Is it even accurate to use the term “animal slavery”? Do nonhuman creatures possess enough rights that depriving them of those constitutes slavery?
Our treatment of species other than our own is often similar to the treatment of human slaves. Creatures large and small are routinely branded, beaten, flayed, stabbed, bludgeoned, chained, roped, hunted, shot, hanged, starved, worked to exhaustion, caged in filth, deprived of medical care, pitted against one another, separated from family members, raped, impregnated, and slaughtered—in most cases legally or with impunity—all notorious hallmarks of the era of human bondage in America’s southern states.
Old journals, legal documents, and newspaper articles from the pre-Civil War years inform us of the horrors that African-American slaves endured. Today, organizations such as Mercy for Animals, The Humane Society of the United States, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals regularly provide undercover video of shocking but not uncommon cruelties perpetrated upon farmed animals, lab animals, sporting animals, and more.
In the 1950s King pushed for a public bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama that helped end racial segregation and discrimination policies across the country. Because of the efforts of King and other leaders, now it is widely acknowledged that slavery and oppression were terrible mistakes, that they ripped wounds into the national soul, and that instead we might walk together toward the brighter, more compassionate future that King laid before us in his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
Will we some day regard our methods of using animals as terrible mistakes?
Are our cruelties toward them wounding our own souls?
And can we dream of a brighter future for the millions of creatures who—mostly silent and hidden—serve us in suffering every single day?
Katerina Lorenzatos Makris is the author of 17 novels for
publishers including Avon, E.P. Dutton, and Simon & Schuster, and
hundreds of articles for publications such as National Geographic
Traveler, San Francisco Chronicle, and Veggie Life. She wrote a
teleplay for CBS and short fiction for The Bark magazine. With coauthor
Shelley Frost, she wrote Your Adopted Dog
(The Lyons Press). Holding a B.A. in Environmental Science Studies and
a lifelong interest in animal issues, she spends a lot of her time
battling a severe addiction to dogs.
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