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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: September 2007

Could a U.S. "Party for the Animals" politically succeed?

 

GUILFORD, Conn.-- Should U.S. animal advocates form a "Party for the Animals," to consolidate support and seek leverage?

Dutch Party for the Animals founder Marianne Thieme, elected to the Dutch Parliament in November 2006, has already visited the U.S. twice to promote the idea, most recently at the Animal Rights 2007 conference in Los Angeles.

Similar Parties for the Animals have already formed in Britain, Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Luxembourg, and Austria. The idea of starting a U.S. Party for the Animals has gained momentum from their example, and because all of the declared candidates for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election have either weak or negative records on animal issues except for Democratic contender Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich, a longtime Ohio Con-gressional Representative, is rated only an outside chance of winning the nomination.

But National Institute for Animal Advocacy founder Julie Lewin warns--as author of a recent book on political organization entitled Get Political for Animals and Win the Laws They Need--that investing time and money in organizing a U.S. Party for the Animals would be a mistake.

"Marianne Thieme is remarkable," Lewin concedes. "Yet our political systems are very different. Most importantly, we have a two-party system and the Dutch have a parliamentary system," as do all the other nations which have Parties for the Animals. "Attempting a U.S. Party for the Animals could weaken us," Lewin told ANIMAL PEOPLE. "First, U.S. lawmakers would doubtless be terrified that by voting for a piece of animal rights legislation, or voting against a piece of anti-animal legislation, they would be labeled as supporters of a 'radical' animal rights agenda," as already happens, but without the opportunity to attach the allegation to a fringe political structure.

"This fear would lose us lawmakers' votes, even on mild legislation," Lewin believes. "The way for us to become power players in the lawmaking arena at any level of government is to organize locally, from the ground up, in local political groups" capable of mobilizing the few dozen or few hundred voters whose support often decides closely contested city, county, state, and Congressional elections.

"Third," Lewin says, "just like lawmakers, most people whose voting behavior would be influenced positively by your local group's political endorsements would shy away from supporting a candidate who carries a U.S. Party for Animals label. You would be asking them to cross the threshold of an ideological divide. "Fourth, the notion of structuring and organizing an effective national political party is enormously difficult and time-consuming," Lewin reminds. "Other issue groups, and Ralph Nader, all politically sophisticated and experienced, have tried and failed.

"One partial exception," Lewin concedes, "may be the Working Families Party. But WFP formed through the already politically established, experienced, heavily funded and heavily staffed labor movement. It operates solely through local chapters for local legislation, not nationally, in six states that allow cross-endorsement of candidates. And it is multi-issue. And in some areas it has no real structure. It exists simply to warn Democratic lawmakers who take labor endorsements for granted, but don't fervently support the labor legislative agenda, that if they don't get with the labor program, the WFP candidate will draw votes away from these Democratics and be spoilers who throw elections to Republican candidates. WFP's influence is possible only because the labor movement is already organized."

Barely remembered today, there was in 1947 an attempt to start a pro-animal political party.

Incumbent U.S. President Harry S. Truman had succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt after Roosevelt died in office during his unprecedented fourth term. Truman was believed to have little chance of winning re-election if he could not mobilize support from outside his own Democratic Party. Therefore numerous independent parties organized to try to win platform concessions from either Truman or Republican nominee Thomas A. Dewey.

Reported the August 11, 1947 edition of Time magazine, "In Manhattan last week, 500 delegates to a convention of the American Naturopathic Association formed the American Vegetarian Party and nominated a 1948 presidential candidate. Their man: Dr. John Maxwell, 84, Jove-bearded, pint-sized proprietor of a Chicago vegetarian restaurant, who says he has tasted no meat for 45 years. He hoped to get some 5,000,000 votes: 3,000,000 from vegetarians, the rest from 'prohibitionists, anti-vivisectionists, anti-cigarette groups, and other people of similar high moral principle."

Time appeared to be less skeptical of the political viability of an anti-meat, anti-vivisection octogenerian candidate than of his prospect of winning Prohibitionist support. The Prohibition Party, Time pointed out, had already nominated Los Angeles clergyman and former minor league ballplayer Claude A. Watson, 62. Watson had received 75,000 votes running on the Prohibition ticket in 1944.
--Merritt Clifton