In Rethinking Rescue (Counterpoint, Aug.) reporter Mithers details one woman’s extraordinary efforts to treat both unhoused people, and their pets, humanely.
What has enabled Lori Weise to make a difference in the lives of so many people and animals?
There is a drive in her, an element of spirituality coming from her own pain. I think she understands wounded people, and she feels the need to reduce suffering.
You write that your book isn’t the standard pet rescue story of a “heroic human” saving a “photogenic” dog or cat. How did that narrative originate, and what does it leave out?
When the no-kill movement started, there were a tremendous number of animals in shelters. They were getting killed routinely, millions of them, and the movement had to find a way to make people care about that. And a really common way to make people care about anything is to show images of innocent suffering. So the public was receiving the message that we want to take these sad-eyed dogs and cats from their shelter and get them a new home, taking them from misery to happiness. What didn’t get included in that message was asking, how did those animals get into the shelter? Who were the people who had them before? What was their story? They were cut out of that story, and, in a sense, they also became demonized: the idea became that if an animal has lost its home and is suffering, the people that used to be part of its life are to blame.
Why did the movement rely on this narrative?
One reason is that the people who got involved in dog rescue were largely affluent white women. There’s nothing bad about that; many social movements have been started by that demographic because they have the money, the time, the energy to do good. But I think the lack of diversity within the movement made it see things through a very narrow frame of reference. Another reason is that the early activists really did see a lot of terrible things, a lot of misery. Working to make things better, you see a lot of ugliness, and that can make you very judgmental.
Most people don’t have Lori’s compassion.
Right. We don’t cross classes as much as we used to in our relationships. That makes it easy to not understand the reality of other people’s lives. When somebody says, “I’m going to give up my pets because the landlord is kicking me out, and the new place won’t take animals,” others will respond, “I’d live on the street before I’d give up my dogs.” But the people who say that are very unlikely to ever end up on the street. It reflects a kind of blindness.
