Four of us got together recently in Baltimore and we toasted the good health of two who couldn’t be with us. From left to right are Rachelle Detweiler, Kirsten Rosenberg and Jacque West. Rachelle and Kirsten were the magazine’s stalwarts along with Jill Howard Church and Suzanne McMillan who were greatly missed that day. Jacque came to the Animal Rights Network, Agenda‘s publisher, to work on the ARN Collection, which later became part of the Tom Regan Animal Rights Archive at North Carolina State University. Jacque stayed on with me as we reinvented ARN as the Institute for Animals and Society, which merged with Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (aka Animals and Society Forum) to become the Animals and Society Institute.
People to this day still say to me how much they miss The Animals’ Agenda. Closing the magazine down was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. I knew how much people relied upon us as an independent and thoughtful source of information. Among the reasons why the magazine closed were the post-9/11 economic depression and the emergence of the Internet. Clearly, reasons beyond our control; but it’s still, I believe, a damning indictment of the animal advocacy movement that it cannot financially support such a publication as The Animals’ Agenda.
Oh well.
