up with.” 

On what she’d do differently and the value of tenacity:

“I would say to my 25 year old self, get the fuck out of your way and just do the work.

Stop thinking you can’t do it, and set aside your “I’m not good enough” crap. That stuff just got in my way.

When I would just stop worrying about whether what I was doing was good enough, whether I was doing the right thing, whether I was getting enough done, whether I was smart enough, tall enough, male enough… when I just set that aside and just did the work, it got done. You don’t have to be the most brilliant lawyer. You don’t have to be the one who went to Harvard. Just do it. Just get out there, pick your project or pick your focus, dig in. … tenacity is a fabulous quality. I’ve learned that by being tenacious, and by just building, building, building, I could be good enough. We women tend to hold ourselves back and I regret that.”

Image courtesy of Joyce Tischler.

On how to become an animal lawyer:

“Learn about animal law as much as you can, read as much as you can, and seep yourself in what the issues are, then decide what you want to do. What calls to you most? What’s your passion? Is it farmed animals? Is it wildlife? Or are you a generalist? I’m a generalist. And then figure out, okay, how am I going to make this my career? There are very few groups and very few jobs working directly in animal law. So understand that it’s going to be tough.

You’re going to have to be tenacious, you’re going to have to be an entrepreneur, you’re going to have to be creative.

Maybe you work at an agency or you start your own. Or, think outside the box. Maybe you go and work at a county level where you can do all the animal work—and there’s lots, if you look for it. Take all animal cruelty cases. Or if you really have a strong stomach, maybe go work for the USDA—the belly of the beast—and try to make change from within. Wow, that would be hard to do! I couldn’t do it.

Learn more about ALDF and support their work.

This interview has been condensed and edited. Interview and photos by Jo-Anne McArthur. Editing and additional text by Anna Pippus. 

Dobrosława Gogłoza

Dobrosława Gogłoza

by and | Sep 27, 2017 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“We are here for an ultra-marathon, not a sprint.”

Dobrosława Gogłoza. All images by Jo-Anne McArthur for the Unbound Project.

It’s a fall day in Poznan, Poland, and Dobrosława Gogłoza is at the local zoo of all places. “It’s my first time in a zoo in many, many years,” says Gogłoza, a feminist and former grade school teacher who now dedicates her life to helping animals. She is here to visit a pair of foxes who were rescued from a fur farm by the national animal rights organization she helped launch in 2012, Otwarte Klatki, or OK (branded as Open Cages internationally).

Gogłoza says she never expected to collaborate with a zoo, but this one has taken an impressive public stance against fur farming, a fight that OK has championed. So when the zoo agreed to house the foxes in a roomy enclosure with plenty of privacy, Gogłoza’s group agreed.

Gogłoza says that one of her favorite things about the animal rights movement in Poland, a country of about 40 million people, is that it’s so new that her organization, which focuses on farmed animals, often finds itself laying new ground. OK has exploded in popularity since its inception just five years ago.

“For me, that’s the whole fun of working in Eastern Europe,” she says. “I feel that in some other countries, many organizations feel like they can’t do some things because people are watching and they expect you to behave in a certain way.”

Here, you can show the way, because there was no one before you.

That isn’t to say that pioneering an animal rights movement here has been easy, and it’s OK’s anti-fur work that has been the hardest.

About two years after the group started, its members learned that spies posing as activists had infiltrated the organization, attending its strategy meetings and feeding information to Poland’s entrenched fur industry, which is among the world’s biggest. The spies—two women—had secretly recorded Gogłoza for months, and although they’d come away with nothing damaging, they used heavily edited audio to personally target Gogłoza to try to intimidate her into quitting as OK’s leader.

The media and public saw through it, but the betrayal still took a toll. Gogłoza felt “paranoid” for a time. She worried about trusting even close friends and about making harmless jokes in case someone was listening.

“I had moments where I felt like I was just going to quit,” she says, tears welling. “I felt that the invasion of privacy was quite a big deal.”

Dobrosława Gogłoza

Others with OK­—now with about 300 core activists driving its work—were deeply affected, too. Some wanted new volunteers to sign pledges as to their intentions and loyalty, but Gogłoza objected.

“Even though I personally had problems with trusting people, I felt that as an organization we should not lose this trust, because trusting made us who we are,” she says. “Year after year, I’ve seen that many of the great things we’ve done have been done by people who are very new to the organization. So I think the fact that we actually trusted them made them motivated to show their best abilities and best ideas.”

Ultimately, she says, the experience made her stronger, which is how many who know her describe her.

“I don’t think I was born that way,” she says, “but many different things made me stronger and stronger. Like after this whole thing, I feel much stronger than before. Even though when it happened I felt on the verge of quitting, I think now they would have to do much more to get me to the same point.”

Growing up in Namysłów, a small town in southwest Poland, Gogłoza was quiet and shy. In college, she studied English philology and became drawn to the hardcore straight edge scene, which espouses abstention from drugs, alcohol and animal products. She went vegan and soon got involved with local feminists. But something was missing.

“It felt like a hobby,” she says, “not activism.”

Then a friend invited her to an international animal rights gathering in Oslo. This was activism, she remembers thinking, and she fell in love.

Nothing like what she’d seen in Norway was happening in Poland, so with a handful of others, she started an informal, grassroots group that became OK. Gogłoza continued to attend animal rights gatherings outside of Poland and then decided to host one at home. It was a turning point.

“The movement in Poland before that and after that were two absolutely different situations,” she says.

Besides fur, OK focuses heavily on egg farming and broiler chickens, carrying out investigations and producing virtual reality videos that it leverages to establish dialogues with corporations. One of Poland’s largest egg producers recently declared bankruptcy as a result, and others have adopted cage-free policies.

OK also promotes plant-based eating, targeting both food businesses and consumers.

Gogłoza and OK are “truly the piston for the animal rights movement in Poland,” says Iga Glazewska, who nominated Gogłoza for the Unbound Project.

And OK is at the center of the Network for Eastern European Animal Rights (NEAR), which Gogłoza helped launch in 2013 to advance the movement regionally. NEAR now includes activists and organizations in Czechia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Romania, and Bulgaria.

“We are trying to implement our best practices to work in other countries,” Gogłoza says. “Even if we don’t have big resources, we are still very committed to sharing them.”

Animal industry operates internationally, and we have to do it as well.

She also believes the movement must be diverse. She recently spoke at the Conference on Animal Rights in Europe about the challenges of being a female leader, and about the intersection of animal rights and feminism.

“If we really want things to be more equal for female leaders in the animal rights movement or elsewhere in society, we personally have to do more,” she says. “Every time you succeed as a female leader or woman in the movement doing great work, you’re actually making it easier for other women. It makes me angry when I hear people say, ‘I did not invite more female speakers to the conference because there are not enough professional women.’ I feel that if you organize an event, you’re partly responsible for who you are showing as the spokespeople for the movement.”

Dobrosława Gogłoza
Dobrosława Gogłoza

Besides her strength, Gogłoza is often praised for being highly strategic. OK is quick to learn from mistakes and drop what isn’t working. It has stopped giving educational talks in schools, publishing an online magazine and using certain social media sites—all because its activists have deemed other uses of their time more effective.

It has also paid close attention to what works best in sharing investigation results. For example, compared to data, OK found it far more effective to reveal to the public that mother foxes on fur farms were so stressed they were chewing limbs off of their babies. The same went for naming individual rescued fox cubs.

This taught OK that its focus should be on telling a cohesive, relatable story.

Gogłoza credits all of this to OK’s structure and culture—flat, accessible, open, unafraid of failure, and unreliant on someone at the top telling everyone else what to do.

With this organization, I could quit now, and it would survive. I think that’s one of my greatest achievements. I know that we are resilient.

“We are here for an ultra-marathon, not a sprint.”

Learn more about Otwarte Klatki/Open Cages and support their work.
Text by Corinne Benedict. Interview and photographs by Jo-Anne McArthur.

Juliana Castañeda

Juliana Castañeda

by and | Aug 26, 2017 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“Once we fully understand that we are all equals, just with a different body, we will find the solution to all our problems.”

Castañeda and her son with sanctuary residents. All photos in this story taken by Julie O’Neill for the Unbound Project.

The first rescue Juliana Castañeda remembers was a little white dog she found on the streets of Colombia when she was seven. He was hungry and dirty, so Castañeda scooped him up and carried him home. She named him Copito, or Q-tip.

More rescues soon followed, including dogs, cats, birds and rodents. Castañeda even once brought home an abandoned little boy—street children are not uncommon in Colombia—whom she fed in her room for days before her mother discovered him.

To Castañeda, it was all the same: If someone needed help, you helped, regardless of species.

Castañeda and sanctuary resident Govinda
Castañeda and sanctuary resident Perla

Hundreds of rescues later, her feelings haven’t changed.

Once we fully understand that we are all equals, just with a different body, we will find the solution to all our problems.

Warm, sincere and endlessly nurturing, Castañeda is founding director of Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary, which she officially opened in 2008, although most of her life had been dedicated to the idea. Within a few years of finding Copito, she was selling chocolates and veggie burgers at school, saving all of her profits for her “dream.”

“I told my mother, ‘When I grow up, I want to buy a big house, and I am going to help all the animals in the world,’” she recalls.

Sanctuary resident Balarma
Sanctuary resident Savadava
Sanctuary resident Paula
Sanctuary resident Sundra
A newly-hatched chick at the sanctuary

As much as Castañeda is a dreamer, she is even more of a doer. It is perhaps the best way to describe her: always doing.

Her recent pregnancy was no exception. She says the hardest part was the last week, when her belly got so big that she finally had to leave her animals’ care to volunteers. But after 20-plus hours of labor and the 10 p.m. home birth of her son, Bhimal, her belly was no longer in her way, so she was up feeding animals the next morning.

“I can’t remember the last time I sat down and relaxed,” Castañeda, who has dark reddish-brown hair and a bright smile, says laughing. “My body does get tired, but I love my work so much.”

Castañeda with her son Bhimal and rabbits at the sanctuary

That work includes far more than taking care of the sanctuary’s 80 or so animals, among them cows, pigs, horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, roosters and more—all of whom Castañeda considers her children. She also hosts sanctuary visitors, gives talks at local schools, fundraises, and promotes veganism through education, a meat-free Monday campaign and cooking workshops in Colombia and beyond.

And that is just one of her jobs. With only about a fifth of the sanctuary’s costs covered by donations, Castañeda helps make up the rest through online work as a Spanish language translator. She brings in additional money selling handmade jewelry.

On top of all that, she runs a robust local project as part of Food for Life, a global relief organization that provides vegan meals for the poor. Her husband, Australian Paul Turner, whom she met through Food for Life in 2013, helped start the nonprofit decades ago.

Turner’s experience and help have been instrumental in boosting support for the sanctuary from overseas; nearly all of its volunteers and donations come from outside Colombia.

“Colombia is not a rich country and is still very ignorant when it comes to animal protection,” she says, describing the country as an extremely challenging place to help animals.

We have a huge responsibility. We are literally the only hope and haven for animals in this country.

She says she can’t imagine doing anything else with her life, and it is the animals who keep her going.

“They give me all the energy to never stop.”

Chickens at the sanctuary
Sanctuary resident Geeta
Chickens at the sanctuary
Sanctuary resident Lion
Sanctuary resident Happy

She offers the story of one in particular, a cow named Gita, who Castañeda rescued from a slaughterhouse 10 years ago. When Castañeda first saw her, workers were trying force Gita into submission by electrocuting her.

“They were trying everything to break her spirit, but she was determined to maintain her dignity,” Castañeda remembers. “I named her Gita, which means ‘song.’ Gita is an example for everyone. The animals are my inspiration. Even after so much pain has been inflicted on them, they still come to you with love. They know everything about forgiveness.”

It is by rediscovering our connection with animals, by meeting and spending time with them, that Castañeda believes we will learn to stop harming them.

Sanctuary resident Balarama

She offers another example, a 1,300-pound bull named Balarama who came to the sanctuary as a calf and whose face is tattooed on Castañeda’s left arm.

“He is a huge animal, but he is like a kitten. He purrs and everything,” she says. Castañeda has seen him change nearly everyone who has met him.

“They’ve told me, they write to me, ‘He is my friend. I cannot eat animals again.’ He is connecting people to all the bulls in the world.”

Castañeda sees mothers and children as another key. Kids are naturally inclined to be kind to animals, but many have told her they couldn’t go vegan because of their families. So Castañeda decided to begin targeting moms.

“The mother is the boss of the table,” in much of South America, she says, “so we have to teach the bosses.”

Castañeda and her family

Castañeda always imagined that she would become a mom herself, but it was her efforts to reach others that made her want to have her son when she did.

“Before, many mothers were upset with me because their kids were turning vegan thanks to visiting the sanctuary or a vegan food workshop. They told me, ‘You don’t understand! You don’t have kids!’” Castañeda says.

“Now I can say to these mothers, ‘Yes, I really do understand.’”

Castañeda with son Bhima
Castañeda with Bhimal and Balarama

In addition to moms, she hopes animal activists can learn from her example.

“I live in a poor, crazy country, and I am doing this,” she says.

“Anything is possible.”

Learn more and support Juliana’s Animal Sanctuary.
Photos and interview for this story by Julie O’Neill. Text by Corrine Benedict.

Smaragda Louw

Smaragda Louw

by and | Aug 17, 2017 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“We want animals to have rights because of who they are.”

L-R: Kathy Watson, Smaragda Louw, Prathna Singh, Kathy Raffray. All photopgraphs for this story by Jo-Anne McArthur/The Unbound Project.

On Fridays in South Africa, animals on sale for weekend sacrifices are everywhere. For those who follow local indigenous traditions, births, deaths, weddings, and cleansing ceremonies are all reasons to end animals’ lives, often painfully.

Traditional healers here peddle tea made from pangolins. Endangered species are sold openly in busy markets. Tigers can be kept legally as backyard pets, and South Africa is ground zero for canned hunting.

This is a tough place to be an animal rights activist.

It’s a good thing Smaragda Louw is tough too.

A mother of two grown children who spent decades as a child psychologist, Louw is chairperson of Ban Animal Trading, or BAT, a South African non-profit that she co-founded with a handful of friends in 2013. Through education, investigations, protests, petitions, media campaigns and more, the organization is working to turn the tide for all sorts of animals here, from cats and dogs sold online and in pet shops to those used in circuses, for their fur, and for experiments.

Smaragda Louw
Smaragda Louw

“We don’t want South Africans to see animals as commodities,” says Louw, whose petite stature belies nearly everything about her. “We want animals to have rights because of who they are.”

BAT is only a few years old and has no formal office or paid staff. But already it has made a name for itself as a formidable force that doesn’t back down.

I’ve just always had a connection with animals, since I was small.

Louw’s reputation is much the same, and she looms especially large in the minds of South Africans who profit from animal exploitation. Energetic and engaging, she is the kind of person who is willing to go anywhere to help those who can’t speak for themselves, including places she knows she isn’t wanted, like chummy closed-door meetings between hunters’ groups and the government officials who are supposed to regulate them. Or to a crocodile farm where she’s recognized and told to leave before somehow getting in anyway. Or to a municipal rabbit park accused of massive neglect, where she chats up a manager until she is sitting behind his desk, dictating what must improve.

Smaragda Louw
Smaragda Louw and a team member
Smaragda Louw
Smaragda at the rabbit park

Says friend Liane Craigie, “She is not afraid of anything when it concerns animals.”

Nor is Louw willing to apologize for what she knows is right. Recalling her answer when someone asked her recently to justify her efforts in a country with its share of human suffering, she says, “Because people can actually talk, and because there are other people doing this for people, so I prefer to do it for animals. I don’t have a problem if you work for people. That’s absolutely fine. But don’t criticize what we do.”

It’s a passion whose beginning Louw can’t exactly pinpoint, but it started when she was young. “I’ve just always had a connection with animals, since I was small,” she says.

Rabbit park
Smaragda at the rabbit park
Rabbit park

A native of South Africa and a vegan, she has long been deeply disheartened by prevailing attitudes toward animals here, including the notion that animal rights is a movement only for privileged whites. For years while working as a psychologist, she dedicated whatever time she could to helping animals. She quit her job in 2010 to make activism her full-time purpose, co-founding BAT about three years later. The organization became an officially registered non-profit in 2015.

“Dealing with human problems and animal problems eventually becomes too much,” Louw says of leaving her first profession. “So, I chose to fight for animals.”

Of that choice, she says, “I’ve often thought there’s something in you that just tells you, ‘This is what you do.’”

By all accounts, Louw and BAT—now with a core team of eight women—do it well.

L-R: Prathna Singh, Smaragda Louw, Kathy Raffray
L-R: Smaragda Louw, Prathna Singh, Kathy Raffray
L-R: Prathna Singh, Smaragda Louw, Kathy Raffray

While the organization has embraced its menacing image to an extent, it has also been deliberate about not putting off potential supporters.

“Individually we may see things differently, but when we talk as Ban Animal Trading, we reach for middle ground,” Louw says. “We don’t want people to think we’re a fringe group. We want people to see us as something they can be a part of.”

That inclusive approach has served BAT well, with support for the organization—volunteers, media interest, online hits—exploding.

I’ve often thought there’s something in you that just tells you, ‘This is what you do.’

Indeed, Louw and some of BAT’s other core members have become so well known that they can no longer conduct undercover investigations themselves.

“She draws people in,” Cora Bailey, of Community Led Animal Welfare, says of Louw. “Smaragda has done so much for the profile of animal rights in South Africa. She’s been what people have needed.”

Another big part of BAT’s success has simply been how hard the team works. Some days Louw and her teammates are organizing marches and answering calls and blowing up social media with posts about the horrors of live-animal export. Other days they’re in the field, checking on cruelty and neglect reports, following up on cases and carrying out investigations.

“I think it’s really important to have new stuff coming out, to show people what is really happening,” Louw says. “I think it gives us a little more clout to get stuff done. We’re not just an organization regurgitating what everybody else gives us.”

Adds Prathna Singh, a core BAT activist, “We’re using stuff that we’ve actually seen ourselves, so when we try to fight something, it’s because we know exactly what’s happening, and we’re bringing that to the public.”

L-R: Kathy Raffray, Prathna Singh, Smaragda Louw
L-R: Prathna Singh, Smaragda Louw, Kathy Raffray

While Louw has no qualms about going head to head with animal abusers and officials who protect them, she also recognizes the importance of working with the system where it is beneficial. BAT produces meticulously researched reports on animal welfare issues, such as pet sales and wildlife trafficking, and submits them to authorities with petitions and recommendations for change. Last year, BAT successfully persuaded three of South Africa’s biggest online classified companies to stop certain animal sales, and it is now working for a total ban.

“It’s a long road that we’re walking and we know that,” Louw says. But, she adds, “We’re making progress.”

She admits the need surrounding her can be overwhelming: The calls are constant; Louw is always on the phone. There are far more issues to tackle than there is time. There are always more animals to help.

People and society are always the reason why policies change, so we have to start by showing people that the commoditization of animals is wrong.

It’s why she’s had to learn to let some losses go, and to pace herself.

“It’s OK to have duvet days and pajama days,” she says.

It’s also why BAT has made education and changing minds a top focus. While working case by case and issue by issue is valuable, Louw is convinced that real change will only come when there is a true groundswell of compassionate action for animals—which she says is BAT’s ultimate goal.

“People and society are always the reason why policies change, so we have to start by showing people that the commoditization of animals is wrong.”

Among the less conventional tools BAT is trying is a soon-to-be-published children’s book covering milk, leather, wool and more.

Even though Louw describes the status quo in South Africa as a “free-for-all” where “anything goes,” she says she also sees reason for hope.

She sees it in the pro bono lawyers who donate their time to help BAT and in the local thrift shop and comedy club that contribute some of their profits.

She sees it in the activists who turn up for BAT’s events and in the animals for whom they’ve made a difference.

L-R: Prathna Singh, Kathy Raffray, Smaragda Louw

Yes, she says, BAT has garnered strong opposition from animal traders and exploiters. But that just means she and her teammates are finding cracks in the system, prying them open and getting somewhere.

And with most people Louw meets, she says, she finds no opposition at all.

“When we start talking to people and giving them information—they watch our videos and see our Facebook page—most people are actually really grateful, because they say they didn’t know.”

She sees it often when BAT hands out flyers outside of zoos and circuses and other places where animals suffer.

“People turn around and leave,” she says.

“Because they didn’t know.”

Thanks to Louw and her team, more people than ever know the truth, and one flyer and one rescued animal at a time, their work is changing the fate of animals in South Africa.

Learn more about Ban Animal Trading and support their work.

Jean Gilchrist

Jean Gilchrist

by and | Jul 22, 2017 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“We’re still just scratching the surface.”

Jean Gilchrist with rescued donkeys. All photos by Jo-Anne McArthur/Unbound Project

A life spent dedicated to animals yields a lot of lessons. The first that comes to mind for Jean Gilchrist is that you have to take the bad with the good.

 

Among the bad: The horrific slaughter methods that she has been documenting in Kenya for decades in an effort to change them. Studying a recent photo of roped camels about to be killed, she notes, “Some of them are crying.”

Next: The public’s indifference. “In a developing country where there are an awful lot of human problems, people are apt to think that animals and their welfare aren’t important.”

Posters at the KSPCA
Posters at the KSPCA
Posters at the KSPCA

And then there is her organization’s bank account balance – a drop in a sea of need. “It’s very hand to mouth, this place,” Gilchrist says of the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals in Nairobi, where she began as a volunteer in the late 1970s.

But there is also so much good, like the transformations she’s seen among the KSPCA’s rescues, several of whom are asleep in her office. “These are my dogs,” she says as she goes around the room introducing them. Charlie, who is curled up under a desk, was found on the side of the road. He had been adopted but the family brought him back, terrified and shaking. Gilchrist had just lost a similar looking companion whom she’d loved dearly.

Gilchrist’s dogs at the KSPCA
KSPCA grounds

“I took it as a sort of omen,” she says, so she kept him. “It only took him a few days to feel he was OK, but he’s still a nervous dog.”

A native of Scotland, Gilchrist has spent the past four-plus decades in Africa. With cropped grey hair and wire-framed glasses, she is humble, unassuming, friendly and soft-spoken – at least until her cause is better served by raising her voice.

When the topic is the treatment of animals, Gilchrist admits that her normally quiet demeanour is quickly forgotten.

“I do get attention,” she says.

Her title at the KSPCA is director of animal welfare, but in practice she does a bit of everything, as does the organization. Most of its funding – all from donations – goes to its rescue and sheltering operation, which includes dogs, cats, donkeys, goats, and pigs, with an average of about 200 individuals in residence at any given time. Some come from abusive owners while others come off the streets. The KSPCA also runs spay/neuter campaigns, investigates and responds to cruelty and abandonment cases, and educates school children about animal welfare, along with its efforts in Kenyan slaughterhouses.

At the center of it all is Gilchrist, who embraces the moniker her work has earned her here: the madwoman of animals.

She says her interest in animal welfare has always been there, ingrained like an instinct. She recalls her first rescue, an injured mouse who she tried to save from a cat when she was a little girl. She took it home and nursed it, but it died the next day.

“I’ve always had this – taking in things that needed help.”

She first came to Africa with her husband, who was a surgeon and “bush doctor,” initially in Tanzania. Eventually they moved with their two young children to Kenya, where Gilchrist’s husband served as a flying doctor aboard air ambulances.

Gilchrist found her own place after a feral cat who’d been living on the roof of their rental house had kittens. Afraid the babies would fall, Gilchrist looked to the KSPCA, started around 1910 by women who gave water to oxen carrying goods into Nairobi.

The KSPCA loaned Gilchrist a trap so she could bring in the cat family. She soon started volunteering, and after about a decade, in 1986, when a field officer position opened, Gilchrist took it.

She quickly began going to slaughterhouses, using advocacy, training, and what she calls her Scottish temper to promote less horrific killing methods.

Jean Gilchrist
Rescued kitten at the KSPCA
Jean Gilchrist

Despite her inclinations, it’s work she says she’d never imagined for herself, and 30 years later, she’s seen both exciting progress and heartbreaking regression.

Slaughterhouses are going up everywhere now and they’re not using humane killing. They’re bashing, stabbing, putting them down and cutting their throats. And it’s got to stop.

“It’s all dissolving,” Gilchrist laments. “Slaughterhouses are going up everywhere now and they’re not using humane killing. They’re bashing, stabbing, putting them down and cutting their throats. And it’s got to stop.”

She adds, “We’re still just scratching the surface.”

Rescued dogs at the KSPCA
Rescued dogs at the KSPCA

In addition to slaughterhouses, Gilchrist is a regular at animal-related conferences and workshops, always with her thermos of tea and often the only voice speaking for Kenya’s domestic animals, rather than wildlife, which receives far more attention.

Kate Chumo of Africa Network for Animal Welfare praises Gilchrist for the inroads she has made promoting adoption among Kenyans and changing people’s perceptions of dogs and cats. Chumo also notes that Gilchrist isn’t one to mince words.

“Kenyans are very practical people,” Gilchrist says. “It’s a matter of, ‘What can the animal do for me? And if it can’t and I have no use for it anymore, it’s not a big deal.’ So I have to keep saying, ‘We’ve got to consider the animals. They’re not just here for use and abuse.’ So I do get quite vocal.”

Rescued donkeys at the KSPCA

Sadly, it is often government veterinarians whom Gilchrist  finds herself reminding, prodding them to adhere to their Hippocratic Oath. Indeed, the KSPCA has been instrumental in progress against strychnine, a painful poison that the government’s veterinary department was using widely to control Kenya’s street dog population.

Gilchrist’s preferred tool for changing minds is the education of school children. The KSPCA both hosts groups and makes visits to schools, which Gilchrist believes is making slow but steady headway against the public indifference she spends so much time fighting.

In the meantime, there is the organization’s rescue work.

“So many animals need help,” Gilchrist says. “If you just concentrate on education, what happens to the 40 donkeys that were dumped in town?”

What gets her through? “Curry and beer,” she jokes.

The KSPCA is a “minimum-kill” operation, meaning it only euthanizes animals who are very old, very sick or whose “character has been too destroyed” by the trauma they’ve endured. The organization vets adopters and checks in on adoptees where it can.

And rather than small, individual cages, animals in its care are kept in groups, and are let out in rotation to romp and sniff during the day.

“We find they’re much happier running about and being free,” Gilchrist says. “The same with cats. People say cats can’t be together, but they can.”

As heartening as many of their rescues are, Gilchrist acknowledges that her life’s work is often wrenching.

“It’s not nice,” she says. What gets her through? “Curry and beer,” she jokes.

More seriously, she says photography and walks in the evenings with Charlie and her other dogs. And, of course, the progress she’s been a part of. During her time at the KSPCA, it has grown from three employees to today’s two dozen. “We have expanded a lot,” she says. “We’re doing a lot more work now.”

In recognition of her contributions, the queen of England in 2009 awarded Gilchrist an MBE, or Member of the British Empire.

“Completely out of my element,” she says of the Buckingham Palace ceremony.

That’s not to say that the award hasn’t been useful, especially with authorities. “When you’re writing letters to people and being official and you can write MBE, it does help.”

Jean Gilchrist with a rescued pig at the KSPCA

As for the KSPCA’s future, Gilchrist dreams of a fundraising committee that might generate reliable income for stronger education and investigative programs and some improvements at the shelter.

She also hopes to find someone to step into her shoes, as she knows she can’t work forever.

“We do our best with what we’ve got,” she says.

She also hopes to find someone to step into her shoes, as she knows she can’t work forever.

Although she’s never really wanted to leave Kenya, she sees Scotland as the prudent choice for retirement.

“I’ve still got enough energy, I think, to last another year.”

When Gilchrist does finally go, she knows this much: Her dogs will go with her.

“Everybody says I’m mad, but I can’t leave them behind,” she says.

“They’re family.”

Learn more about the KSPCA and support their work to protect animals.

Three Filmmakers Fighting for Animals

Three Filmmakers Fighting for Animals

by and | Apr 14, 2017 | Contemporary, Photo Interviews

“The best work is always done when there is passion.”

Liz Marshall. All photopgraphs for this story by Jo-Anne McArthur/The Unbound Project except where indicated

At one point or another, every animal activist has described their motivation as speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves. Filmmakers Allison Argo, Shannon Keith, and Liz Marshall are no different. Artists as much as activists, they are driven professionals, determined to use their voices to speak for the animals exploited and abused in a human world.

“I am inspired by causes that need representation,” says animal rights lawyer turned director and producer Shannon Keith. After years spent helping activist clients fight government harassment, Keith discovered that she too was known to the authorities. “I found out that I had been followed for years, my trash had been taken and I was on a terrorist watch list,” she says. But instead of giving in to the intimidation, “this only fueled the fire,” she says, the threat backfiring and increasing her desire to tell the stories of those fighting animal exploitation through activism. She founded the non-profit group ARME (Animal rescue media education), which, as well as taking on direct animal care & rescue work, addresses animal abuse and exploitation through producing documentaries. “The degree to which animals are exploited, abused and neglected is unfathomable and it continues because most people don’t know it exists,” Keith says of her motivation. “Documentary exposés are a great way to get information out so that individuals can take action.”

Shannon Keith
Shannon Keith

Talking with Argo, Keith, and Marshall, it’s clear that telling stories for animals comes with its own set of challenges, but that the passion each woman feels for the cause has allowed them to overcome the obstacles that have arisen in their careers. Though “career” was hardly how Allison Argo viewed filmmaking when she made her first documentary. “I knew nothing about making films,” she says. But then Argo encountered a silverback gorilla named Ivan on display as an attraction in a low-end shopping mall in Washington State. Seeing Ivan kept in isolation in these conditions, Argo resolved to tell his story, teaching herself the craft to be able to do so. “It took me three years to do it. After the film aired, the shopping mall was picketed and Ivan was sent to live with other gorillas. I’ve made films focused on animal welfare ever since.” Now a producer, director, writer and editor, she founded Argo Films to continue making documentaries that help animals.

I look for those who are struggling – for survival or freedom or simply for dignity and respect.

– Allison Argo

“I believe that most humans are inherently compassionate,” Argo says. “But if they’re unaware of the suffering of others, how can they make compassionate choices?” Educating audiences about the suffering of animals is evidently a passion for all three filmmakers, but the task itself takes skill. “To visually witness the truth head-on means showing violence and suffering, yet people turn away or shut down when confronted with these uncensored realities,” says Liz Marshall, director and co-producer of The Ghosts in Our Machine. “How do we convey the gravity without traumatizing the audience?”

Allison Argo

Marshall was already an established filmmaker when she decided to make a film that focused on animals. Having already made documentaries focusing on other social issues, one of her goals in making a film that focused on animal issues was to draw in members of other social movements.

We wanted to make a film that could be a bridge.

– Liz Marshall

Marshall focused on the power of human narrative to help audiences connect with animals, but also strove to give animals agency by essentially letting them speak for themselves in her film. “The result in Ghosts is that there are some sentimental sequences and long observational sequences without talking.”

All three women highlighted connecting viewers to animal stories as one of the primary challenges they face as filmmakers fighting for animals. “Getting people to care about animal issues can be challenging,” says Keith.

And it’s not just the audience that’s hard to convince. “The industry has tended to trivialize the significance and importance of animal-focused films,” says Argo. “I have noticed an unfortunate bias in the film industry towards human-focused stories.”

Liz Marshall
Liz Marshall

But that’s changing. Argo, Keith, and Marshall all mentioned a shift in recent years, with both producers and filmgoers more open to viewing animal stories. And indeed, all three women have produced award-winning animal-focused documentaries that have generated considerable attention. Not only are today’s audiences more willing to watch films about animals, the breadth of topics available to the animal movement’s storytellers has been significantly expanded by the progress of recent years. As the movement to protect animals moves forward, so too does the art that reflects it.

Promotional poster for The Last Pig, directed by Allison Argo
Promotional poster for The Ghosts in Our Machine, directed by Liz Marshall
Promotional poster for Sanctuary, directed by Shannon Keith

Marshall’s next project, supported by Canada’s documentary Channel, is a feature length documentary called Meat the Future, a film that explores the movement to transform conventional animal agriculture with the advent of “cultured” “clean” meat: real meat produced without animal slaughter. Marshall describes the film as upbeat and solutions-focused––hardly terms that have been traditionally associated with stories at the heart of the animal rights movement. Likewise, Argo’s newest project is also a story that offers a non-traditional narrative within the movement. The Last Pig is a documentary about pig farmer Bob Comis, who, after contemplating his life as a farmer raising animals he cared for but ultimately killed, decided to transform his farm into a sanctuary. “The film invites the audience to question their own ethics and connect the dots between what they eat and the sentient creatures on factories & farms,” says Argo. Keith’s latest work, Sanctuary, tells the story of the harrowing world of non-human primates kept in captivity and the incredible stories of the people who work tirelessly to free these animals and give them a chance at a life that is their own. More than two decades ago, Argo started her filmmaking career portraying Ivan’s plight in an effort to mobilize her community and offer him sanctuary; today, Keith has been able to base her own film project on just a handful of the countless activists now working to liberate and care for animals like Ivan. The momentum is tangible.

The best work is always done when there is passion.

– Shannon Keith

These women are telling stories that need to be heard with voices that for too long went underrepresented. For years, the film industry lacked diversity and inevitably produced narratives from an overly homogenous perspective, but trailblazers like Argo, Keith, and Marshall are changing that. Keith’s experience as an attorney taught her to let her talent and drive do the talking. “There was a definitely a men’s club that tried to keep women out, degrade us, make fun of us, and otherwise do their best to make my job difficult, but it never worked. The best attorney typically won out in the end,” she says. “Winning awards early on… helped to establish me as an equal player,” says Argo, and she hasn’t stopped since. And while there is still work to do, the industry has quickly realized the power of diversity: “There is a big campaign now, all about the importance of the female gaze, and about gender parity when it comes to funding,” says Marshall.

Shannon Keith
Allison Argo and Joseph Brunette on set for The Last Pig. Photo courtesy of The Last Pig
Liz Marshall

The range of subjects available to animal-focused filmmakers in today’s world, and the angles with which they are choosing to portray these stories, shows a movement in full swing that needs artists more than ever. The success of documentaries like Blackfish and Cowspiracy have thrown issues affecting animals onto the mainstream agenda in unprecedented way. While documentary filmmakers were once constrained to using festivals and campaign events as platforms for their projects, they are now able to use the power of animal narratives to appeal directly to anyone with a Netflix account. Perhaps the greatest tool that animal activists have today is not a megaphone, but a camera lens. Argo, Keith, and Marshall are all turning theirs on the animals who need our help and on the activists fighting for them. Their efforts are shining lights into the corners of animal-use industries that, for so many years, have relied on darkness.