Photo: Suzanne's cat Daisy basking in the sun
My name is Suzanne Bring. I’m an NhRP supporter who lives in Pennsylvania. For over four years, I’ve been a monthly donor to the NhRP.
Growing up, I loved our family’s cats and dogs with the full passion of a child. My mother helped me send small but regular contributions to a local pet rescue after I was moved by the newsletters it sent in the mail. Still, I couldn’t explain the deep and heavy pain that came over me after my father took me to the circus in New York. He loved it, and he likely attributed my sadness to mere childish moodiness.
As an adult, I’ve always lived with beloved cats and appreciated their complexity of feeling, senses, and intelligence. But it was not until my mid-30s that I recognized the brutality meted out routinely to animals used for human consumption, entertainment, and experiments. The evidence was everywhere, but not until I stumbled across an undercover activist video did I acknowledge the horror.
After that, the facts combined with my feelings: my husband and I chose a vegan lifestyle that matches our shift in values. We take part in advocacy campaigns and support the NhRP and several other organizations—ranging from those conserving animals and their habitat in the wild, to groups rescuing domestic animals, to others seeking to change animal welfare laws.
For several millennia, most of human society has been built on the bedrock that we are the highest life form, the most powerful, the most important, and that we therefore have the exclusive right to use animals as we will. We must use every tool to chip away at this bedrock—which has caused so much harm to animals, the Earth, and us.
The legal work the Nonhuman Rights Project leads is one very powerful tool. By pushing the boundaries of existing statutes and developing new case law, the NhRP is building a society in which animals have legal personhood and are no longer subject to the violence, follies, desires, and appetites of humans.
Join Suzanne in donating to the NhRP here. Through the end of the year, all donations will be doubled thanks to the generosity of a group of NhRP donors. Thank you to everyone who’s donated so far to help us continue to change how animals are viewed and treated under the law and in society at large.
