ARZone Podcast 62: RPA's David Cantor Returns

[Animal Rights Zone]

Episode 62 features a return visit with the Executive Director of Responsible Policies for Animals, David Cantor. When we first spoke with David in Episode 53, David explained RPA’s vision and mission as a group that engages in what he calls “strict rights advocacy”, rejecting both the traditional animal welfare strategy as well as abolitionism. David believes and argues that “rights precede abolition”. In this podcast, David speaks about the progress RPA has been making as well as why he believes that other animals must be recognized as persons before they can be protected by rights. Audio Podcast, approx. 36 minutes.

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[Betty Sherman]

Cantor's  talk  is truly about Animal Rights.  Thanks for allowing his views on ARZone.

[Susan Curry]

I am moved by Mr. Cantor's implicit belief that we and all living beings are kin to a meaningful degree -- to the degree that we begin to recognize the other breathers as deserving our respectful treatment in a "live-and-let-live" way (as hominoids may have done in deep prehistory) and aim to confer new legal rights in our Constitutional frame work as a modern-day way to re-grasp the natural order of a justice-based relationship with them all as fellow "persons".

It is daunting to think about what would need to happen to get a Constitutional Amendment, yet when I think about human society humbling itself to recreating the rules and order of our society in order to be consistent with Animal Rights, that seems nearly unthinkable!  I am glad that Mr Cantor stimulates us to think about it!