Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror
Friends of Animals and Nectar Bat Press are pleased to inform our readers of the new book by Lee Hall, Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror.
Capers in the Churchyard encapsulates the current trends in animal advocacy campaigns from the militant to the mainstream, and discusses the psychology that motivates them.
Author and psychologist Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson introduces the book by exploring the activist’s desire for revenge and control—a feeling which has, at times, unsettled Masson’s own mind. “Buckle up,” says Masson after a gem of a foreword, “and prepare for the ride of your life!”
The ride takes us to a family dairy farm in central England which, for a number of years, has supplied animals to a company which uses animals for toxicity tests. When activists decide to target the farm for closure, their campaign suddenly becomes part of the daily experience of an entire village. But the campaign oversteps all social bounds when it arrives at a centuries-old church where the late Gladys Hammond, related by marriage to the owners of the farm, was once laid peacefully to rest.
“Anyone who cares about animals or who is even just curious about ‘all this talk of rights for animals’ will profit from reading Capers in the Churchyard.”
- Steve F. Sapontzis, author of Morals, Reason, and Animals.
Militants have celebrated the sabotage. A dairy farmer said it “shows what sort of world we are forced to live in.” And what has unfolded, more clearly than ever before, is the terrible conflict within animal activism itself, a conflict between militants and peacekeepers.
Steve F. Sapontzis calls Hall’s critique of using violence to save animals “especially thought-provoking today, in America, when the fear card of ‘Terrorism!’ is constantly played to obstruct all sorts of social progress.”
At the same time, Professor Sapontzis finds in Capers in the Churchyard “an informative, eloquent presentation of an abolitionist animal rights philosophy.”
Purchase Capers in the Churchyard from our website or call us up at 203.656.1522 and we’ll deliver a copy to your door.
