STRIKING AT THE ROOTS - A Practical Guide to Animal Activism

by Mark Hawthorne 2008

Although we are still waiting eagerly for our review copy, we’re sure this book is going to prove an important contribution to the animal protection world. Animal activist, Mark Hawthorne, has written it for all those animal lovers and animal rights activists who want to change things, change the law, change values, the world (!) but don’t know where to start. We’re not taught at school how to lobby, how to protest, how to fight for what we believe in. We have to find out for ourselves, often the long, slow painful way. Or, more often, sadly, we never find out.

Nor are we taken on school trips into factory farms, where stinking chicks are force fed a liquid diet of an antibiotic-laced formula that causes their flesh to grow but not their bones, to the point where, at six weeks, they can only lie there, unable to carry their own weight on their brittle little legs, and await slaughter. Nor are we led through the closed, locked doors of vivisection labs on a guided tour.

Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism presents some effective tactics for speaking out for animals and interviews activists from around the globe, who explain why their models of activism have been successful. Then on a practical level it offers advice on how you can become involved, from letter-writing or leafleting to taking direct action. The book reminds us that in this age of big organizations, big money, and big media, ultimately it’s still the little individual activist who makes the real difference.

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