Is No Kill Going Mainstream? Home 4 the Holidays, Just One Day, the Myth of Pet Overpopulation, The Six Freedoms, and the Million Cat Challenge in Context Over the last several years, and 2014 in particular, the animal sheltering industry has finally started to grow up. After decades of little more than calendars with pictures of cute puppies and kittens, vapid hand wringing about shelter killing but no serious solutions to bring that killing to an end besides increasingly sterile campaigns like Adopt a Cat Month and a Adopt a Dog Month, we are seeing paradigm shifting efforts like Home 4 the Holidays, Just One Day, and now the Million Cat Challenge. For those of us who have been in the No Kill trenches for many decades, enduring the relentless ridicule of the traditional sheltering establishment for championing alternatives to killing, such changes are more than welcome; they are, in fact, the realization of our greatest hopes. The changes we are now witnessing—in which a sheltering culture based on killing and stalwartly defending that killing are giving way to an embrace of lifesaving innovation and a greater respect for the lives of animals—are proof that No Kill is an idea whose time has come not just for the few, but the many. As I wrote nearly 10 years ago, “the more successful this effort is, the more No Kill will shift from being personality based (a result of the efforts of individual leaders) to becoming institutionalized.” That is what efforts like Home 4 the Holidays, Just One Day, and the Million Cat Challenge do. And that is why I hope to see more of them. But as we celebrate the larger embrace of the No Kill philosophy and the sheltering methods that make lifesaving possible, it is important to recognize how it is the No Kill movement—once so relentlessly ridiculed by the traditional sheltering establishment—has achieved the massive paradigm shift that is beginning to take root. If past can be prologue, understanding the methods of our success is key to leveraging them for ever greater innovation and lifesaving in the future. My article, “Is No Kill Going Mainstream?” explores how it came to be that a once small, grassroots movement which dared to challenge the absurd but thoroughly entrenched notion within the animal protection movement that killing is kindness has grown in size and influence to the point that the long and deadly hegemony of shelter killing is finally on the run. To read the article: nathanwinograd/?p=14610
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 21:05:10 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015