I first met animal rights philosopher Tom Regan in April of 1985 after he’d given a rousing speech in Philadelphia condemning the University of Pennsylvania’s baboon head-bashing experiments. (This was the infamous Thomas Gennarelli lab which the Animal Liberation Front exposed by breaking in and taking tapes the researchers made of themselves.) Tom was walking across the commons area and I asked him to sign a copy of his book All That Dwell Therein: Essays on Animal Rights and Environmental Ethics. The pictures below are of that day.
These were halcyon times for the animal movement. The annual FARM-organized Action for Life conferences were foundational in networking and training people who had no social change experience. April 24, 1983 marked the official birth of the modern animal rights movement with four Mobilization for Animals rallies in Boston, Atlanta, Davis, California and Madison, Wisconsin. The many thousands who participated went back to our communities, organized grassroots groups and began putting slaughterhouses, research labs and factory farms in the faces of the American public. In England, the Animal Liberation Front waged war on fur farms, fur stores, factory farms, laboratories and meat shops. In popular culture, the television show LA Law showed graphic footage of animals caught in leghold traps to millions of viewers as part of one episode’s court case — and there were prominent anti-vivisection messages in three 1982 films: The…