A NYC Animal Activist Responds to the Latest ADL Post

A NYC animal activist response to the latest ADL posting. This really was forwarded to me, as opposed to writing it myself, as does Pam Ferdin.

ADL Post: "Pretty words do not save lives -- actions do. L.A. Animal Services General Manager Ed Boks is all pretty words and no action, which is the reason New York City fired him mere weeks before Mayor Villaraigosa hired him. Boks boasts modest statistical gains.
(He has done) NOTHING new to stop the annual kitten flood, and his killing of thousandsand thousands of kittens.


To: ADLLA

Subject: Re: [stopthekilling] Regarding Boks "Fluff" Piece in the LA Times
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:36:32 -0400

Hey guys,Come on. This is just hyperbolic shit, and unattributed to boot. If you're going to have an intelligent dialogue on the deficiencies of municipal animal management in L.A. (or anywhere else for that matter), you better get a reality check about what we're all up against and present a realistic picture about solutions.The problems are complex and some of these allegations are ridiculous. Such as:NOTHING new to stop the annual kitten flood, and his killing of thousands
and thousands of kittens.

What the fuck do you think can be done to "stop the annual kitten flood"? Boks has been in office 6 months. You've got to be kidding...This is really unfair, unrealistic and the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that is directed at simple-minded people to get them all riled up -- BUT in the long run is really not productive.

I've been in the movement for 25 years. I'm really tired of angry, ineffective advocates ruining things for the rest of us. Real change comes incrementally. I'm going to send you a video about Henry Spira. It should be viewed by all activists. It's about strategies that work.We just sued NYC over the animal control contract

Why don't you work on some more strategic ways to get results? Just leveling angry tirades isn't going to help the animals. And accept that there are no solutions to resolve the problems overnight. It's the human population to blame for the problem anyway. Those are big numbers.Think about it.

Gary Kaskel

Proof Boks Was Not Fired

6' 7" Pam Ferdin repeats endlessly that Boks was fired from his post in NYC. She repeats this lie over, and over and over depite having no proof. The only "evidence" she has to support this Neverending Lie was the title of a small article in the New York Daily News. That title was repudiated by the reporter who wrote it, stating her editor put it in, and who unequivically denied Boks was fired in a much longer article published a week later.

All this, with names and dates, are in a previous post on this blog.

Three months ago, a request was sent in to the NY board that controls NYCACC asking them what happened with regard to his leaving. HERE IS THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE FROM THE CITY OF NEW YORK:

Subject: New York City Animal Care & Control
Date: 4/6/2006 7:03:31 AM Pacific Daylight Time

From:

VPCS@health.nyc.gov
Re: New York City Animal Care & Control

Dear *****:

This is in response to correspondence sent to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) regarding the above referenced matter. We would like to inform you that Ed Boks the former Director of AC&C left on good terms.Thank you for your inquiry.

Sincerely,

Veterinary and Pest Control ServicesDivision of Environmental Health

Pam, your nose grows longer each and every day.

L.A. Can Be a No-Kill City for Strays

New shelters and new attitudes could bring about the end of euthanizing unwanted pets.

By Ed Boks

WHEN IT COMES to dealing with stray animals, can Los Angeles become the first major "no-kill" city in the United States? A generation of skeptics, accustomed to a system that for decades has killed more than 50,000 homeless animals a year, would say no. But the Department of Animal Services, backed by the mayor and the City Council, is intent on making humane history.

More than just a policy or statistical objective, no-kill is a principle: that the city should apply the same criteria for deciding an animal's fate as would a loving pet owner or conscientious veterinarian. Healthy and treatable animals shouldn't be killed simply because of lack of room or resources. Killing strays may be the quick and, at least from afar, easy thing to do. But I have never, in nearly 25 years in this field, heard anyone argue that it is the right thing to do.

People who seek to excuse such killing often say we have to be "realistic." But such realism would be better directed at the main source of the problem — human irresponsibility.

It is humans, not animals, who engage in the cruelty that brings so many cases to the Animal Services Department's doors. More than 30% of the 45,000-plus animals the city takes in each year are relinquished — turned in — after years of living with a family, just like old furniture donated to Goodwill.

A third of the animals killed are orphaned, neonate puppies and kittens from parents that humans neglected to spay or neuter. The general attitude is, "Let someone else deal with the problem." Thousands of times a year, someone else does — with a lethal injection.

Compounding such human failure is a breakdown in social responsibility. On the government's balance sheet, saving animals can seem like a lowly or trivial concern compared to overcrowded prisons, underfunded police and the nation's worst homeless problem.

That's an easy position to take as long as you don't have to be there when the problem gets "solved." If public officials who brush off animal welfare as trivial had to see the results of their priorities carried out — to witness for themselves how trusting the dogs are even when being led to their deaths, how they lick the hands and face of the person with the needle — I suspect they would see matters in a very different light.

Yet things are looking up in Los Angeles. Between now and early 2007, the city will open six new state-of-the-art animal shelters, paid for through Proposition F. The new centers will provide four times our current shelter space, enough to accommodate the 150 lost, sick, injured, neglected or abused animals entrusted to the Animal Services Department every day. The centers will have wide aisles, solar and radiant heating, cooling misters, veterinary and spay/neuter clinics, park benches for visitors, fountains and lush landscaping — a world away from the grim conditions of older shelters, where animals can become so agitated or depressed that they seem unadoptable.

By transforming our animal shelters, chances are we can dramatically increase adoption rates.We already have been moving steadily in this direction. Over the last five years, our dog euthanasia rate has decreased 62%, our cat euthanasia rate 19%. In the last 12 months, just under 19,500 animals were killed — the fewest over a one-year period since the department began keeping records in the early 1970s, and fewer than in the much smaller city of Bakersfield. But that's still nearly 20,000 creatures who had love and devotion to offer and never got their chance.

As L.A.'s new animal care centers begin to open, the Animal Services Department offers this pledge, and it asks for your help in making good on it: No animal who comes through those doors should be killed out of convenience or lack of space. For every one of them, there is a kind and loving person or family, and it is our mission to bring them together.

The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

FROM NBC4-TV:

FBI: Animal Group Leaves 'Molotov Cocktail' At Wrong House

POSTED: 6:25 pm PDT July 12, 2006
UPDATED: 6:27 pm PDT July 12, 2006

LOS ANGELES -- The Animal Liberation Front took credit for leaving a "Molotov cocktail" outside the Bel-Air home of a UCLA primate researcher, but apparently hit the wrong house, an FBI official said Wednesday.

The ALF boasted in a statement that it had left a bottle filled with a flammable liquid on the porch of Lynn Fairbanks' home in Bel-Air on June 30.

But Laura Eimiller of the FBI said the bottle had actually been left at the home of one of Fairbanks' 70-year-old neighbors.

According to arson investigators, they believe that, had the device functioned properly, the inhabitants would have had a very difficult time escaping," she said, adding the house is backed against a hillside.

The FBI is offering a reward up $10,000 for information leading to the culprit who left the would-be fire bomb at the house. The FBI can be reached at (310) 447-6565.

UCLA issued a statement blasting the ALF's action.

"UCLA strongly condemns this terrorist attack and deplores violence intended to injure people or damage property for any reason," the university statement said. "According to the FBI, the improvised incendiary device mistakenly was left on the doorstep of the faculty member's neighbor and could have caused serious injury, death or property damage had it functioned."

On its Web site, the ALF claimed Fairbanks was keeping vervet monkeys to study "psychological, psychiatric and social problems such as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, substance abuse, criminality and violence."

University officials said that description "totally misrepresents" Fairbanks' work.

Eric Brunson Hosts a Reception for Ed Boks

A few weeks ago, Erica Brunson, the “Best Commissioner LAAS ever had” according to repeated and repeated and repeated ADL-LA posts, hosted a reception for Ed Boks. Jim Bickhart, among many others, was there. Someone (or ones), very close to LAAS, leaked the happenings at the event to the ADL, and of course, to Dan Guss, who gets more and more vile the more broke he gets.

ADL and many other fellow travelers, claim Mr. Bickhart fired Brunson. Would he have been invited had she been fired by him? She had already stated she was going to resign because she could not work with Stuckey, therefore no decision was necessary to fire anyone from the Commission.

Also, would the “best Commissioner LAAS ever had” have thrown a reception for Boks if she did not appreciate the job he was doing? If she had been the best, how come ADL-LA does not respect her opinion regarding LAAS’s direction under Ed Boks?