Gary Yourofsky in the News

This page contains an archive of over 100 news stories and articles relating to Gary Yourofsky, including editorials and letters-to-the-editor written by Gary, as well as profiles, quotations, photos and captions, and other items that appeared in print media between 1996 and the present. On this page the articles are arranged according to topic.

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Profiles of Gary Yourofsky

Animal Rights Activist Won't Stand for Cruelty

By Mike Martindale

The following article appeared in "In The News" section of The Detroit News on December 23, 1998.

Who he is: Gary Yourofsky is an animal activist and substitute teacher in Pontiac. He's founder of ADAPTT.

His background: Yourofsky, 28, was born and raised in Oak Park. He graduated from Berkley High School in 1988 and Oakland University this year. He also graduated from Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts and attended Wayne State University. He has worked at a radio station and an interactive marketing agency. His mother, sister and stepfather live in Chicago. His father lives in Ferndale. He has lived with his dog, Rex, in Royal Oak the past two years. He found Rex at the side of the road after he had been hit by a car. Yourofsky began his activism through his savings. He recently appointed a board of directors and hopes to conduct some fund-raising.

Why he's in the news: Yourofsky is out front at most area protests against the use of animals for fur, experimental testing and circuses. In March he will go on trial in Canada for a 1997 raid on a mink farm.

What he says: "Animal rights is my life. There's not much else I do. I'm your average person. I like Seinfeld and Jim Carrey, but when it comes to cruelty to animals, I won't stand for that. If people had to see the inside of a slaughterhouse, I know they'd all be vegetarians. Animals exploiters do a wonderful job of keeping it out of sight. You never see the heinous atrocities."


Activist Risks Life, Liberty and Lawsuits to Protect Animals

By John Wisely

The following profile appeared in the The Oakland Press on August 1, 1999.

Gary Yourofsky has risked his neck for his beliefs. Last year the animal rights activist drove to the Michigan State Fairgrounds and stopped in the driveway. He crawled under his car with a U-shaped bicycle lock, slipped it over his rear axle and cinched it aorund his neck. "That way they can't move the car without breaking my neck," said Yourofsky, 28, Royal Oak. "Plus it makes it harder for them to get under there with the bolt cutters."

Detroit police took more than an hour to cut him loose, but Yourofsky had clogged the main fair entrance and captured attention for his animal rights agenda.

That protest and others like it earn him praise and scorn from people on both sides of the animal rights debate. Despite six arrests, one lawsuit and thousands of dollars in debt, Yourofsky continues. He currently is fighting animal-based circuses in Michigan and is working to prevent the killing of deer at Kensington Metropark.

Supporters argue that his passion is needed to give animals their rights. But opponents say he breaks the law and may do animals more harm than good.

"My experience with Gary and with people like him is that they do well in bringing attention to the animals," said Michael Killian, a former investigator with the Michigan Anti Cruelty Society. "But it's not necessarily viewed by the general public in a positive light."

Yourofsky traces his interest in animal rights to the early 1990s. His stepfather volunteered as a clown in The Shrine Circus and offered to take him on a tour. Yourofsky said he was shocked to see an elephant chained to a post with scars behind his ears. "I looked into the elephant's eyes and all I saw was sadness and despair," Yourofsky said. "There is no way to get wild animals to perform except to beat the pride out of them."

From then on, he began researching animal treatment. The more he learned, the less he liked. He believes speciesism is a form of discrimination that causes sexism and racism. "People say, 'they're just animals,' like they used to say they're just Jews or just blacks," Yourofsky said.

In 1996, Yourofsky founded a group called ADAPTT. The group, which claims about 1,000 members nationwide, hopes to stop animal use in medical research, product testing, circuses, rodeos and other forms of entertainment. Its members have been arrested for protests in Troy, Bloomfield Hills, Detroit and Canada.

Gary Yourofsky, president of ADAPTT, talks with Kathy Austin of Waterford as she passes by the circus in downtown Pontiac. Yourofsky is protesting the circus's use of animals.

Yourofsky operates the group from his studio apartment in Royal Oak. One bed, one chair, one TV and a laptop computer fill the room. Yourofsky shares it with his dog, Rex, a collie-shepherd he rescued after he was hit by a car. A shleving unit mounted outside the bathroom is crammed with newsletters and other ADAPTT literature. A bullhorn used to heckle fur wearers and other involved in the animal trade, hangs nearby. "This is animal rights central," he said. "I live and breathe animal rights. I want to speak the truth."

ADAPTT does not charge a membership fee. Yourofsky, who works as a substitute teacher in Pontiac, sends literature to anyone who asks. He publishes the church bulletin-sized newsletter whenever he can afford to send it out. "I've put over $10,000 of my life savings into ADAPTT," he said. "I owe credit card companies over $20,000. I'll probably have to declare personal bankruptcy in a few months."

Yourofsky practices a vegan lifestyle, which forbids using animals for food, clothing or other purposes. Inside his mustard-colored refrigerator is evidence: "A bowl of cherries, rice milk, soy cheese, vegetable-based food formed into bacon and turkey substitutes. "There is fake everything," he said. "I've seen fake ribs."

He is a tireless salesman for the vegan lifestyle. Two years ago, he persuaded his chiropractor, Robert Levine of Farmington Hills, to give up meat. "He gave me some information about the agriculture industry and overnight, I stopped eating 99 percent of what I was eating," Levine said. "Would I like to have him at dinner every night? Probably not. But I like Gary a lot. He's quite a rebel."

Others are less eager to be associated with Yourofsky even when they agree with him. Yourofsky wants to meet with Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer to lobby for a ban on animal circuses in the city. He hopes Detroit Zoo Director Ron Kagan can help him. "We have Ron Kagan's support," Yourofsky said.

But Kagan said he does not know Yourofsky well enough to say whether he supports him. Kagan has opposed animal circuses for years. "My issues are not founded on helping Gary," Kagan said. "They are about helping animals. I do think it's important for all of us to speak up and certainly he is a voice."

Yourofsky has a journalism degree from Oakland University and a habit of reading dictionaries in his leisure time. To ask him about animal rights is to trigger an avalanche of quotations from Gandhi, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., puncuated with words like "perfidy" and "pusillanimous." He also studied television and radio at Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts in Southfield. Yourofsky uses the media to amplify his voice. He sends out press releases announcing protest plans. He keeps his newspaper clippings in an art portfolio and displays them with the pride of a grandparent showing baby pictures.

Getting arrested helps attract media attention. Besides, penalties are usually minimal. "Will I pay a $100 fine for a front-page story? Absolutely," Yourofsky said. "I can't buy that kind of advertising."

Not all of his protests have been dismissed so easily. In March 1997, Yourofsky and members of his group released 1,500 mink from Eberts Fur Farm in Blenheim, Ontario. The owners caught the group and recovered most of the mink. But the episode disrupted reproduction and led to tiny litters. "That cost us over $300,000," said owner Tom McLellan. "We're running a legal business, we're not dealing drugs. It's been our way of life for years. He is going about it the wrong way."

Canadian courts agreed, and convicted Yourofsky of breaking and entering. He was sentenced to spend 180 days in a Canadian correctional facility, but was released after 77 days. He also was fined $35,000 but has not paid a cent. "I'm not paying mink murderers," he said.

McLellan has sued Yourofsky trying to recoup his losses, but he doubts he'll ever be paid. "The odds are pretty thin," McLellan said. "It bothers me that he basically got away with it."

Yourofsky's adversaries are not limited to fur farmers. He has publicly feuded with Gary Tiscornia, executive director of the Michigan Humane Society. Yourofsky called for Tiscornia to resign after Tiscornia agreed with a plan to allow deer hunting in Kensington Metropark. "We feel that interests of animals are best served by working within our legal system," Tiscornia said.

That's not good enough for Yourofsky, who doubts the state Legislature or Congress will pass laws protecting animals because agriculture interests have too much power. He plans to continue his protests, which have drawn wide notice. When he was in jail in Canada, he received letters of support from people as far away as New Zealand. They make up for the times he is branded a radical or a wacko. "I'm anything but a wacko," Yourofsky said. "Radical is great to me. If I don't make some people nervous, then I'm doing something wrong"


Taking it to the Limit

Driven by a Passion for Justice, Royal Oak Activist Does Whatever it Takes to Protect Rights of Animals

By Cathy Nelson

The following profile appeared in The Daily Tribune (Royal Oak, Mich.) on February 27, 2000.

This is part one of a two-part profile. Part two will be published next Sunday.

Although just 29, Royal Oak's Gary Yourofsky has already experienced more than many people will, or ever will want to, in a lifetime. He's picketed prominent businesses, chained his neck to the axle of his car, been arrested at least 10 times and spent 77 days in a maximum security detention center—all in the name of animal rights.

Yourofsky is founder of ADAPTT, a Royal Oak-based organization known for in-your-face tactics and an uncompromising stance against animal exploitation. Yet, by Yourofsky's own account, he's just a normal guy. "People find it hard to believe, but I'm kind of like everyone else. I'm pretty normal," said Yourofsky. "I enjoy Jim Carrey movies, I watch sports, I play guitar. I just will not tolerate cruelty to animals. I will not tolerate the way society treats them."

By all outward appearances, Yourofsky's life is not out of the ordinary. He shares a modest apartment with his roommate, Rex, an 11-year-old dog he found lying, paralyzed, on the side of the road. A collection of CDs, videos and books (Gerry Spence's "How to Argue and Win Every Time" is prominently placed at the front of one shelf) mixed with pictures of those closest to his heart—his 3-year-old twin niece and nephew, two dogs, Brandy and Bourbon, who've passed away, and Rex. Degrees from Specs Howard and Oakland University hang by the bathroom, not far from a picture of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Yourofsky wears jeans with a button-down shirt and his manner is relaxed, even down right congenial.

But when Yourofsky speaks about animals, things change. An intensity surrounds him, his words come fast, yet firm, his arms wave often, and he barely stops to catch his breath between sentences. He liberally quotes Martin Luther King Jr. among others, using a vocabulary that could put an English professor to shame. (Knowledge garnered from another favorite hobby of his, looking up words in the dictionary and memorizing their meanings.)

For the last two years, he has been, arguably, the most recognizable and talked-about member of the animal rights movement in Michigan. Yourofsky's notoriety was heightened last year when he was sentenced to six months in prison for his part in a 1997 break-in at a Blenheim, Ontario, fur farm where 1,542 caged minks were set free.

The incarceration only heightened Yourofsky's commitment. Since his release from prison, he's protested circuses, fur stores and led a silent vigil in front of the home of someone Yourofsky calls a "a psychotic researcher" who conducts experiments on live animals.

Another brush with the law occurred in August 1999, when Yourofsky chained himself underneath his car and blocked the entrance to Detroit Animal Control Center. He was protesting what he called the center's "antiquated" use of gas chambers and its selling of animals to Wayne State University for experimentation.

In August 1999, Yourofsky chained his neck to the axle of his car to protest practices at the Detroit Animal Control Center.

It's not surprising, then, that words such as "radical" and "extreme" are often used to describe him. "I used to get upset at that," said Yourofsky. "Now actually I don't, because I know what it means. I guess it means you're too honest, too truthful, too uncompromising, too strong. I might find those to be good attributes."

There is, however, one thing he never wants to be called, and it's probably not what people expect. "I despise the term 'animal lover' because I find it to be derogatory...whenever you put the term 'lover' in front of something that you're fighting for, it's completely derogatory. It has nothing to do with that group, it has to do with loathing injustice."

Yourofsky wasn't always part of the animal rights movement. He was, only five years ago, a meat-eating, leather-wearing part of the general population. The child of divorced parents, Yourofsky grew up in Oak Park and Berkley with one sister, two years his senior. Hockey was his big love—in 1980 he was the number one goalie in his age group in Michigan. That year, his team placed second in a Lake Placid national tournament around the same time and place the US Olympic Hockey team skated to its "Miracle on Ice."

Still there were signs as to what the future might have in store. "I was always bucking the system," Yourofsky said. "I always had something to say. My friends would say 'You think you can save the world.' I'd never go into a situation thinking I couldn't change it."

Yourofsky's dreams were typical of many teenagers—he figured on being a rock guitarist or playing in the NHL. But, it was an incident during those same formative years that sent him on a much different path. Yourofsky's stepfather was working as a clown in The Shrine Circus and thought his stepson might enjoy going behind-the-scenes to see the animals. He couldn't have been more wrong.

"He took me backstage to see the elephants," remembered Yourofsky, emphasizing every word. "I saw them shackled in chains. I looked in their eyes and saw nothing but fear and hopelessness. I knew this wasn't right." Yourofsky has never forgotten the look in those elephant's eyes.

Driven by a thirst for knowledge, he began reading, studying and researching not only the animal rights movement, but civil rights movements throughout history. In 1995 he became a vegetarian, and, after attending a 1996 animal rights conference in Washington DC, went vegan. "The more I opened to the truth, the closer I got to the truth," he said.

While the circus experience may have started him down the path that now consumes his life, it was simple words from a friend that got him going full steam ahead. He said, "You're always talking about this stuff, why don't you do something about it, already?" Yourofsky's friend probably had no idea what he started.

It began with newsletters, phone calls, a protest here and there. It didn't take long before there were over 1,500 members.

"There's no denying once you meet Gary, you don't forget him," said Jim McNelis, who met Yourofsky five years ago and is now community outreach director for ADAPTT. "He makes a strong impression. He is a leader."

As membership expanded, Yourofsky saw the opportunity to reach more and more people. He never backed down from his straightforward approach, no matter what television station or newspaper was interviewing him, no matter who was watching or listening.

"I can't express in words what Gary means (to animal rights)," McNelis said. "The movement needed people like that. With Gary, there's no me-first. He's extremely committed, and passionate. Many people are not lucky enough to find their passion. He did."

Yourofsky's commitment meant a willingness to use what some would consider shocking tactics to get points across. ADAPTT recently drew attention for two graphic billboards it sponsored—one anti-fur billboard contained a grotesque picture of a skinned animal, another plastered the slogan "The Circus Sucks" next to a photo of a chained elephant—and a controversial television commercial featuring footage of fur farm animals being electrocuted.

"I know for me, that's what did it," said Yourofsky. "When I saw the videos, that's what pushed me over the age. When I read the literature, when I saw photos of cats with electrodes in their heads, of primates languishing in cages, when I saw elephants in chains. As far as I'm concerned, that's what's going to work." He turns to a quote from slave abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to make his point: "I will be as harsh as the truth and as uncompromising as justice."

Yourofsky also believes in exercising his First Amendment right to assemble—and will be joined by other ADAPTT members in doing so, at upcoming protests targeting local appearances by The Shrine Circus in March and The Royal Hanneford Circus in April.

Gertrude Hanneford, 68-year-old matriarch of The Royal Hanneford Circus, said while she's "grateful" for the concerns of animal activists like Yourofsky, her animals are not abused. "I've spent many many years and half of my life taking care of animals," said Hanneford, who's had the same three elephants for more than 20 years and drives the semi truck they travel in. "Most activists don't live with animals." She said her elephants are not shackled, but kept in free-walking pens and that conditions are "constantly" monitored by the USDA and animal inspectors.

Yourofsky said he's seen the pens Hanneford's referring to. "These areas are unsuitable for a two-pound toy poodle, much less an 8,000 pound animal that walks 20 to 50 miles a day in the wild. They're still incarcerated in an area they should not be."

Hanneford said protests, such as the one ADAPTT plans, don't hurt her business. "I never have any problems. I think we get along fairly good. I respect their concerns, but my conscience is good. I love my animals."

"Animals were not put on this earth for our entertainment," countered Yourofsky. "If she loves them, she'd release them to an elephant sanctuary."

Carrying a picket sign is an experience many Americans have had, but for Yourofsky, protests don't go far enough. He believes there's an extra step that must be taken, and he's one of only a few willing to do so. "One cannot achieve goals without civil disobedience. King and Gandhi went to jail for civil disobedience. It's funny how throughout time we place certain people on pedestals, like Dr. King, Gandhi and Malcolm X and rightfully so. But when they were around, people thought that they were crazy for going to jail for what they believed in and fighting the system."

Great leaders have often used nonviolent civil disobedience to facilitate change, according to Donald N. Perkins, a Mount Clemens attorney and member of the Animal Law Section Council of the State Bar of Michigan. "Nonviolent civil disobedience is part of the American tradition going back to the Boston Tea Party," said Perkins. "Those men today are seen as heroes. When we do achieve a cruelty-free society, it will be because of the actions of people like Gary."

"You cannot work within an unjust system," said Yourofsky. "You cannot change immoral laws with moral protests. As far as I'm concerned, you have to work outside of the unjust system and come back in it. You have to break the law to make new laws. Anyone who thinks it's silly or too much or extreme to go to jail doesn't understand what it takes to liberate an enslaved group."


Taking a Stand and Standing Alone

Animal Rights Activist Vows to Live and Die for His Cause

By Cathy Nelson

The following profile appeared in The Daily Tribune (Royal Oak, Mich.) on March 5, 2000.

This is the second half of a two-part profile on animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky. In part one, which ran on Feb. 27, Yourofsky talked about how his views were formed. Today, he discusses how they shape his life.

"I will gladly go to jail for this cause." Those are not empty words from Royal Oak animal activist Gary Yourofsky. On April 27, 1999, he proved it. That was the day Yourofsky was sentenced to six months in Elgin Middlesex Detention Center in London, Ontario, for his part in a 1997 break-in at Ebert's Mink Farm in Blenheim, Ontario. The break-in resulted in the release of 1,542 minks and the subsequent arrest of Yourofsky and four others.

It started out, according to Yourofsky, as a way to "liberate" the minks and "economically sabotage" the fur farm. It ended up as a time of betrayal and soul-searching for the man who's dedicated his life to the animal rights movement.

It was a quiet Easter Sunday evening. Yourofsky, along with his uncle, Alan Hoffman, and fellow activists Patricia Dodson, Hilma Ruby and Robyn Weiner set out with a plan to free as many minks as possible from the fur farm. The five were well aware just how dangerous and illegal their plan was. "Just because something is legal doesn't make it just," Yourofsky said. "If someone wants to liberate animals, there's nothing quicker than opening cages in fur farms or research labs."

Knowing the likelihood of at least one of them getting caught, the five made a pact. "If something happened that night, if certain people got away, then so be it." Each person had a specific duty to perform; Yourofsky's was to open the mink's cages—all 1,542 of them. It took him about one hour and 45 minutes, and even though his arms ached, he didn't stop until he was done. Physically exhausted, Yourofsky and his uncle then crawled on their hands and knees, "like we were in a war," 1.5 miles back into the town of Blenheim, where they called a cab. It wasn't long after the taxi picked them up and pulled on to Highway 401 that things began to go wrong.

That's where police pulled over the cab and took Yourofsky and Hoffman, who were covered in mink fur and feces, back to the station. Yourofsky refused to talk, but soon was being charged with burglary, mischief and possession of burglary tools. "Since we were never apprehended on the farm, someone had to place us there," he said. Yourofsky said he was shocked by who it was—his uncle. "He sold me out to save himself."

Yourofsky said Hoffman, along with Weiner, offered information on the incident in exchange for reduced sentences and, in doing so, broke the "code" of the animal liberation movement: never tell on another. "It hurt," Yourofsky said slowly. "I'm not upset they turned me in. What's breaking my heart is they sold out the animals. They sold out 1,542 mink that were given the chance of freedom that night." He said Ruby remained the only "solid activist who understood what it took."

While the owner said most of the minks freed that night died, Yourofsky said he was only shown proof that two died. He believes the rest survived. The owner of Eberts estimates nearly half a million dollars in damage was done; the farm has since closed.

For Yourofsky, the night of what he considers a betrayal was only the beginning of tough times. It was on the fifth day of a 10-day bail hearing, during which he was incarcerated, that Yourofsky received devastating news: his beloved dog Brandy had suffered a stroke and was dying. "I laid in my (prison) bed that night and said "I've got to get out and hold my dog one last time. I just have to," he recalled. Still, to have any chance of being released, Yourofsky would have had to apologize or offer information to authorities. "I couldn't bring myself to sell out the millions of animals that needed my strength, my commitment, my empathy." Brandy died while Yourofsky was still in jail.

Two years after the break-in took place, Yourofsky was sentenced to six months in a maximum security facility. Although he served only 77 days of his sentence, it was the most difficult time of his life. For the most part he got along well with other prisoners and the guards, and even his request for vegan food was accommodated. But, because Elgin is a maximum security facility, inmates were only allowed outside (courtyard) 20 minutes a day. For Yourofsky, the prison became a world unto itself.

"You're put inside four walls, and that's your world," he said. "Jail is such a desensitization. It's such a cold, stale, sterile environment. My mind actually shut down. I couldn't write or think clearly." What got Yourofsky through the ordeal was the amount of support he received. Letters from across the country, literally hundreds of them, came in and mail-call became the bright spot in his day.

"As I write this letter, tears fall because the wrong person is being punished—the man who took those animals lives should be there, not the man who freed them," wrote a woman from Woodhaven. An attorney from Novi wrote the parole board: "He is altruistic. He is a hero. He represents what is good about the human race."

"Gary follows in the footsteps of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, all of whom have been imprisoned for their nonviolent beliefs," said a writer from Los Angeles.

One act that greatly touched Yourofsky was a proposed resolution in support of his actions put before the Animal Law Section Council of the State Bar of Michigan by attorney Donald Perkins. "I wanted to go on record as showing support within animal law for what Gary Yourofsky was attempting to do, which was stop the indefensible action of wearing fur coats," said Perkins, a council member. Perkins ended up tabling the motion because he felt resistance among the group for a resolution which, in effect, supported the breaking of the law. Personally, Perkins stood firm. "Gary was working for a higher purpose and that should take precedence over a technical violation of the law. There will be a time when the legal community will recognize obedience to laws is not the highest form of morality. Justice and compassion are the highest form of morality."

Yourofsky said it was people like Perkins who helped him remember why he was there. "I just told myself 'I'm an elephant in the circus, a lion in the zoo, a mink in a cage.' It would intensify my empathy. I would get mad and want to free the animals even more. I lived the life of a caged animal for 77 days. I experienced what they go through on a daily basis." The only difference, Yourofsky said, was he knew one day he'd get out.

Not surprisingly, the fur industry frowns upon acts like Yourofsky's and defends the industry's practices. "The measure of success for a farmer is how well they take care of the animals, not how poorly." said Teresa Platt, spokesperson for Fur Commission USA, an organization representing 450 mink and fox fur farms. "The animals need to be beautiful."

Yourofsky's response: "The animals are treated about as well as prisoners in Thailand. Keeping animals confined in a cage is not just inhumane, it's inhuman."

Platt said most mink are killed using carbon monoxide gas, but admitted many foxes are killed by anal electrocution while unconscious. Yourofsky said none of these methods are humane and that foxes are conscious during electrocution. "Not one animal in the history of humankind has ever been euthanized using lethal injection on a fur farm. The reason why brutal methods are used is because they are the cheapest methods possible."

Platt said farmers in the mink fur industry, with an estimated $80-120 million in annual revenue, are caring, rural people. "Do farmers think they take good care of the animals? They know they do," she said. "They love their animals. Animal rights groups don't jump into debates, but just attack. We don't solve things by terrorizing people."

"Does she think incarceration and denying freedom is equal to compassion and benevolence?" Yourofsky asked. "It's laughable for people who kill and exploit animals to say they care. It's preposterous. Terrorists are people like Timothy McVeigh. Animal rights activists are the true humanitarians. She is an animal terrorist."

Far from seeing himself as a terrorist, Yourofsky simply says he's someone trying to liberate an enslaved group. While in prison he wrote the following words: "What a pathetic life I must have led before I heard the cries of the enslaved and the tumult of the animal kingdom. Activism engulfs me." It also changed the life he had only a few years ago, before becoming involved in animal rights. He worked for a while as a substitute teacher, but admits he is now out of money and describes himself using the oxymoron "broke philanthropist."

Yourofsky's "new" life has also taken a personal toll. He said his mother still wears a fur coat, but calls his father, who lives in Ferndale, "the first one to understand."

He no longer gets together with family at holidays, due partly to his refusal to dine with anyone eating meat, and partly to the ridicule he's endured at past gatherings. "My family is no different than anyone else's. They don't understand animal rights. They probably think it's silly or misguided. I'm not close with my family. We don't talk much."

The problem he said is his insistence on talking about animal rights, met by just as strong a resistance on their part. "Frankly, I'm tired of discussing it with them. I've realized over the years, you have to throw away some people who don't get it."

To explain why he's willing to sacrifice so much, Yourofsky turns to a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: "There are some things so dear, so precious, so eternally true, that they are worth dying for."

"I think anybody who leads a life without a purpose, without trying to make the world a better place, is pathetic," Yourofsky said. "And that includes everyone from family members to someone on the street."

Although Yourofsky is willing to pay any price in the name of animal rights, he is also smart enough to know the fight is an uphill battle. "I don't see animal freedom coming anytime soon and it upsets me, it bothers me, it's frustrating, it's disheartening. I know most people have goodness inside of them. If I can just tap into that. I think that's the only thing that keeps me going."


Activist Devotes Life to Animal Rights (Toledo Blade)

Activist Would Give His Life for the Animals (Oakland Press)

By Jack Lessenberry

The following profile appeared in The Toldeo Blade and The Oakland Press (Mich.) on June 24, 2001.

Gary Yourofsky is not, he says, an animal lover. Never mind that virtually every waking moment of his life is devoted to fighting for animal rights. Never mind that he has been arrested more than a dozen times and served more than two months hard time in a Canadian prison for liberating mink.

No, he's not an animal lover. "I don't even like most animals," the outspoken 30-year-old said.

"Anyway, this isn't about loving them. It's about injustice. My goal is to free them. They are a disenfranchised group. They have the right to their own existence. They aren't ours to exploit. They exist for their own reasons."

Mr. Yourofsky, a slight, virtually bald young man with piercing eyes, has dedicated his life to fighting for what he sees as the world's greatest civil rights movement: Animal Liberation. Though he is of a generation that is virtually a stranger to political commitment, he is, cheerfully and proudly "an activist 24/7. This is what I do."

He isn't kidding. A large tattoo of himself wearing a hood and displaying the symbols of ALF, the Animal Liberation Front, adorns one forearm.

He isn't getting rich at it. Mr. Yourofsky is "in debt up to my ears. I owe at least $30,000 on credit cards," and gets by on donations. He lives in a tiny apartment with his ancient dog, Rex, and probably could fit all his worldly goods into his car.

Sometimes, he admits, he gets down, especially when he thinks about how much brutality there is, and how little progress he has made. But he has absolutely no doubt that what he is doing is right, and that his life would even be worth losing if it would help stop what he thinks is the most evil "ism" in human history.

"Speciesism. That is, the unfounded, unethical, and unprincipled view that the human animal has every right to enslave, torture, and murder the non-human animal."

Does he think that the life of a gnat, say, is as valuable as that of a person? He waves impatiently; he isn't going there. "What we must do is start viewing every cow, pig, chicken, monkey, rabbit, mouse, and pigeon as our family members."

"And we must be willing to do whatever it takes to gain their freedom and stop their torture," he adds. For himself, that means only nonviolent means. But Mr. Yourofsky doesn't condemn others who feel differently. "Do not be afraid to condone arsons at places of animal torture," he has written to supporters.

Matter of fact, if an "animal abuser" were to get killed in the process of burning down a research lab, "I would unequivocally support that, too."

He wasn't always out there. He grew up in the very suburban, mostly Jewish Detroit suburb of Oak Park. He ate meat, played guitar, and dreamed of someday being a goalie in the National Hockey League.

Then, one day in his early 20s, his stepfather, who was a professional circus clown, took Gary behind the scenes at the circus. He went up to an elephant and "saw nothing but fear and hopelessness in her eyes" and saw that she was chained and could barely move. "I didn't even know then how they are routinely beaten, to break their spirit. I just knew something was wrong." When they brought out dancing bears wearing tutus, he left.

That changed his life. He plunged into research on how animals are treated and mistreated; became first a vegetarian, then a more radical vegan. Though he had degrees in journalism and broadcasting, he decided to put his skills to work full-time for the animals. Five years ago, he founded ADAPTT (Animals Deserve Absolute Protection Today and Tomorrow) which now has, he says, 2,200 or so members.

Yes, he did once liberate precisely 1,542 mink from individual cages on a now-bankrupt Ontario farm, crawling through dirt and mink feces to do so. Yes, he chained himself to his car and blocked the entrance to Detroit Animal Control Center, to protest their gassing of unwanted animals and, worse, selling them to a university for experiments.

"Any real scientist will tell you we learn nothing of value by experimenting on animals. Nothing!" he maintained. "And even if we did, we've no right to do it."

Though he may be arrested again, what he really prefers doing is lecturing about animal rights. An articulate, compelling speaker, he is in increasing demand on the classroom and lecture circuit. When he's not doing that, he is heavily into other forms of "informational propaganda." Last fall, he successfully wangled $10,000 from PETA—People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—and got a commercial attacking "the animal slavery enterprise known as the circus" on local TV 69 times.

What the future holds, he knows, is more frustration. Last winter, depressed over his economic situation and the enormous task, Mr. Yourofsky dropped out for two or three months, before gradually returning to the fray. Now, however, he is pumped and ready. If he gets tired, he remembers what he tells audiences: "Picture yourself in chains, swaying back and forth as someone whacked you over the head with an elephant hook. Then tell me you wouldn't want your supporters to do anything to obtain your freedom."

In the long run, he doesn't expect to see very much animal liberation in his lifetime. "I really think I will be assassinated," he said. One comes away with a feeling that if his own death helped further the cause, it might, for Gary Yourofsky, seem worth it.


Activist for the Animals

By Jack Lessenberry

The following profile appeared in The Metro Times (Mich.) in the July 11-17, 2001, edition.

Nobody, the old saying goes, should see either legislation or sausage being made. Gary Yourofsky thinks you need to know exactly where the meat for your sausage comes from, for the same reason you need to know about Auschwitz.

To him, they are exactly the same—or maybe your local slaughterhouse is a trifle worse; the Nazis usually didn't dismember their victims while many were still conscious. (No, Muffy, whatever they told you in kindergarten, they don't put Clarabell painlessly to sleep before grinding her up for hamburger. That would cost money.)

"Enslaving and killing animals for human satisfaction can never be justified," the bald, cheerfully intense 30-year-old argues. "They aren't ours to begin with. They belong to themselves only." Yet most of us "continue to believe that the human animal has every right to exploit, enslave and murder the nonhuman animal."

We murder billions of our fellow animals each year, and that's what he has dedicated his young life to fighting. Actually, he knows he can't do much to stop it, not in the foreseeable future, anyway. But he intends to raise our consciousness. That's why he has done jail time for "liberating" 1,542 mink from an Ontario fur farm, and been arrested more than a dozen times for other "random acts of kindness and compassion."

Frankly, when I went to interview Yourofsky I expected to meet a fanatic.

Afterward not only did I find him frighteningly sane and mostly convincing, I had the rather uneasy feeling that always comes when you realize that you are a hypocrite.

Like most liberals, I always have been very concerned with the public's right to know about legislation—and never thought about sausage, except when I had to read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and when it became clear that packing plant workers in sweatshops like Tyson Foods were severely endangered by their working conditions.


Duty and the Beasts

By Jack Lessenberry

The following profile appeared in Hour Magazine (Mich.) in the May 2002 edition.

Gary Yourofsky believes we are all living in a new Auschwitz. Make that a world a million times worse than the Nazi death camp. The way he sees it, the vast majority of us are participants in this Holocaust.

"Aren't humans amazing animals? They kill all kinds of wildlife by the millions, and then turn around and terrorize domestic animals by the billions," he says, tenor rising and falling, rippling between razor-sharp sarcasm and the confident tones of a man utterly convinced he possesses the absolute truth.

For him, the truth is that animals have the same rights we do. Yourofsky, 31, really believes that when we eat meat, drink milk and permit circuses, we are actively committing evil. "I don't eat anything that had a face, a mother or a bowel movement," he tells wide-eyed students in any class he lectures.

When one timid Wayne State student asks hesitantly whether people weren't meant to eat meat, the answer explodes off his lips. "Okay—pick up the first dead squirrel you find in the road, and eat it! Raw. Eat the face, the eyes, the hair, the toenails and the bacteria-laden organs. That's what real carnivores do."

He believes that eating meat is murder, and we're killing ourselves by eating it. Yourofsky argues that not only do we have no right to do experiments on animals but, against the weight of most scientific opinion, that no medical research done on animals ever can have validity for humans.

Hunters are sick people filled with hate and violence, "cowards who never fight those who fight back." Rodeos are obscene. Zoos are bad—pet shops, slave markets. Even a fish tank full of seemingly content neon tetras is a moral outrage, an "aquaprison." Never mind that such are likely to live longer lives and be far better fed than they would in some Amazon stream. In Yourofsky's view, they aren't ours to mess with. "This isn't about loving animals. It's about fighting injustice," he said.

Yourofsky rarely sugarcoats it. He doesn't show his videotape of a cow having her ovaries ripped out—without anesthesia—to elementary school kids. Otherwise, he's proudly, defiantly, deliberately, in your face.

A half-blind man wouldn't have any trouble picking him out of a crowd. His most arresting feature is a completely shaven, milk-white scalp above a scraggly beard and intensely burning brown eyes. Add to that a weightlifter's arms, usually poking out from a T-shirt. Immediately, your gaze is drawn to his right forearm, adorned with a large tattoo of a hooded figure—Yourofsky himself—cradling a bunny. The man's feet are definatly planted above the letters ALF. Animal Liberation Front.

"Abolition! Liberation! Freedom!" he says with a smile, displaying his tattoo as he eats an Ethiopian vegan meal with his hands at The Blue Nile in Greektown. Over the tattooed man and beast floats the Latin motto, Praesto et Persto—I stand in front and I stand firm.

"I got that right after I got out of prison for liberating mink from a fur farm in Ontario," he says proudly. He doesn't do "random acts of kindness and compassion" like that anymore. These days Yourofsky says he's not into direct action. Still, I expect that someday, someone will assassinate me."

Yourofsky says he has no desire to be a martyr. In his view, if he's murdered for the cause, it will be a sign that he's winning the greatest war in the history of evolution. And there are some who would follow him anywhere.

The first time I saw him, I said, "Uh-oh. Is he a skinhead, or what?" says Lana Mini, a 34-year-old writer who has been equally devoted to animal rights for longer than Yourofsky. That was six years ago, when she was doing a charity dog wash to raise money for her group, HARE (Humanitarians for Animal Rights Education).

Yourofsky came in with Rex, a shepherd mix he'd rescued (after he was hit by a car). He was just in the process of forming his own group, ADAPTT (Animals Deserve Absolute Protection Today and Tomorrow). Soon, HARE was defunct, and most of its members had joined ADAPTT. He and Mini found they had nearly identical views, and became friends. Mini went to visit him in his Canadian prison and waged a campaign to get him out of solitary in which he was placed when he went on a hunger strike. Yourofsky was in protective custody from the beginning because the hunters among the cons had threatened him. Today, she's executive director of the Michigan's ADAPTT chapter.

"He's intense," Mini says. "But he's also so convincing. He can talk to anybody. A few years ago, animal rights started as a mainly middle-to-upper class movement. Gary can reach minorities."

While in prison, he wrote: "What a pathetic life I must have led before I heard the cries of the enslaved and the tumult of the animal kingdom. Activism engulfs me. Activism is near. Activism is now."

Nobody who knew him back at Berkley High School would have imagined this. Gary Yourofsky was born August 19, 1970. His earliest love wasn't hamsters, but hockey; he was a prize-winning goalie in grade school.

Marci Culley, his first girlfriend, remembers a very "shy-boy" who had friends but wasn't part of any clique. "He had this mane of hair you would not believe," she says. Now finishing a doctorate in community psychology, Culley was shocked when she found out he's now bald. "I think his hairline was receding, and ashamed he was no longer a good Leo, he made the decision to shave his head and stay in control." Culley is also an animals rights supporter. She thinks the soft-spoken boy she knew has found his identity in a cause larger than he is.

It seems clear that even before he heard the cries of the animals, Yourofsky wanted to be heard. He took broadcasting courses at Specs Howard, then studied journalism at Oakland University. He was a normal hamburger-munching kid.

The defining moment came while he was still in college. His stepfather, who was a professional circus clown, took him behind the scenes at the circus. He went up to an elephant and "saw nothing but fear and hopelessness in her eyes. I didn't even know then how they are routinely beaten to break their spirit."

That night, he plunged into research on how animals are mistreated. He chained himself by the neck to the axle of his car to block the entrance to circuses. He got arrested, by his count, "13 times for random acts of kindness and compassion." Yourofsky gave up eating meat. The next year, in 1996, he became a vegan, abstaining from any animal products. Then he planned his greatest "action," the liberation of all those mink from a farm in Blenheim, Ontario. Crawling on hands and knees through mink excrement, Yourofsky and four other activists freed 1,542 of the animals. They were stopped by the police while making their getaway. Two years later, he was charged with burglary-related offenses and convicted after two of his fellow mink liberators turned him in.

The trial gave him a forum for his signature speech. "One day every enslaved animal will obtain their freedom and the animal rights movement will succeed," he said. Unmoved, the judge sentenced him to six months' hard time, though after 77 days Yourofsky was released and expelled from the country.

Owners of the mink farm, which has gone out of business, said most or all of the animals, unprepared for life in the wild, would have speedily suffered dreadful deaths. Yourofsky says they're lying.

"I'm following in the footsteps of other routine radical lawbreakers like Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Jesus," he tells a Wayne State class. "I'm here to uplift you morally. And to show you things you don't want to see. Then he puts in the first of a horrific series of videotapes that show where your meat and fur come from. Foxes are electrocuted anally; chinchillas get it in the genitals. Live cows are gutted. A conscious pig is tortured with a blowtorch in the name of burn research.

Slowly, almost unnoticed by the mainstream media, animal rights has been catching on across the country. One student who heard him started a satellite chapter in Tampa. Another started in Omaha. Then Ypsilanti, then Toledo. Students beg teachers to invite him. John Simicek, a special lecturer at Oakland University, has Yourofsky talk to his rhetoric classes. "Sure, there are some who think Gary is too harsh. But I think when it comes to the truth, you have to be up front," he says.

Yourofsky was a whirling dervish of animal rights activity, here lecturing, there disrupting, a deer hunt to tell one of the nimrods he'd be happy to take a bullet for Bambi. Though he has feuded with his fellow radicals at PETA, he got them to ante up thousands for anti-circus TV spots. Yet personally, he was falling apart. For one thing, he has no money. Being an animal rights revolutionary doesn't pay the bills. By last summer, he was more than $30,000 in debt. Then an attorney in California read about him, then got enamored. She invited him to come share her home. So Yourofsky moved in. And everything was perfect, except...

"There was no spark. Well, I think there was on her part, not mine," he says. By March he was still crashing at her place, but neither of them was happy about it. Reality hit when he had to wire his dad in Ferndale to send him $20 so he could buy gas. Depressed, he decided he'd had enough. Early in March, he sent a long email to all his supporters, announcing he was giving up and dropping out. Immediately, he got a flood of responses from dismayed suporters. He got a phone call, too, from PETA, the group most Americans associate with radical animal rights. They'd had their differences, but Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's head, wanted him out there. They offered him a salary to do just what he'd been doing, for six months. Yourofsky took it. For now, he plans to keep a new part-time teaching job in California—but to continue traveling and fighting for the animals.

"Picture yourself in a tiny cage waiting to be infected, surgically mutilated, blinded, burnt and killed. Picture yourself in chains, swaying back and forth as someone whacked you over the head with an elephant hook. Then tell me you wouldn't want your freedom now! Then tell me you wouldn't want your supporters to do anything to obtain your freedom!"

Yourofsky pauses, weary from a day of hunting for a landlord who wouldn't mind a tenant with supremely bad credit. "This is the way I live."


From Liberator to Educator

Man Who Freed Mink Now Lectures Nationwide on Animal Rights

By Lana Mini

The following profile appeared in The Observer & Eccentric (Mich.) on October 10, 2002.

Ever wonder what happened to the Royal Oak man jailed in 1997 for freeing 1,542 mink from a Canadian fur farm? Today he's one of the nation's most convincing and knowledgeable lecturers in the animal rights movement and works for the country's largest animal protection group, PETA.

Universities and high schools are clamoring for Gary Yourofsky. He's already spoken to students at Birmingham Seaholm High, U of M, UC Berkeley, Oakland University and Wayne State University. This week he speaks at Harvard, Purdue and soon Cornell. OU professor John Simicek invited him to lecture for his English and Rhetoric classes. "Yourofsky's passion about the necessity to unchain animals from the shackles of vile exploitation and oppression translates into a forcefully captivating presentation that's assertive, honest, documented and accurate," he said.

Gary Yourofsky speaks to students at Oakland University about animal rights.

CAPTION: Gary Yourofsky speaks to students at Oakland University about animal rights.

Quick background: Yourofsky, who grew up in Oak Park, is a journalism graduate from Rochester's Oakland University. He's been arrested 13 times and says peaceful civil disobedience was also used by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Yourofsky, after all, is a civil rights activist for animals. Over the years we've worked together on a few projects and became friends. We took a rescued pig to his new home in Minnesota. We drove to the city of Hegins, Penn., to rescue birds wounded in an annual event where they were released one-by-one from cages and shot for so-called "sport."

Yourofsky and his girlfreind are vegans who neither eat nor wear animal products. He has locked himself at circus entrance gates and chained himself in front of fur stores to fight against animal exploitation. He served 77 days hard prison time for freeing mink, went on a hunger strike and was deported. At his trial, Yourofsky said, "If it is not a crime to torture, enslave and murder animals, then how can it be a crime to free tortured, enslaved and soon-to-be murdered animals?"

Today, though, no more jail. He's moved from liberator to educator. His speech begins with a thought-provoking paraphrase from author C. David Coats: "Aren't humans amazing animals? They kill all kinds of wildlife by the million—deer, birds, coyotes, cats, groundhogs and beavers. Then they terrorize and kill these animals to protect domestic animals and the feed of these domestic animals. Then, humans terrorize and kill domestic animals by the billion—cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys—and eat them. This in turn kills humans by the million because eating animal flesh causes fatal and degenerative health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease and many cancers. So then humans torture, terrorize and kill millions of other animals to search for treatments for these illnesses—which by the way will never work because animal research is unscientific. Elsewhere millions of humans are dying of hunger and malnutrition because the food they could eat—like corn and wheat—is being ised to feed the animals that most people eat."

I attended his lecture last month at Oakland U. which I've heard before. The students' reaction was the same as others. First they laugh. Then they watch videos of animals dismembered alive for food and the laughter stops. Then they debate to justify eating meat. At the end, each talk. Some go vegan. Others leave at least understanding the animal rights movement.

"Before I met Gary I was a vegetarian for health reasons. I had never looked into animal rights," Oakland graduate Meghan Bogden said. Now she's vegan and also an animal rights activist.

Years ago, Yourofsky went backstage with a family member who worked for the circus. He saw an 8,000-pound elephant swaying frantically, chained to the cement ground. At age 23 he had an epiphany. "From then on, I wanted to know what else was going on with animals. Common sense and decency took over from there. I became vegetarian and then vegan. I eat nothing that had a face, a mother or a bowel movement. What a pathetic life I must have led before I heard the cries of the enslaved and the tumult of the animal kingdom."

He also told students that he asked himself: "Who taught me that animals were put on this earth for food? Who taught me to disrespect animals and view them as mere commodities? Who stole my compassion, my empathy and my conscience? Who lied to me? Who instilled this vicious mind-set of human-to-animal exploitation as standard operating procedure?"

He quotes Dr. William Roberts, editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Cardiology: "When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh—which contains cholesterol and saturated fat—was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores."

Students ask if jail time impacted him. "I briefly experienced vicariously what a caged animal goes through. My empathy for every mistreated animal intensified." They also ask why he risked his own freedom to give the minks a chance for survival. He quotes from his courtroom speech: "Enslaving and killing animals for human satisfaction can never be justified. And the fur industry must understand that the millions of manual neck-breakings, anal and genital electrocutions, mass gassings, drownings and toxic chemical injections can never be justified."

He lectures to educate, partially because he doesn't believe the Animal Welfare Act of the 1960s protects animals. "The AWA allows people to enslave and murder all animals, even endangered ones if you apply for the proper permit. Enslave like this. Don't enslave like that. Kill ‘em this way. Don't kill ‘em that way."

Yourofsky is also a fighter for human rights. Speciesism, or valuing one species over another, is as callous as sexism or racism, he says. "Someday people will understand that speciesism is the root of all hatred, violence and discrimination. If we, as humans, want to survive, we must dole out rights, compassion, equality and simple decency to our planetary companions."

Gandhi proclaimed, "All throughout history, the way of truth and love has always won."

Yourofsky proclaims: "This planet should be a replica of the most beautiful place imaginable. A place where humans views animals in awe. And animals view humans with a curious aloofness."


Extreme Measures: Animal Activist Promotes the Freeing of Animals

By Dana Parker-McClain

The following article appeared in The Collegian (Fresno State's school paper) on February 12, 2003.

"The first form of hatred that human beings are taught is to eat the animal, mistreat the animal, hate the animal, view the animal as an inanimate object and a mere commodity," said Gary Yourofsky, animal rights activist and national lecturer.

As a participant in the upcoming "Revolutionary Activism: A Dialogue Between Activists and Academics" event, Yourofsky will discuss spirituality in environmentalism and revolutionary environmental activism. Yourofsky, who is paid by PETA, lectures in schools, colleges and universities across the nation. He fervently advocates the benefits of a vegan lifestyle, traveling to as many schools as time will allow.

A typical week for Yourofsky consists of five days on the road. He plans to lecture 70 times this semester. But the travel doesn't bother him. "I am the luckiest person in this movement by far," he said. "I am blessed that PETA is behind my work and fortunate enough to be able to deliver the message of animal freedom with passion and eloquence."

PETA is a nonprofit organization that believes animals are not disposable products for humans to eat, to experiment on, or to use for clothing or entertainment. Most of their efforts go to educating the public about animal rights and opening eyes to animal abuse that so often goes unnoticed in the world.

Yourofsky's eyes were opened in Detroit, at the age of 23, when he was invited backstage at The Shrine Circus. "I'll never forget standing face-to-face with an 8,000-pound chained elephant," he said. Her front left leg and back right leg were chained to the cement floor of the warehouse. She was swaying neurotically back and forth. I later found out that circus elephants' neurotic behavior is caused from being completely immobilized backstage when they are not on stage performing."

Yourofsky said he felt something was inherently wrong with the picture in front of him and began to dedicate time to learning about animal oppression. By 1996, Yourofsky founded ADAPTT, a grassroots organization, after attending The March for Animals in Washington, DC.

Arrested 13 times, Yourofsky received much notoriety for his role in the raid of a Canadian fur farm in 1997. That night Yourofsky, his uncle Alan Hoffman and three other activists freed 1,542 minks from Ebert's Mink Farm in Blenheim, Ontario. Yourofsky and Hoffman, covered in fur and mink feces, were later apprehended by police while riding in a cab.

Yourofsky found himself charged with burglary, although he refused to talk. He learned that his uncle and another activist, Robyn Weiner, had offered the police information in hopes of lighter jail sentences. The incident landed Yourofsky in prison, where he served 77 days of a six-month sentence in maximum security. Yourofsky's jail time changed his life, but said he doesn't hold personal grudges against his former cohorts.

"They let the animals down, not me. They sold out the enslaved mink for their own happiness. They are selfish, weak humans to me. I simply don't think about them at all any more," he said.

A statement on the Fur Commission USA Web site says, "Animal rights activists have launched a campaign to deny us the freedom to choose fur. They oppose the consumption of meat, reject the use of animals in medical research, view pet ownership as slavery. And their goal is to impose that value system on the rest of us."

But Yourofsky thinks people may not understand actions taken by animal rights groups due to selfishness. "People have a tough time understanding a group of people who act unselfishly, on behalf of animals who unfortunately are treated like property," he said.

"Just because certain tactics are illegal, does not make them the wrong pathway for achieving change," he said. "Just because certain tactics are legal, does not make them the best avenue for facilitating change. The quickest way to make an animal free is to open the cages and let 'em go, not to write your senator or hold a protest," he added.

Yourofsky will continue to speak in support of animal rights until people understand that "nonviolence through animal liberation is the only ethical and acceptable way to live on this planet."


Animal Rights Activist Changes Tactics But Still Stands Firm (Oakland Press)

Lonely Life of an Animal Rights Activist in the Midwest (Toledo Blade)

By Jack Lessenberry

The following excerpts appeared in The Oakland Press and The Toledo Blade on June 15, 2003.

Oak Park native Gary Yourofsky likes to call himself the "most radical animal rights activist in the Midwest." It is hard to disagree. He regards slaughterhouses and factory farms as the equivalent of Nazi death camps. He thinks zoos and aquariums are evil penitentiaries for innocent creatures who have done no wrong. Pet shops are slave markets. Restaurants serving meat are an atrocity. He passionately believes animal research is not only immoral, but also useless when it comes to human beings.

And he is convinced that meat-eaters are slowly poisoning themselves. "Aren't humans amazing animals? They kill all kinds of wildlife by the millions and then turn around and terrorize domestic animals by the billions," this muscular 32-year-old intones to college, high school and elementary classrooms all over the nation, voice rising with messianic zeal.

Nobody who meets him ever forgets him. Completely bald, he has pale white skin, round glasses, piercing brown eyes and a giant tattoo of himself wearing a mask and holding a rabbit, covering most of his right forearm. "Praesto et Persto," it says in Latin. It means, I stand in front and I stand firm, he explains.

That he does. For years, he's grabbed headlines by chaining himself to cars blocking entrances to circuses, leading demonstrations against furriers and staging other "outrageous acts of compassion." He did hard time in Canada a few years ago after "liberating" 1,542 minks from an Ontario fur farm. For years, he cheerfully predicted his own assassination.

But things have changed. Yourofsky has given up overt action and is devoting himself to the lecture circuit, speaking mainly in college classrooms across the country. That doesn't mean he has mellowed: "I am always supportive of people who do the right thing by taking unjust laws into their own hands. The quickest way to free an animal is not to write your senator—it's to open up a cage."

Trouble is, he no longer thinks such stunts do much good. "I think protest has lost its luster. Look at the war," he said. "Millions of people protested going to war, and the government said: 'So what. We don't care.'"

What he has decided to do instead is spend his life promoting veganism. "The average person eats 3,000 land animals in their lifetime. Every time I make a convert, I save that many animals," he said. He does seem to be developing a following. This year, he's given around 76 talks in 17 states.

That has led, he says, to a brisk demand for the basic version of his speech, "From Liberator to Educator," which he sells on CD, DVD and VHS for $10. (Contact him at GaryTofu@earthlink.net.) The video isn't for the faint of stomach; it is interspersed with scenes of animal atrocities in slaughterhouses, circuses and research facilities.

But he is, nearly everyone agrees, a powerful speaker. If his style is a bit closer to Joseph Goebbels' than to Winston Churchill, still, he generates nearly as much fan mail from professors as students. "Your presentation was an intense emotional experience both for my students and for me personally," Jennifer Keys, a sociology professor at Kenyon College, wrote after he appeared there this winter. "Academically, I think there was tremendous value in the students seeing the way a social activist frames an issue with powerful imagery and rhetoric. This was a perfect illustration of how a 'moral entrepreneur' can raise the consciousness of individuals and sweep them up," she added.

His own consciousness was raised a bit this winter, he admitted, when he spoke in St. Marys, Ohio, and managed to have a civilized conversation with a teenage pig farmer. It did not begin well—Gary started by screaming at the top of his lungs, "Why do you hate animals?" but after a while, they shook hands. "I remember thinking, 'Here I am with Greg the pig farmer, and I don't want anything bad to happen to this guy.'"

What he does intend to do is go on hitting the road, trying to make more converts to a vegetarian diet. It is a lonely life. For a brief time, he was on the staff of PETA but he found that too confining. So now he is just on retainer.

His only home is a couch in his retired father's suburban Detroit home. His only other immediate family is a 15-year-old shepherd mix named Rex, who is too elderly to travel much these days. He's had girlfriends but nothing permanent.

"I'm still looking for my vegan princess," he says, devouring cantaloupe, getting ready to take off for a lecture series in Florida. "But I can't seem to find her."



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Mink Liberation

Jail Bond Set at $10,000 for Student Activist

By Suzy Scholz

The following story appeared in The Oakland Post (Oakland University's school paper) on April 16, 1997.

OU student and animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky was released last Thursday from Chatham County Jail in Ontario, Canada. He posted a $10,000 bond after spending more than a week and a half behind bars.

Yourofsky, along with four other Michigan residents, had been jailed since March 30 for allegedly breaking into the Ebert Fur Farm and releasing 1,500 minks in a protest against the fur industry.

The five accused are now free after posting the bond. This was about $7,500 American dollars. The activists are due back in court for another appearance on April 25. The decision on bond came Wednesday about 5 p.m., after Chatham Justice of the Peace Elaine Babcock heard testimony. However, Yourofsky and the other accused were not released until Thursday because the offices had already closed for the day.

Yourofsky faces a maximum of two years in prison on charges which include mischief and conspiracy for breaking and entering. Co-owner of Ebert Fur Farm, Tom McLellan, estimated monetary losses at $500,000. Additionally, Ebert Fur Farm was raided two weeks prior to this incident, at which time, according to McLellan, 400 minks were released. A group named the Earth Liberation Front took claim to the event shortly later in a letter to the Toronto Sun.

Early news reports had stated that police believed the five were affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front and involved in the prior incident. Yourofsky, however, denies involvement. "I have no affiliation with Earth Liberation Front or any law-breaking human rights or animal rights group. I am simply a true humanitarian who opposes every form of oppression and discrimination," he said in a prepared statement.

Yourofsky has been actively involved in fighting and education about animal rights. He is president of ADAPTT, a non-profit animal advocacy organization which publishes a monthly newsletter.

ADAPTT's mission statement reads, in part, "We are uncompromisingly opposed to the so-called sport of hunting and the wearing of animal skin, mainly fur, but also including leather, wool, silk, down, etc. Plus, ADAPTT supports the eventual phasing out of animals for food consumption."

Yourofsky could not comment on the specifics of the case. However, in a statement to The Post, he said, "I am a true humanitarian who opposes the worldwide, ignominious philosophies of injustice and inequity...It is beyond absurdity and more along the lines of insidiousness that the media, the courts and a large portion of society would label a true humanitarian as a terrorist! A comment of that nature is an institutionalized, discriminatory malapropism."


Jail Made Him Feel Like Caged Mink

By Larry Perl

The following story appeared in The Mirror (Royal Oak, Mich.) on April 24, 1997.

Gary Yourofsky doesn't deny that he broke into a Canadian mink fur farm Easter Sunday and freed thousands of the caged, furry animals. After 10 days in jail, he thinks he knows how the minks must have felt.

Until his family posted a $10,000 cash bond last week, Yourofsky, a 26-year-old animal rights activist and former Royal Oak resident, had languished in a crowded cell in Chatham, Ontario, about 90 minutes from Detroit's border. He and four other suspects from the Detroit suburbs were charged with breaking and entering and mischief.

Newspaper articles depicted them as mink freedom fighters, and as animal rights terrorists.

Yourofsky says Justice of the Peace Elaine Babcock made them post a high bail because she was afraid they wouldn't return to Canada to stand trial, but she gave a Michigan man accused of two counts of sexual assault a $1,000 bond [a few weeks earlier].

He says there were 25 people in his cell, 14 beds, one shower and two toilets.

"I was no more than an animal in the zoo. It wasn't pleasant" and it reinforced "my empathy and understanding of what these animals go through," he says.

He argues philosophically that death in the wild is a better fate than anal electrocution on a mink farm. "I have videos," he says. "I can come over and show you."

Yourofsky's group ADAPTT is based in Royal Oak. He lives in West Bloomfield with his mother, who he says has been totally supportive.

Another defendant in the case, Patricia Dodson, 48, is a resident of Royal Oak. Yourofsky says Dodson is active in the organization Humanitarians for Animal Rights Education (HARE). The other three are Yourofsky's uncle, Alan Hoffman of Roseville; Farmington Hills resident Robyn Weiner, 25; and Hilma Ruby, a 59-year-old resident of Rochester Hills.

Yourofsky is a full-time journalism student at Oakland University and the host of a weekly radio talk show on WPON 1460 AM.

He says he started ADAPTT so he could write a newsletter and be independent from other animal rights groups. He says he is not affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front or any other "law-breaking human rights or animal rights groups." He says, "I am simply a true humanitarian who opposes every form of oppression and discrimination."

When Yourofsky returned home from jail last week, he learned that one of his three dogs had died of a stroke. He had already lost his beloved Bourbon a few months earlier, and he came home to find that Brandy had passed away, too. Rex is the only one of Yourofsky's dogs still alive.

"I feel like Job in the bible. Everything has been taken. I lost my dog. I lost my freedom," he said.

Yourofsky said two of the five defendants gave police in Chatham confessions, but he wasn't one of them. Friday, they'll head back to Ontario, where a judge will set a trial date. Yourofsky is reluctant to talk about the case while it's pending. However, he thinks the mink farm owner exaggerated how many minks died from exposure to the cold after their release.

Yourofsky also challenges many people's assumption that releasing the animals led them to freeze to death because they were raised in captivity and were too tame to survive in the wild. "It's absolute rubbish," he says. "Minks are wild animals."


Activist Fights for Rights of Animals

By Mike Martindale

The following article appeared in The Oakland Press (Mich.) on May 16, 1997.

In the sci-fi film 12 Monkeys, animal rights activists break into a zoo and free lions, elephants and other exotic animals from their cages.

Small wonder that the 1995 thriller is a favorite of Gary Yourofsky, one of five Michigan residents now facing charges of sneaking onto a Canadian mink farm last month and releasing 1,500 minks.

"That (12 Monkeys) is a great film, I really enjoyed it," said Yourofsky, who contends animal rights are the next civil rights issue to be advanced by society.

"Animal rights is the logical next step," Yourofsky said in one of the first interviews he's granted since his arrest. "Just like women's rights, the rights of blacks and other minorities," the 26-year-old Oakland University journalism student said. "It's just a matter of time before we all realize what we are doing to animals is wrong."

Authorities say the West Bloomfield man and others cut through wire fences at Ebert's Mink Farm in Chatham, Ontario, on Easter Sunday and opened the cages of minks being raised for the fur industry. The farm's owner, Tom McLellan, pegged the losses at the farm, about 60 miles East of Windsor, at around $500,000.

Yourofsky declined to discuss the specifics of crimes he and four others are charged with—burglary, mischief over $5,000 and possession of burglary tools—but says the claims are "highly exaggerated."

Also charged are Alan A. Hoffman, 47, of Roseville; Patricia M. Dodson, 48, of Royal Oak; Hilma Ruby, 59, of Rochester Hills; and Robyn R. Weiner, 25, of Farmington Hills.

All five are free on bond and set to appear today before Chatham Justice of the Peace Elaine Babcock for a pretrial hearing. No trial date has been set.

The case is considered serious and perhaps a benchmark for the nervous, multi-billion-dollar fur industry. It also may set a standard for handling of fur protesters, whose activities are on the rise on both sides of the border.

Chatham Prosecuting Attorney Paul Bailey referred to the defendants as "eco-terrorists" and McLellan, owner of the farm where the damage occurred, said he felt like he had been a victim of an American "invasion."

The charges are punishable by up to 14 years in prison. At one point last month it was questionable if the five Michiganders would even be allowed to post bond. "They've tried to make us out as extremists and part of some international terrorism organization who would never return to court," Yourofsky said.

"They let us sit in jail for 10 long days last month trying to prove we were part of some group ELF (Earth Liberation Front), which I've never even heard of."

Investigators said ELF bragged on the Internet that it broke into the mink farm in March. Other animal rights groups—Yourofsky said there are hundreds—promote disruption and destruction of fur farms and fur dealers in violation of law.

Though Yourofsky noted that Canadian authorities were not unkind ("we got vegetarian meals every day") he has no desire to spend another day behind bars. Still, he stressed, his jailing has not destroyed his passion for animal rights.

"If anything, spending 10 days in a jail—I was a human animal in a cage—has strengthened my feelings," he said. "I don't want to spend another day locked up, but I'm prepared to go to prison if I have to."

Yourofsky and the others have been critical of hunters, furriers and others who profit from animals—including circuses and rodeos—or use of them for the inhumane testing of products. But before Easter Sunday, they also were known as otherwise law-abiding citizens.

Yourofsky is president of ADAPTT, a nonprofit animal rights group based in Royal Oak. He also has a weekly radio program on WPON 1460 AM.

Weiner is a social worker, Dodson and Ruby were associated with Humanitarians for Animal Rights Education (HARE) and Yourofsky's uncle, Hoffman, is a truck driver.

During incarceration, Weiner and Hoffman both reportedly made statements to Ontario Provincial Police implicating themselves in the incident.

Meanwhile, Yourofsky struggles with a logic he says he can't understand. "How can it be a crime, punishable by prison, to free enslaved animals, yet it's perfectly all right to enslave, torture and kill them."


Champion or Criminal? Royal Oak Animal Activist Faces Trial in Canadian Mink Release

By Kim North Shine

The following article appeared in The Detroit Free Press on December 7, 1998.

Gary Yourofsky has locked himself to fur coat racks, chained himself beneath cars to block the circus and stood unarmed deriding a gun-toting pigeon hunter—all in the name of animals. But don't call him an animal lover. "It's not about loving animals. It's about fighting injustice," the Royal Oak resident says. "My whole goal is for humans to have as little contact as possible with animals."

His fight against what he believes is animal abuse by businesses such as circuses, research labs and furriers has made him enemies and he's been arrested four times. Yourofsky, 28, could be facing his toughest penalty yet, in Canada, when he goes on trial in Chatham, Ontario, March 1. The possible punishment: 12 to 18 months in prison. In the US he only has been sentenced to fines for his misdemeanor convictions.

He is accused of freeing thousands of caged mink from a Canadian fur farm in a middle-of-the-night break-in in April 1997. He and four other metro Detroiters were charged in the raid, which the Ontario farm owner said cost him $260,000.

Some of Yourofsky's cohorts reached pleas in return for their testimony, with the Ontario crown attorney, who has promised a prosecution that will tell US animal rights activists to stay out of Canada. But Yourofsky refuses to bargain. "To cooperate with an unjust system would be saying their position is right and mine is wrong, when the truth remains that animals are treated viciously and vilely," he said.

Some of his adversaries say he treats them viciously. Tom McLellan, owner of the raided Ebert's Fur Farm, said the world should be afraid of people who want to shut down legitimate businesses. "It's one thing to protest," he said. "But it's a whole other thing to destroy people's business and lives." McLellan lost 1,542 mink the night of the raid, 1,500 of them pregnant. At trial, McLellan expects the courtroom to be filled with outraged townspeople pushing for jail time. "If we don't, it'll set a precedent that we don't take this crime seriously," he said.

Arthur Bricker, owner of Bricker-Tunis Furs in West Bloomfield Township, whose store has been picketed and pelted with red paint, says Yourofsky "is dangerous and he distorts the truth. Prison is where he belongs."

But half hoping for a prison term, Yourofsky, an Oakland University journalism graduate, sees it as an opportunity to become an international champion of animals, changing people's minds about eating, wearing, hunting and entertaining with animals. The substitute school teacher neither eats nor wears anything derived from an animal. His dog Rex eats vegetarian dog food. And Yourofsky misses family holiday meals because he won't sit at a table with dead animals on it. He devotes nearly all of his energy to abolishing animal-supplied businesses.

"I'm in schools educating kids about animal enslavement, and I'm getting arrested. It all has to be done," he said.

His peaceful approach has won acceptance from mainstream animal professionals, including Detroit Zoo Director Ron Kagan. He has endorsed Yourofsky's proposal to ban circuses with animal acts, which Kagan said are cruel and even dangerous to spectators. For now, Yourofsky, who is a Michigan contact for several national animal rights groups, will keep moving the animal rights machine from his apartment.

The centerpiece of his operation is a 42-hole cardboard postman's box that he calls animal rights central. There are boxes for cloning, religion, zoos and aquariums. There's one for lethal research on live animals, which he most detests. There are boxes for rodeos, bears, chimps, fur/leather, Oprah Winfrey/beef, hunting and product testing. Across the room are videos for converting nonbelievers. "If I could show everyone this seven-minute video, I would change the world," he said.

A sociology class at Sterling Heights High School recently watched. The horrific pictures show foxes and chinchilla being anally electrocuted. Cows and goats are slashed across the throat, dying slowly in pooled blood.

Yourofsky likes to compare himself to the century's great social fighters, including Martin Luther King Jr. He can quote them from memory—for instance, Mahatma Gandhi: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." He predicts he'll lead the movement in Michigan, if not the Midwest, within a few years.

"Gary has a big ego, but I could see him playing a big role," said Scott Harris, president of the Michigan Federation of Humane Societies. "You need people in any social movement who will bring the issue to the forefront. Gary is doing that, and he's done it in a short time."

Two years ago Yourofsky made the drastic conversion to rid his life of animal products. Three years earlier he went vegetarian when his bond with his dog convinced him to show strict compassion for all animals. That's when he came up with an abolition list of businesses that rely on animals.

Through his nonprofit animal education organization called ADAPTT, he has a cadre of supporters who will carry out his plan of attack with militancy—civil disobedience, animal liberations and protests—and with public school programs, public service announcements and legislative changes.


Animal Activist Swears Off Eating

By Kim North Shine

The following article appeared in The Detroit Free Press on April 28, 1999.

Animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky vowed a hunger strike Tuesday after he was sentenced to six months in a Canadian prison for releasing 1,500 mink from an Ontario fur farm in 1997.

The 28-year-old Royal Oak resident was also ordered by Ontario Superior Court Justice Anthony Cusinato to pay $34,298.06 in restitution to Ebert's Fur Farm in Blenheim, Ontario, which was damaged by Yourofsky and four other metro Detroiters in a predawn break-in.

After the sentencing in Chatham, Ontario, Yourofsky read a statement to the audience of mostly local farmers: "For every mink that ever languished in a tiny cage and was savagely murdered at Ebert's Fur Farm, I will go hungry. And for the 40 million other animals worldwide that have the skin ripped off their backs in a disgusting display of barbarity in the name of vanity, I will go hungry."

His hunger strike could make Yourofsky, a substitute schoolteacher and director of a program that teaches students about animal suffering, a worldwide martyr for the animal rights movement.

Activists nationwide won't eat for a week in support of Yourofsky, said Hanna Gibson of ADAPTT.

Tom McLellan, the second-generation owner of Ebert's Fur Farm, said he was angered by Yourofsky's lack of remorse. "He could care less what happened to us," said McLellan, whose family has closed one its fur farms from the property damage, loss of animals, and much-needed breeding cards that were stolen.

Yourofsky was convicted of breaking and entering to commit theft. Two other suspects finished 90-day sentences, and two were sentenced to community service in exchange for testimony.

Alan Hoffman, Yourofsky's uncle from Roseville, might have provided the most damaging testimony in Yourofsky's four-day trial, when he described the bumbled raid and getaway.

But animal rights groups will likely hail Yourofsky as a champion along with animal research lab arsonist Barry Horne of London, England, who ended a 68-day hunger strike in December. And as the animal rights movement swirls around its latest cause celebre, McLellan and other fur farmers will be on watch. "At least for now, we can sleep through the night," he said.



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Billboards and TV Ads

Freeway Banners Take up Dilemma of Life and Death

By Tom Greenwood

The following excerpts appeared in the Commuting section of The Detroit News on December 4, 1998.

Sometimes the journey to work is more than just a commute. Sometimes it's an ironic ride that veers between our appetites for food and philosophy.

At the Warren I/75 overpass, there was another banner. Measuring 25 feet by 5 feet, it said: "Holidays are Murder on Turkeys." The banner was sponsored by PETA and ADAPTT. The groups were protesting the slaughter of turkeys—primarily during the holiday season—for human consumption.

I also located one of the turkey people. His name is Gary Yourofsky, a native of Royal Oak, and founder of ADAPTT. Earlier that day Yourofsky had picketed in front of the federal building in Detroit threatening to burn the British flag to protest vivisection in the country. The flag was spared. He also has been arrested four times for protesting the treatment of animals in circuses and rodeos and is facing trial in Canada for allegedly helping to release a couple thousand mink from a fur farm near Chatham in 1997.

Yourofsky said he was a banner bearer to tell commuters what a "vile and vicious holiday Thanksgiving really is."

"Christmas and Thanksgiving are masked in false benevolence in that 40 million turkeys are murdered for the holidays," Yourofsky said. "Not to mention Native Americans, which is another issue altogether."


Billboard Rips Circuses for Animal Acts

By Kim North Shine

The following excerpts appeared in The Detroit Free Press on September 8, 1999.

The circus is coming to town, and an eye-catching billboard is here to greet it. More important to the people who paid for the sign, it will scream out a message to thousands of drivers along southbound I-75 near West Grand Blvd. in Detroit: "Chained, caged and abused for your entertainment. The circus sucks!"

Next to the words are three pictures: A caged tiger, a caged lion, and a chained elephant. Circled in red are the shackles around the ankle and a chain tethering the elephant to a wall.

ADAPTT's anti-circus billboard was erected on September 3, 1999 along 1-75 and West Grand Blvd. in Detroit.

A Royal Oak animal rights group, ADAPTT, raised $5,000 for the sign, which went up Friday near the Ambassador Bridge. "I truly believe without a doubt that the circus is an animal slavery enterprise. Animals endure vicious beatings, endless confinement with chains or cages, forced trickery and torturous hours of non air-conditioned transportation," said Gary Yourofsky, president of ADAPTT. Last year the group circulated a proposal to several cities asking that they outlaw circuses with animal acts. Detroit Zoo Director Ron Kagan endorsed that proposal, saying the travel and training of the animals is cruel.

Said Paula Witt, spokeswoman for the UniverSoul Circus: "We understand their concerns. Whether its people or animals, we are opposed to cruelty or mistreatment. ...And we support all efforts to monitor and regulate the treatment of animals." The circus starts today at Chene Park in Detroit and runs through September 19. Ringling Bros. comes to Detroit October 7-10. UniverSoul has never been cited by federal regulators for poor animal treatment; Ringling was cited last year by the USDA for the deaths of an elephant, a sea lion and a tiger.


Animal Rights Advocates Protest Circus in Detroit

By The Associated Press

The following article appeared in The Ann Arbor News on September 8, 1999.

The circus is coming to town, but one eye-catching billboard isn't giving it a warm welcome.

The billboard along I-75 near downtown, says, "Chained, caged and abused for your entertainment. The circus sucks!" It also shows a caged tiger, a caged lion and a chained elephant, shackles around their ankles and a chain tethering the elephant to a wall.

A Royal Oak animal rights group, ADAPTT, raised $5,000 for the sign, which went up Friday. The UniverSoul Circus starts Wednesday at Chene Park and runs through Sept. 19.

"I truly believe without a doubt that the circus is an animal slavery enterprise," said Gary Yourofsky, the group's president. "Animals endure vicious beatings, endless confinement with chains or cages, forced trickery and torturous hours of non air-conditioned transportation."

Last year the group circulated a proposal to several cities asking that they outlaw circuses with animal acts.

"We understand their concerns," Said Paula Witt, spokeswoman for the UniverSoul Circus: We are opposed to cruelty or mistreatment. ...And we support all efforts to monitor and regulate the treatment of animals."


Animal Rights Group Slams Detroit Circus on I-75 Sign

By The Associated Press

The following article appeared in The Grand Rapids Press on September 9, 1999.

The circus is coming to town, but one eye-catching billboard isn't giving it a warm welcome.

The billboard along I-75 near downtown, says, "Chained, caged and abused for your entertainment. The circus sucks!" It also shows a caged tiger, a caged lion and a chained elephant, shackles around their ankles and a chain tethering the elephant to a wall.

A Royal Oak animal rights group, ADAPTT, raised $5,000 for the sign, which went up Friday. The UniverSoul Circus starts Wednesday at Chene Park and runs through Sept. 19.

"I truly believe without a doubt that the circus is an animal slavery enterprise," said Gary Yourofsky, the group's president. "Animals endure vicious beatings, endless confinement with chains or cages, forced trickery and torturous hours of non air-conditioned transportation."

Last year the group circulated a proposal to several cities asking that they outlaw circuses with animal acts.

"We understand their concerns," Said Paula Witt, spokeswoman for the UniverSoul Circus: We are opposed to cruelty or mistreatment. … And we support all efforts to monitor and regulate the treatment of animals."

UniverSoul has never been cited by federal regulators for poor animal treatment. The Ringling Bros., which will come to Detroit Oct. 7-10, was cited last year by the USDA for the deaths of an elephant, a sea lion and a tiger. Deaths of circus animals and fatal attacks on their trainers are rare, as are animal rampages, circus leaders say.


Billboard Targets Fur Wearers

By Kim North Shine

The following excerpts appeared in The Detroit Free Press on November 18, 1999.

Just as fur coats are coming out of storage, a billboard has risen above a major Detroit freeway to remind people who originally wore the plush garments.

The graphic antifur ad, on northbound Lodge Fwy. at 8 Mile Rd., went up overnight Wednesday. It shows a bloody, skinned fox head—although it's hard to tell exactly what animal it is—on a fur background. The picture is accompanied by a white-lettered caption that takes a shot at fur-coat wearers: "Here's the rest of your fur coat. Have a nice day while she bleeds to death."

ADAPTT's anti-fur billboard was erected in November 1999 along northbound Lodge Fwy. at 8 Mile Rd.

Royal Oak resident Gary Yourofsky, president of the nonprofit ADAPTT, designed the ad. His group and the national group In Defense of Animals paid $4,150 for the billboard, Yourofsky said. It will be up for at least 60 days.

Yourofsky, 29, doesn't apologize if the billboard is offensive. In September, ADAPTT posted an anti-circus billboard at I-75 at West Grand Blvd. The latest billboard coincides with the start of 16 days of national protests against department stores that sell furs. Locally, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue are the targets.

"People should be offended by what's happening to these animals. People shouldn't think they are too precious to be offended. What I'm hoping is that people turn around, get my number and call me and let me explain to them what's going on," Yourofsky said.

Yourofsky and other groups whose goal is to abolish the fur trade say the animals live in tiny, dirty cages. They say they're denied the outdoors, including their (mink) popular pastime of swimming. They also say the animals are killed in inhumane ways such as anal electrocution and neck-breaking.

Yourofsky served time earlier this year in a Canadian prison for releasing thousands of mink from an Ontario fur farm. He said he speaks for animals who deserve better lives. "We just want to make people think. Is what we're doing to animals right?"


Koalas, Nevil, Fur, etc.

The following comment by the editors of The Detroit News appeared on the editorial page on November 20, 1999.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: A new billboard sign on the northbound Lodge Fwy. at 8 Mile Road, posted by an anti-fur organization, shows a gruesome skinned head of an animal and announces: "Here's the rest of your fur coat." Meanwhile, Internet journalist Matt Drudge has been ordered by Fox News Network not to show pictures of a human fetus on his TV show as part of his anti-abortion commentary.


Animal Rights Activist Gets TV Station to Air Graphic Commercial

By Christy Strawser

The following excerpts appeared in The Daily Tribune (Royal Oak, Mich.) on December 28, 1999.

In a 45-minute extemporaneous address, animal rights activist Gary Yourofsky convinced Channel 7 (WXYZ-ABC) executives to air the most graphic acts of animal violence in Detroit television history.

His final 30-second commercial protesting furs as fashion aired Monday. The commercials Yourofsky, 28, persuaded the network to air over the holiday weekend were filled with images of animals writhing in traps, being electrocuted and dying in other ways.

A voice-over tells the audience that "every year millions of animals are confined in tiny cages and killed by anal and genital electrocutions, gassings and neck-breakings. Sometimes they're even skinned alive."

The station stopped the footage short of showing an animal actually die, which was the only compromise Yourofsky said he was willing to make.

"I'm pretty pleased with the outcome," said Yourofsky, president of the Royal Oak-based ADAPTT. "It was revolutionary. Nothing like that has ever aired."

Animal rights activists across the country have tried for years to get similar footage on the airwaves. But they've always been rejected.

Yourofsky said it was a speech from the heart that convinced the local station his commercial was airable. It was sponsored by the California-based group In Defense of Animals.

"I just talked, basically condemning injustice," he said. Then he showed executives the footage he wanted to air. "It worked," he said. "When it was over, the room was visibly shaken."

It was a difficult decision to let the $2,000 commercial run, said Bob Silva, general sales manager for Channel 7. But, he added, it seemed to be the right one. And the station hasn't heard otherwise from many people. "The funny thing is that we got only a handful of letters," Silva said. "And maybe six or seven phone calls. There hasn't been a tremendous amount of feedback."

A good number of the responses came from people who supported the commercial, he said. But there was an outcry from some local furriers. A Fur Commission USA spokeswoman contacted the station, saying the commercial has false content.

Yourofsky disagrees, saying everything in his commercial is correct. "We're standing up for the truth," he said.

Controversy is nothing new to the substitute teacher, who said he's been arrested 5 or 6 times in the last several years at demonstrations protesting animal abuse. Most recently he spent 77 days imprisoned in London, Ontario, for sneaking onto a fur farm and releasing 1,500 mink. He was sentenced for burglary, mischief and possession of burglary tools.

But it didn't deter Yourofsky, who, with the help of fellow ADAPTT supporters, put up a graphic billboard on the Lodge Fwy. recently with a picture of a skinned fox, trying to deter people from purchasing fur.

"I want people not to buy fur, period. I have no intention of stopping," he said.



Activist Suing WXYZ to get Video Back

By Christy Strawser

The following article appeared in The Daily Tribune (Royal Oak, Mich.) on February 17, 2000.

An animal rights activist is readying a legal battle against a local television station over a videotape he claims it owes him. Activist Gary Yourofsky of Royal Oak filed a lawsuit recently in Southfield's 46th District Court, claiming that WXYZ-TV/Channel 7 kept the master copy of a tape featuring slaughtered animals.

Yourofsky contends that he owns the commercial on the tape—though the television station paid for it (the tape)—and said it won't release it for fear of repercussions from furrier advertisers.

Without the master tape, Yourofsky said he can't air the commercial on any other station.

Channel 7 general sales manager Bob Silva said it seems that Yourofsky is making a big deal out of nothing. He said the station keeps master copies of all of its commercials, and predicts the issue will probably be settled out of court. But Yourofsky is preparing for a fight.

"Why should I pay to redo it?" Yourofsky asked. "If they don't return it, I'll make their lives miserable. I'll protest the hell out of them."

Silva said the activist filed the suit without ever putting in writing a request to keep the tape the station produced for him. He said if Yourofsky had, Channel 7 would probably have just given him the tape.

Yourofsky, the 28-year-old president of ADAPTT—an animal rights organization—contends that he was turned down when he asked for the master tape. He said he was told the station owned it. In the lawsuit, Yourofsky also is asking to recover the $2,000 he paid to air the ads at the end of last year. "I'm not out here to make friends," he said. "But I've been vilified for no good reason."

The commercials Yourofsky is trying to recover showed the most graphic acts of violence aired in Detroit television history. They depicted animals writhing in traps, being electrocuted and dying in other ways. A voice-over told the audience that "every year millions of animals are confined in tiny cages and killed by anal and genital electrocutions, gassings, and neck-breakings. Sometimes they're even skinned alive."

National fur organizations protested saying animals aren't skinned alive. But locally it didn't raise much commotion. Silva said Channel 7 received a handful of letters and maybe 6 or 7 phone calls about the commercials. One of those who protested said the station should never have aired the spots.

"These people are fanatics," said the owner of a local fur shop, who asked to remain anonymous for his safety. "We're not dealing with people who are civil. And the agenda they're pushing is wrong."

Yourofsky, who's been arrested five or six times in the last several years, remains strong in his cause. "Just like in this case, it always comes down to money," he said. "But we're right and they're wrong."


Sign of the Times

By Gary Yourofsky

The following article appeared in The Animals' Agenda Sept./Oct. 2000 edition.

Since the entire planet has been inundated with endless lies about how animals are treated at circuses, rodeos, fur farms, factory farms, slaughterhouses and research labs, it is our duty to inundate the public with the truth.

As a movement, we have done a poor job of exposing—via advertising—the suffering that our planetary companions endure. A few billboards here and there. Some radio spots. And very few, if any, TV ads. Our lack of advertising allows the animal killers to continue their carnage with low visibility. Yet, by engaging in advertising, animal advocates can expose the abusers as the extreme terrorists that they are.

All forms of advertisements must be done in order to de-program the masses who unknowingly have been transformed into mindless, animal-abusing robots. It is partly our fault for not continually inundating the public with the graphic truth about every premeditated form of animal slavery and animal murder.

ADAPTT, Michigan's most active animal liberation organization, has always been uncompromisingly truthful when discussing the depraved tradition of human-to-animal slavery.

Since September 1999, ADAPTT has erected three billboards. One, which reads "Chained, caged and abused for your entertainment. The Circus Sucks," cost $4,650 and went up on I-75 in Detroit and stayed there for two months. Vision Media, the billboard company that ran all of our ads, was sympathetic to the cause, so it remained up for an additional 90 days. Nearly 100,000 motorists each day observed the ad, which included images of a chained elephant, a caged lion and a caged tiger.

ADAPTT felt the "Circus Sucks" tag line would catch on with the younger crowd, and it did. Plus, when the TV and radio outlets covered the ad, it repeated the line this way: "Local activists have sent a strong message to the circus industry. They've sponsored a billboard proclaiming, "The Circus Sucks."

ADAPTT's compassionate advertising ruckus continued on The Lodge Fwy. last November with the help of In Defense of Animals. The $4,000 anti-fur billboard showed a bloodied, skinned fox with the tag line, "Here's the rest of your fur coat. Have a nice day while she bleeds to death." More than 50,000 motorists each day were given the opportunity to think about the deadly fur trade.

ADAPTT and IDA then teamed up for another billboard on the same freeway. This one said, "Stop animal torture. Boycott Procter & Gamble" and went up in May, accompanied by several graphic photos of abused rabbits. The best part of all three billboard campaigns is that additional media was garnered from newspaper, TV and radio coverage, which increased the outreach and reduced the cost of the ad.

When erecting a billboard, sending press releases and making phone calls to other media outlets are a must. Play up the angle that it is thought-provoking, graphic, shocking, truthful and pithy. Most of the time, reporters will bite.

If you are interested in billboard advertising, contact all the companies in your area. Although the bigger ones will be more hesitant to erect controversial ads, the smaller ones often will jump on board.

Billboard companies can create the artwork for your campaign for about $1,000, but you can haggle for a better deal or supply artwork via an animal-friendly graphic artist, which will reduce the cost, too. Some groups who have done their own billboards might allow you to borrow the vinyl (artwork) for free as well.

Stand firm and explain that you simply want the right to condemn animal suffering while most companies advertise to condone it. Stay solid. Be honest. Know your issues. Be eloquent. Insist on your right to advertise truthfully and powerfully with graphic images.

After seeing the skinned-fox billboard, Witko Indoor Advertising, a company that displays ads in restaurant and bar restrooms, donated a few hundred at-cost ads to help galvanize ADAPTT's anti-fur campaign. Witko representatives said if restroom ads are available in your area, the company will offer advertising space at a slightly reduced rate. Contact Witko at 734-261-1092 or www.witko.com.



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Defining Animal Rights

Treat All of God's Creatures Equally

By Gary Yourofsky

The following editorial appeared in The Macomb Daily (Mich.) on June 18, 1997.

Joseph Perkins' May 21 column, "Rabid fringe pushes animal rights," was egregious. The prose was tainted with erroneous facts and assumptions. I'm not surprised, however, by Perkins' ignorance and hubris.

Let me briefly describe myself. I run a nonprofit animal rights group called ADAPTT. Moreover, I am a true humanitarian who cannot be deceived by society's prevarications, which are driven by money, power and dominance.

The column's first mistake was the failure to understand what Ingrid Newkirk said about animal experimentation. Besides explaining that all beings suffer alike, she was describing the biomedical community's credo for its fraudulent justification of vivisection. Since animal researchers believe that vivisection can benefit humans, the biomedical establishment is saying that a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.

Second, the story claimed that the polio vaccine was developed with monkeys. But the vaccine, invented in 1944, failed to destroy the artificially induced, polio-like symptoms that were re-created in the ensuing rhesus monkey experiments. In turn, the public was denied the vaccine until 1954 after Salk and his medical team realized that rhesus monkeys were anatomically, physiologically and immunologically different from humans. How many lives do you think were lost to polio during that wasted 10-year span?

Third, if anyone even considers chemotherapy to be a successful procedure, the technique was developed and refined through the true scientific methods of human-based clinical research, computer and mathematical models, and cellular and molecular biology.

Fourth, heart by-pass surgery was developed with the aforesaid methods and years of human trial-and-error operations.

Moreover, animal testing has not contributed one valuable piece of information relevant to a human, ever. Since animals don't get human diseases and humans don't get animal diseases, vivisection cannot work.

Since columnist Joe Perkins claims to be an informed journalist, then why doesn't he ask true scientists about medical inquiries? Instead he quotes Newkirk and uses PETA as a generic animal rights term like most people use the terms Xerox and Kleenex.

Furthermore, it is utterly despicable and downright ignominious that an African-American would be so condescending toward the subjugation of animals. As a Jewish person whose people were enslaved and murdered in Nazi Germany, I never want to see any sentient being put through a similar atrocity. Perkins and all African-Americans should feel the same about putting sentient beings through the manacles of slavery.

And don't misconstrue the aforementioned point. Animals are not more important than humans. But everyone must understand that importance and a comparative worth analysis are irrelevant to the way animals should be treated in this society. Simply put, all sentient beings deserve to be treated as equals.

If people want to learn the truth about animal rights, they should open their eyes and ears, feed their heads and not be embarrassed to admit that their lifestyle supports a cruel, pernicious industry of animal exploitation.


Animal Activist to Go on Hunger Strike

By Tania Prepolec

The following article appeared in The Oakland Post (Oakland U.'s school paper) on April 15, 1998.

Hunger pangs and a jail cell won't be enough to deter OU student Gary Yourofsky from attempting to eradicate what he believes are "premeditated murderous acts committed against animals."

Yourofsky, one of five activists charged with breaking and entering for allegedly liberating 1,500 minks from Eberts Fur Farm in Blenheim, Ontario, last April, will be facing trial in Ontario this June.

Yourofsky, journalism senior, is the president and founder of ADAPTT, an organization focused on animal rights. If convicted, Yourofsky will conduct a 30-to-40 day hunger strike "to protest the everlasting torture that animals endure on a daily basis," he said. Throughout the strike, Yourofsky's only sustenance will be water. If acquitted, he will still conduct a 7-day strike in honor of Josh Ellerman, a 19-year-old activist recently sentenced to 35 years.

I want people to acknowledge the seriousness of the strike...not for me, but for the animal rights movement which has stagnated, he said. "You need something of this caliber in order to get people's attention," he added.

Currently, Yourofsky is in the process of recruiting activists nationwide for participation in the strike. With the help of conventions, newsletters, word of mouth and the Internet, he has received commitments from 40 people. That represents 10 states, he said.

By June, he'd like to have at least one representative from every state. "People may select a 1-to-7 day strike in accordance with my possible 40-day strike," he said. "Drinking fruit juice will be permissible for participants," he added. "I hope this action will be the catalyst to ignite and invigorate the movement."

Although he hasn't consulted with a doctor, Yourofsky believes that his health, veganism, determination and his mindset will get him through the 40 days. "I won't stop if my health fails," he said.

However, if he falls unconscious, people will have the right to step in and force feed him, he said.

A major goal is to bring attention to the five methods of death practiced at fur farms: Gassings, anal electrocutions, genital electrocutions, neck-breakings, and toxic chemical injections.

Another goal is to abolish the fur industry. "Our philosophy doesn't include making conditions better. It's time for abolition," he said.


A Proposed Resolution in Support of Gary Yourofsky

By Donald Perkins Esq.

The following proposal appeared in the State Bar of Michigan Animal Law Section spring/summer 1999 newsletter (Vol. 3 No. 1).

RESOLVED: In recent times some citizens, including some from Michigan, acting from motives of compassion and concern for the protection of animals, have committed nonviolenct acts of disobedience to laws, statutes, and ordinances. In some of these instances, property used in the exploitation of animals was deliberatley damaged or destroyed. These acts were committed for the purpose of protecting animals from cruel treatment and suffering at the hands of researchers, farmers, ranchers, and others who exploit animals for economic gain.

We recognize that throughout this nation's history, other individuals, acting from conscience in obedience to moral law, have similarly violated certain laws and ordinances. This was true for antislavery abolitionists before the Civil War, who helped slaves escape to freedom in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act which required that escaped slaves be returned to their legal owners. In our own time, these same principles of nonviolent disobedience to unjust laws have been applied by such individuals as the Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom were—as was Michigan's Gary Yourofsky, President of ADAPTT—sentenced to jail for their actions.

Today, because we see the animal protection movement as encompassing great moral truths of liberty, equality and kinship with all living creatures, both human and animal, we cannot condemn those individuals who, oftentimes at great personal sacrifice, act upon these moral principles for the purpose of relieving or preventing the suffering of defenseless animals. As lawyers, we recognize and respect the rule of law, but we note that law must ever rest upon a foundation of truth and justice. We cannot and do not, therefore, condemn these principled persons for their nonviolent acts to protect animals, even when their acts may be in violation of local, state, or federal statutes.

To Mr. Gary Yourofsky of Royal Oak, Michigan, now incarcerated in Canada for his role in freeing hundreds of mink from a ‘fur farm,' we extend our respect, admiration, and support.

The above resolution will be proposed for adoption by the Animal Law Section Council meeting in Lansing on June 12, 1999.


Stop Hunting, Boycott Circus to Save All Animals from Bloodshed

By Gary Yourofsky

The following editorial appeared in The Oakland Press (Mich.) on October 16, 1999.

The animal rights movement 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."

The animal rights mission statement is clear and unambiguous. We are seeking the abolition of animal use in medical research, product testing, circuses and rodeos. We are opposed to the so-called sport of hunting, the wearing of animal skin and the consumption of animals. Moreover, we are an unwavering supporter of human rights, and we are seeking an end to discrimination of all kinds. With help, we can end unnecessary bloodshed, malicious treatment and injustices for all sentient beings.

The movement employs tactics to facilitate positive and meaningful changes. We lecture at universities and other schools. We gather in protests in accordance with our First Amendment rights to assemble. We pass out literature. We compose and push for animal-friendly legislation to change or eradicate unjust laws. We engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. Some activists even take part in direct action campaigns by intentionally breaking unjust laws that allow animal torture.

In early 1999, I spent 77 days in a maximum security detention center after freeing 1,542 minks. Keep in mind, throughout history, laws have always been broken to achieve substantive change.

Please help us free out planetary companions and live a nonviolent lifestyle. Stop donating money to animal researching charities. 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, go vegan and refuse to consume anything that once had a face, a mother or a bowel movement.


Activist Explores True Meaning of Animal Liberation

By Gary Yourofsky

The following editorial appeared in The Oakland Post (Oakland U.'s school paper) on February 13, 2002.

Animal rights activists believe 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."

The mission statement of the animal liberation movement is unambiguous. We want to abolish animal use in medical research, product testing, circuses and rodeos. We are opposed to the so-called sport of hunting, the wearing of animal skin and the consumption of animals as food. We condemn animal prisons like zoos and marine jails like aquariums for putting animals on display. Moreover, we are an unwavering supporter of human rights, and we are seeking an end to discrimination of all kinds. With your help, we can end the unnecessary bloodshed, malicious treatment and injustices that all sentient beings endure.

The movement employs a variety of tactics to facilitate change. We lecture at universities, high schools and elementary schools. We gather in sign-carrying protests in accordance with our First Amendment right to assemble. We pass out literature via leafleting and tabling. We compose and lobby for animal-friendly legislation to change or eradicate unjust laws. We engage in nonviolent forms of civil disobedience and direct action like our social justice predecessors, i.e., Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

We also support the courageous freedom fighters of the Animal Liberation Front. In fact, as an ALF activist, I once spent 77 days in maximum security for my role in the 1997 liberation of 1,542 mink from an animal concentration camp which is euphemistically referred to as a "fur farm." If anyone believes that violating laws is improper, ineffective or ignominious, remember that Gandhi, King and Jesus were routine lawbreakers. And laws have always been broken to achieve substantive change. Legality or illegality is not interchangeable with morality and immorality.

Please help free our planetary companions by living a nonviolent lifestyle. Stop donating money to animal-researching charities like the March of Dimes and MDA. 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, go vegan and refuse to consume anything that once had a face, a mother or a bowel movement.

Activists understand that everyone is busy, so we're not insisting that people come to protests or engage in civil disobedience. Simply put, we want you 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."


What You Give Is What You Should Get

By Gary Yourofsky

The following editorial appeared in The Shield (U. of Southern Indiana's school paper) on January 24, 2008.

Ever since Pythagoras promulgated peace to our planetary companions some 2,600 years ago, the animal rights community has utilized pacifism in its attempts to facilitate substantive change. As a proponent of education, my activism is no different. Each year I give around 250 lectures on ethical veganism to over 10,000 students explaining that victims of discrimination, slavery and murder come in all shapes and sizes. Many students thank me for removing their blinders and subsequently eliminate meat, cheese, milk and eggs from their diets. After all, consuming the cut-up corpses of murdered animals—and the things that ooze out of their bodies—is hardly an enlightened way of living.

However, author Sam Harris explained a major flaw with pacifism activism: "When your enemy has no scruples, your own scruples become another weapon in his hand."

So, while my lifestyle and lectures are based on compassion, those who refuse to stop harming animals force me to support 'eye for an eye' and 'by any means necessary' philosophies.

In a world full of lying politicians and deceitful public relations, I hope you'll appr