Capers in the Churchyard Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror

Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror discusses current advocacy trends, tracing one campaign across the Atlantic to a family dairy farm in central England which, for a number of years, has bred animals for commercial toxicity tests. When activists decide to target the farm for closure, their campaign suddenly becomes part of the daily experience of an entire village. Militants have celebrated the sabotage as a victory. A dairy farmer said it “shows what sort of world we are forced to live in.” And what has unfolded between those poles, more clearly than ever before, is the conflict within animal activism itself, a conflict between militants and peacekeepers. Morris Dees, co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center, calls Capers in the Churchyard "a beautifully written book that lays out an ethical animal rights activist's vision of a world without violence ­and offers a comprehensive critique of the 'eco-terrorism' of recent years." Steve F. Sapontzis, author of Morals, Reason, and Animals, 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." 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.