Maybe my most important blog post ever.

 Taken from A Hopeful Act in a Perilous time

 Pam Houston's Dedication

When I was four years old my father broke my femur. I believe he meant to kill me, and for the next fourteen years it became my mother's job to try to keep him from getting another chance.  Needless to say, my childhood home was nervous at best and terrifying at worst, and it turned me into a woman who always takes notice when a man threatens a woman's life.

My father said to me often, “Pam, one of these days you are going to wake up and realize you spend your whole life lying in the gutter with someone else’s foot on your neck.”  It was the closest thing he had to a world view.  Looked at a certain way my entire life has been dedicated to making his words untrue.    

Maybe its because I grew up in my father’s house that I can see Trump so clearly for what he is.  A desperately insecure bully, with no moral center--no center of any kind really--who feels momentarily powerful only when he is able to break those unlucky enough to step into his path.  

Trump has already vowed to destroy (or threatens by his very being) every single thing about my life that I value: the remaining wilderness, diversity of all kinds, education, art, animal rights, choice, affordable health care, compassion, tolerance, honesty, hard work, kindness, peace.  I have not lived well these 54 years just to end up with a sociopathic narcissist’s foot on my neck.

So I dedicate my No-Trump Vote to my four year-old self, smiling bravely for the camera in her 3/4 body cast, and for every little girl who lays awake at night in her room afraid, and to Hillary Clinton, who has dedicated much of her life to the betterment of girls and women, and who each day puts on her bulletproof vest and stands up for us all.  

#DedicateYourNoTrumpVote

To Dedicate Your No-Trump Vote, Click Here

PAM HOUSTON is the author of two novels, Contents May Have Shiftedand Sight Hound, two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton.  Her stories have been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The 2013 Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories of the Century. She teaches in the Low Rez MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is Professor of English at UC Davis, and directs the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers. She lives at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande and is at work on a book about that place.

Help Stop the Deportation of Endangered Chimpanzees

Finally, chimpanzees have been recognized as an endangered species and, in its first test of how their protection will be implemented, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, failed miserably.

Perhaps a backlash is in order.

"For almost two years, the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University has been working to send seven chimpanzees to a zoo in England, prompting the outrage of several animal welfare and conservation groups because the zoo is unaccredited and there are American sanctuaries ready to accept the chimps." From the NYTimes.

Chimps to be shipped to England

Here is the latest update in our critical campaign to stop the transfer of Emory’s Yerkes 7 endangered chimpanzees—Agatha, Elvira, Faye, Fritz, Lucas, Tara, and Georgia—to Wingham Wildlife Park in Kent, England. 

Immediately upon hearing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s decision that New England Anti-vivisection Society NEAVS and its coalition lacked standing to stop the export permit, and upon reading the Court’s language regarding the export, including that “FWS’s [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s] broad interpretation [of the Endangered Species Act] appears to thwart the dynamic of environmental protection that Congress plainly intended,” it is obvious that the legality of this export permit was successfully challenged. (As background we have attached the entire court ruling, but most important are pages 56-58; key sections highlighted.) The Judge’s ruling places both Yerkes and FWS under a glaring spotlight. Even with the permit in hand, the illegality and accompanying immorality of this export is no longer in doubt. It is confirmed. 

NEAVS appealed directly to the Emory University President and its Board of Directors. You can view the letter here: http://www.neavs.org/resources/publication/641.

And to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, who soon will welcome Dan Ashe, Director of FWS under which this highly unethical and blatantly wrong interpretation of the Endangered Species Act has occurred. You can view the letter here: http://www.neavs.org/resources/publication/642.

NEAVS and its coalition of chimpanzee and conservation experts, former Yerkes caregivers, and animal advocates will leave NO STONE UNTURNED to stop this export of endangered lab chimpanzees. As we write, our lawyers are planning our prioritizing our next steps. Our staff are working hard on internal strategies.

We are now asking YOU to SPEAK OUT in opposition to this illegal export permit as it is in clear violation of what the U.S. Congress intended within the language of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). 

ACT NOW. 

1. Express your strong disapproval of the export permit TODAY by contacting Emory University President, Claire E. Sterk, Ph.D. at president@emory.edu, or call Dr. Sterk at 404-727-6013. Implore her to make certain that Emory stops Yerkes’ complicity and blatant disregard for U.S. law and instead exhibits nothing less than the highest ethical standards of behavior by sending these and all of their chimpanzees to U.S. sanctuaries.

2. Contact Dan Ashe at FWS and ask him to suspend this export permit given the scathing language of the court calling into question why FWS thinks it has the right to “sell permits” when its mandate is to protect endangered species. You can contact him at dan_ashe@fws.gov or 202-208-4717.

Keep those emails and calls coming and spread the word. They need to be reminded that FWS did not prevail in this lawsuit on merit. The judgement was with NEAVS and the thousands who oppose this export. They prevailed on a legal technicality. And shame on them if they take advantage of that to the detriment of these 7 chimps, all captive U.S. chimps, and all chimpanzees worldwide.

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Theodora Capaldo, EdD
Chief Executive Officer
New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS)