President's Note

A Call to ActionIf you were to sit in my chair as president of The HSUS, you'd get an unobstructed view of the human spirit and character.The fact that an organization like ours exists-and happens to be one of the world's most powerful advocacy groups-says a great deal about the good of people.On display at The HSUS are the values of kindness, generosity, and sacrifice.I am thankful every day that millions of Americans support such a force for the good.Yet that The HSUS must exist at all reflects a harsh truth: that a species capable of so much altruism is equally capable of selfishness, greed, and cruelty.Not a day goes by when I am not shaken and confounded by acts of indifference and malice-whether it is individual cases of cruelty or large-scale exploitation by industries that are themselves models of unnerving efficiency and creativity.Indeed, we live in a society aswirl with countervailing, contradictory, and self-negating forces.But a corollary principle at The HSUS is that our broader circumstance is not static.We believe that while cruelty and greed are intensely powerful forces, they can be overcome or at least constrained through the development and enforcement of the law; the advance of logic, philosophy, and science; and the unyielding ambition of individuals to innovate and solve problems.The advance of our ideals is not self-executing, but a matter of moral agency.We must act.We must act as individuals-in the political process, in the marketplace, and as educators.And we must act as institutions, as we do at The HSUS, where our staff mobilizes rank-and-file citizens for collective action.With our experts in law, politics, the sciences, investigations, communications, and other disciplines-and the backing of millions of Americans-we have the strength to drive reform.And we are doing so to great effect, as you'll read in the pages of All Animals.We won two landmark victories in the November election.We passed Proposition 2 in California to ban the confinement of 20 million farm animals in cages and crates, winning 63.5 percent of the vote despite a $9 million campaign by factory farming interests.And in Massachusetts, we won Question 3 to ban greyhound racing after two previous efforts fell short at the ballot box and in the courts.The California campaign reminds us that we must be bold in striving to end cruelty, and the Massachusetts victory shows that we must be unrelenting in the face of occasional setbacks.All in all, we secured passage of 92 new state laws to protect animals in 2008.We also raided cockfights, dogfights, puppy mills, and other dens of cruelty.We headed into floods, fires, and hurricanes to rescue animals displaced or left behind.And we drove programs to spay and neuter dogs and cats and promote adoptions from shelters, most recently urging President Obama to choose a shelter dog for his family.While we celebrate the progress, we must resolve to press ahead.We have much unfinished business, including stopping the Canadian seal hunt, halting the wildlife trade, putting the lid on captive hunting, opening the cage doors at puppy mills, and ending the confinement of animals on factory farms in scores of other states.Especially in this turbulent economic time, we need your financial support for our lifesaving programs.But we also need other forms of action.You are The HSUS, and every one of you can be an ambassador, advocate, consumer, educator, and political activist.It is when millions of us do this work in concert that we will see the status quo altered.The HSUS is prepared to lead the way.Thank you for your support.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.