During one of my pilgrimages to India I took a bunch of footage of poverty-stricken scenes, thinking it might come in handy for the film.  Some of it did.  The little moment posted below did not end up in the film, but when I first observed and filmed the following, I was both charmed and mesmerized.  I sat silently in the cab across thee street for nearly twenty minutes, caught in the wonder of what life might be like for this family.  It was at once sacred, joyful, and struck with a deep sadness.

Such responses are impossible to fake.  They show the depth of his integrity, the source of his power.  It’s one thing to be able to say the following words, another to be capable of living them in the face of personal attack: “We will meet the forces of hate with the power of love… We must say to our white brothers all over the South, We will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering… Bomb our homes and we will still love you… We will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.”

The thing I most admire is the grandness of King’s vision.  Who even speaks about love these days in the world of social change?  The best we seem to hope for is some measure of justice, a moment of peace. The idea of love seems naive, perhaps even embarrassing.  Are we too jaded now for MLK?

John Webster, a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Bristol, in England did extensive research on the ways cows behave when they aren’t being shipped off to the slaughterhouse so we can eat them.  It turns out they live in communities with strong social hierarchies (sorry anarchists) and form lifelong bonds with each other.  Cows are clickish.  They like to make a few good friends within the herd and hang with them all day, grooming and licking each other.  There’s no homophobia among cows, apparently.

Descartes thought cows (and other animals) were just machines.  He was so convinced that he laughed at the cries of his dog when he underwent live vivisection.  Who knows, maybe it was actually nervous laughter.  Anyway, his argument was persuasive and shaped the way people related with animals for hundreds of years.  It turns out that cows are way more like people than Descartes imagined.  Cows feel pain at the loss of loved ones.   If mother and calf are separated by a fence, for example, the mom will wait for her calf through severe conditions like intense heat or cold weather, hunger and thirst.  Cows have even been known to break fences, knock down cement walls and walk miles to be reunited with calves that were sold at auction.  It’s well known to farmers–but seldom discussed–that mother cows frantically call and search for their babies for days after the calves have been sold off to veal farms.  In a natural setting the bonds between a mother and calf last through adulthood.

Cows also reciprocate with human affection. Edmund Pajor of Purdue University found that they produce significantly more milk when they are spoken to gently than when shouted at and handled roughly.  In fact, they can be downright sensitive–even a simple slap on the rump meant to keep them moving can cause them to become upset, and they were found to bear grudges for months or even years.  I’m not sure how to scientifically measure the way a cow holds a grudge, but I guess they’ve made advancement in measuring all kinds of stuff.

Artwork by Gabriel Leavitt!

To find out more about the emotional life of animals check out the book: The Pig who sang to the moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals by Jeffery Moussaieff Masson

Watching this reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Today We Have the Power.  As the filmmaker, having watched the film for what seems like a million of times now, but despite that fact, some clips remain incredibly potent.  I see these as cornerstones for the film.  Here is one by Tom Goldtooth:

I’ve spent the past couple of months canvassing for an environmental group here in California. Not everyone is happy to see us at the door but I’ve found that on my best days I end up meeting people who deeply inspire me. Yesterday, for example, I met a woman who spoke passionately about our need to be conscious of our life that I felt she was canvassing me instead of the other way around!

The most inspiring person I’ve met so far was a woman I met at Thanksgiving time. I was going door to door and was speaking with one woman while her friend sat on the couch. The woman I was speaking with was polite, but I could tell she wanted to get back to the conversation she was having with her friend. Just as she was telling me “no” in a definitive way, her friend leapt off the sofa. “Charlene,” she said, “I’m sorry, I know we’re having an important conversation here but I am going to write this man a check. Sometimes there’s a knock at the door at a bad time but you just have take a stand for what you believe in.” She came up to me and began to fill out my pledge form with a fierce determination that was worth all my efforts that week to witness.

Activism, I find, is all about holding on to a state of consciousness of living for more than ourselves, living to serve others in a state of gratitude. So many days out there I find myself consumed by other thoughts, half-hearted in my conviction. How I wish I could package up that woman’s mindset and carry it with me!

Form more on sea turtles in particular go here.

For more on species extinction visit the World Wildlife Fund, or  Animal Planet.

A couple of great places to learn more about deforestation are the Greenpeace website and the One World website.