Contents
ADAPTT is an ethical vegan organization that was established in 1996. We are unequivocally opposed to the meat, dairy, egg and honey/pollen industries in every way imaginable. ADAPTT's other goals are to assist in the abolition of vivisection, dissection, circuses, rodeos and other forms of enslavement, exploitation, abuse and murder. We are uncompromisingly opposed to the bloodsport of hunting and the wearing of animal skin (fur, leather, wool, silk and down). If society can change its selfish, arrogant, egotistical and ignorant ways, we can end the bloodshed, malicious treatment and injustices that animals endure.
After working in the trenches from 1996 to 2014—conducting 2,660 lectures, hundreds of demonstrations and interviews, and getting arrested 13 times and being banned from entering 5 countries—I am no longer active. For more information, read my retirement letter on the home page.
And Justice For All?
Animals Deserve Absolute Protection Today and Tomorrow (ADAPTT) believes that all animals have an inherent right to be free and live completely unfettered by human dominance. Sadly, most humans continue to embrace animal slavery, animal torture, and animal murder. Billions of animals are killed every year in a premeditated, systematic massacre. Remember, without universal equality, one type of equality will always create another type of inequality.
Surprisingly, animal rights is not a new concept. The notion that animals deserve absolute protection has been around for thousands of years. Pythagoras uttered the following comment around 550 B.C.: “As long as humanity continues to be the ruthless destroyer of other beings, we will never know health or peace. For as long as people massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, those who sow the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”
ADAPTT's mission statement is clear and unambiguous (see above). While we used to employ a wide array of tactics to facilitate substantive change, ADAPTT has realized—through hands-on activism—that EDUCATION is the most effective way to enlighten the masses. As of January 1, 2015, ADAPTT founder and president Gary Yourofsky has given 2,660 lectures to more than 60,000 people at 186 schools in 30 states and several Israeli cities/schools (check out the page titled The Lecture Tour). ADAPTT also believes that direct action (check out Gary's 1997 Mink Liberation Story) and radio/TV/billboard/print advertising are the other effective ways of achieving animal liberation. Lobbying, protesting, letter-writing, media interviews, civil disobedience, welfare concessions and welfare campaigns seem to be ineffective in this day and age.
Please help free our planetary companions by eliminating exploitation from your life. Stop donating money to animal-researching charities like the March of Dimes and MDA. Instead, support Easter Seals and dozens of other charities that neither condone nor participate in animal-based research (contact charities directly to inquire about their vivisection practices). Buy household and hygiene products that exploit no animals by visiting the Cruelty Free Kitty website for a list of companies that neither use animal-based ingredients nor test their products on animals.
Stop donating to ineffective, welfare-based animal rights corporations like PETA and HSUS. Only support grassroots animal groups like SASHA Farm Animal Sanctuary.
Condemn the bloodthirsty tradition of hunting. Curse the Ringling Bros. and Shriners next time they come to town. Throw out that fur-trimmed jacket and burn that full-length mink. Toss those leather shoes, belts and jackets. And, most importantly, refuse to exploit other animals, and stop consuming anything that once had a face, a mother or a bowel movement. Veganism is the only way to live in absolute peace with all of our planetary companions.
Don't get caught up in apathy and inaction. You can make a difference to thousands and thousands of innocent animals. The following quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. should give you the strength to embrace animal liberation: “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it polite?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a point when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor polite, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells him or her that it is right.”
Acknowledgments
This website owes a great deal to the contributions of several individuals and organizations. First of all, we acknowledge Luke Dowding, a.k.a. The Vegan Web Designer, who created an early prototype of this website from which we drew inspiration for several design elements. These include the beautiful Open Sans font, elements of the ADAPTT logo, the title bars used throughout, and the aggregations of image links prominently featured in collections of essays such as All About Veganism, Other Animal Rights Issues, and so on.
Erika Windisch supplied numerous photographs and illustrations for this website, as well as the decorative Edo font seen in numerous places throughout. She also counseled extensively on the website's color palette; the earthy yet vibrant color scheme sprang from her many helpful comments and suggestions.
Unlike our previous website, this one contains a lot of imagery, gleaned from several sources which deserve credit. To that end we thank a number of individuals who have given permission to use their artwork throughout; these include Anita Sidler, Roger Olmos (Roger's artwork is a courtesy of FAADA and Logos Edizioni), Miki Mottes, and Shinya Okayama. Individual acknowledgment is generally provided in a tooltip that readers can view by rolling their cursor over the artwork in question.
We also want to acknowledge other animal rights organizations such as Occupy for Animals and All Creatures. In the interest of advancing animal protection and advocacy as widely as possible, all of these groups allow other activists to share their materials, generally without restriction. We have also used numerous public-domain images provided by Wikimedia Commons, PublicDomainPictures.net, and Pixabay.
Copyright and Terms of Use
With only few exceptions, the essays on this website are free from copyright restrictions, and are available for anyone to post, to cite passages therefrom, and to otherwise use as they see fit. (A handful of essays, however, are protected by copyright, and are clearly marked as such. In these cases, permission from the author of an essay is required before citing, posting, or otherwise using.) Whether or not an essay has been copyrighted, we ask, in return for your use, that you please include a proper citation of ADAPTT and/or the individual author as appropriate, whether in a footnote and/or bibliographic reference for non-digital media, or similar citation on the face of the webpage for digital media. The material contained in this website is distributed without profit.
About the Images on This Website
We have striven to use as many images as possible that we know to be in the public domain. In certain cases for which acknowledgment of the source is required per the Creative Commons Attribution license, we have provided acknowledgment in either (1) the tooltip that accompanies the image (readers can view these tooltips simply by rolling their cursor over the image); or (2) in a citation on the body of the same or adjoining page.
That said, we may have posted a number of images for which no copyright status was specified in the source of the image, or is otherwise unclear. If you are a copyright owner or an agent thereof, and you believe that some content infringes upon your copyright, please let us know by submitting a written notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and by providing us with the following information:
- URL of allegedly infringing image(s);
- Written evidence of copyright ownership thereof;
- Copyright owner's name (company name if applicable); and
- Your full legal name (aliases, user names or initials cannot be accepted).
Please specify whether you want your name cited with the image, or whether you want the image removed. Please address all copyright concerns directly to the web developer by using this contact form.
Anita Sidler’s drawings were created solely for the ADAPTT site and cannot be used under any circumstances without Sidler’s permission.
Fair Use
ADAPTT has made this material available in the effort to advance understanding of issues pertaining to the environment, politics, religion, human rights, economic, scientific and social-justice issues—but most especially, to advance awareness of animal rights and violations thereof, and about the beneficial impacts of veganism. We believe this constitutes fair use of such material as provided for in Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law, which generally license such materials for noncommercial use only. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material contained in this website is distributed without profit.
Disclaimer
ADAPTT is not responsible for the content of external sites, whether or not it has used material from them.
Contact ADAPTT
By Regular Mail
ADAPTT
P.O. Box 725
Royal Oak, MI 48068-0725