By Jason Miller

“We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means – all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity.” - Derrick Jensen

Jensen’s words resonate deeply with me. My allies and I are currently engaged in an intense battle with individuals who embody the destructiveness of our culture as they stubbornly insist upon assaulting a part of the natural world with a “magnitude and ferocity.” Some of the enforcers of our destructive dominant culture (the state and local officials in Johnson County Kansas) are preparing to massacre 300 graceful and innocent whitetail deer in a costly, bloody, unnecessary and insane “culling” of the herd in suburban, family-oriented Shawnee Mission Park. I am opposed to this moral abomination and intellectual idiocy with every fiber of my being. Toward that end, my allies and I are waging a sustained and formidable struggle to stop this impending slaughter.

We have provided the Johnson County Park Board with a viable, cost-effective means of managing the deer overpopulation problem that would not spill a drop of blood. As has been the case in locations around the country, state “conservation” officials—like those comprising our “beloved” Kansas Department of Wildlife—have rejected nonlethal means in favor of killing the “excess” deer with sharpshooters and bow-hunters. Politically aligned with the powerful gun and hunting lobbies (sorry to disappoint the NRA, but I’m a vegan AND an ardent proponent of the Second Amendment—they’ll have to pry my guns “from my cold dead hands”) and empowered by a malevolent legal system under which sentient beings, aside from humans, are considered to be property or “resources,” those charged with governing wildlife, ready, aim, and fire at will. Nonhuman animal pain, suffering, and annihilation be damned. Public opinion be damned. Ostensibly civilized barbarians, like the public officials driving this deer “cull,” are symptoms of the deeply rooted disease that Derrick Jensen described as the “most destructive culture ever to exist.”

For the past three exhausting months, I’ve poured my heart and soul into our fight for the deer. With a legion of allies, I’ve orchestrated and helped carry out an intense, hard-hitting campaign that is still going strong. I want to thank each person who has made our tenacious defense of the deer possible. You are too numerous to name in this essay, but I appreciate your dedication and sacrifice more than words can express.

Our campaign is comprised of a diverse group, including men, women, teens, middle aged and older folks, people of different ethnicities, omnivores who simply love deer, vegetarians, and both pacifistic and militant vegans. Many of us have little in common, but we all share an intense passion for saving the deer from an unnecessary mass execution.

While grounded in a deep compassion for these particular beings, my motivations and reasons for defending the deer are also deeply rooted in my personal philosophy, ideology and core beliefs, which are far more complex and nuanced than a simplistic and syrupy “love for animals.”

I initiated this campaign arguing that there was not a deer over-population problem in Shawnee Mission Park, but I have since accepted the evidence that the deer have out-stripped the carrying capacity of the park and are adversely affecting the biodiversity. So on that point, I agree with the KDW and park officials.

However, that’s where our viewpoints diverge dramatically. Unlike the “conservationists,” I view deer and other nonhuman animals as sentient beings, with the essential, basic right to live free of human exploitation, torture, and killing. They are not property or resources. While it is true enough, all too true unfortunately, that human intervention caused the deer overpopulation problem, and that we will need to solve the problem by further human intervention, “culling” is not the only means for us to intervene. In fact, as the moral agents who precipitated the problem involving our moral patients, we have a moral obligation to implement a solution that doesn’t involve snuffing out their lives. And contrary to the intellectually dishonest and feeble objections raised by the KDW (that Anthony Marr’s deer auto assembler is “illegal” because it “traps” the deer and that immunocontraceptive drugs, which have been field tested and proven to be safe and effective, are “experimental”), Anthony Marr’s plan that we presented to the Johnson County Parks Board will enable us to fulfill our moral obligation.

As a vegan, I shun and eschew foods (including “meat,” eggs, and dairy) and consumer products (to the extent that it’s humanly possible), that are derived from the torture, exploitation, or killing of nonhuman animals. Despite the fact that most vegans (including me) choose not to retreat into the wilderness–so as to remain effective agents of change in society–and hence contribute to our culture’s destructive ways to some degree, veganism is one of the simplest and most powerful ways a person can minimize their complicity in the slaughter of 50 billion nonhuman animals per annum and the consumerist rape and destruction of the Earth.

Veganism and animal liberation are deeply interwoven into my personal spirituality. My personal beliefs are somewhat akin to paganism in that they involve an eclectic form of nature worship—as separated from nature as I remain because of the tenuous relationship I hold with the dominant culture. Despite my dualistic, dissonant existence, in which I maintain a foot-hold both in the culture of resistance and within the dominant culture, the park and its nonhuman inhabitants are sacred to me. If the “cull” takes place, those who’ve enabled and implemented it will have desecrated my “church” and murdered some of my “deities.” It is a moral outrage that our perverse and malignant social structure allows and promotes the barbaric blood-letting of innocent beings while shielding the lives of monstrous, sociopathic human beings via a legal system that primarily ‘protects and serves’ the rich, property, profit, and, on a selective basis, human lives.

Johnson County plans on paying Anthony DeNicola, his repugnant “research” entity called White Buffalo, and ‘law enforcers’ to riddle 300 defenseless deer with bullets as they come to feed; yet if an underground eco-warrior or nonhuman animal defender were to interfere with their egregious violations of Higher Laws, they would face severe consequences. Protecting defenseless sentient beings by any means necessary is no crime; it is both morally justifiable and highly laudable.

“What I call extensional self defense mirrors penal code statues in California and other states, known as the “necessity defense.” A defendant can invoke this defense when he or she believes that the illegal action taken was immediately necessary to avoid immanent and great harm to someone, and the urgency and desirability of avoiding the harm clearly outweigh the wrong of breaking a law, as well as the harm that would have resulted had the action not been taken. Certainly, the necessity defense could be used to justify unethical and unwarranted acts of violence, but clearly the principles of law and ethics do not always overlap and acts of civil disobedience, sabotage, and even violence in certain cases may have a strong rationale.”

–Dr. Steve Best

Our species is waging war on nonhuman animals. As Gary Yourofsky (one of the most powerful activists in the animal rights movement) has stated, “The hate that humans hold toward animals is matchless. It is impossible to overcome with compromise, or with only entreaty. It is so vicious, aseptic and bitter that a thousand peaceful Gods and Goddesses couldn’t eradicate it.” Virtually the same could be said about humanity’s contempt for the Earth.

As an aboveground polemicist, thinker, organizer, publisher, and on-the-ground activist who’s heavily invested in the struggle, I’ve chosen a side. And at this place, in this time, with the resources at hand and the allies I can assemble, I’m waging a battle on behalf of 300 deer in a family park that’s near my home. Those gentle, majestic beings deserve far better than the fate the craven public officials and their hired thugs have in mind for them.

While in the immediate purview, my objective is to prevent the ruthless annihilation of 300 deer, hence also preserving the integrity of our community and sparing our children exposure to such a macabre slaughter, my long range goal and life’s purpose are to advance the cause of total liberation, for Earth, nonhuman animals and oppressed humans.

I fully acknowledge that as a member of the human species who has not dropped out of society, I’m a part of the problem. But I’ve also striven tenaciously to become an even bigger part of the solution. And so I shall remain…..

Jason Miller, Senior Editor and Founder of TPC, is a tenacious forty something vegan straight edge activist who lives in Kansas and who has a boundless passion for animal liberation and anti-capitalism. Addicted to reading and learning, he is mostly an autodidact, but he studied liberal arts and philosophy at the University of Missouri Kansas City. In early 2005, he founded the radical blog Thomas Paine’s Corner. An accomplished and prolific essayist on social and political issues, his writings have appeared on hundreds of alternative media websites over the last few years. He is also a press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office and the founder of Bite Club of KC, a grassroots animal rights activist group. You can reach him at willpowerful@hotmail.com

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By Jason Miller http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/our-species-is-waging-war-on-nonhuman-animals-and-the-earth/