2005
Director
of Animal Welfare for Silverlake - Dr. Rich Mc Lellan
2006 Chair of
the Platform Committee
I retired from a career in
Emergency Medicine to devote more of my time to the deteriorating relationship
between humans and the biosphere.
Consciousness and the awareness of being
alive are rare entities in the universe. They, and the suffering they
are capable of sustaining are not trivial but worthy of our most concentrated
attention and action. My early training was in responding to disease and
suffering in humans and we do a pretty good job of this in this country, but
as time went on, I became aware of the much greater pain and injustice
suffered by non humans, and our almost total failure to acknowledge or
address this reality. In my opinion, It is the greatest failure of
our species that we have the ability to prevent the death and suffering
in other living things but are reluctant to do so.
Where my initial efforts to
alleviate suffering in non-human animals was individual and immediate, my
efforts have switched to focus on the the laws and policies of our
society that perpetuate the prejudices and concepts of insignificance
that characterize our relationship to other sentient creatures.
I direct the Animal
Legislative Action Network, a state-wide political action committee, working
on behalf of animals. I sit on the board of the California
Animal Association, a lobbying coalition working to effect animal protective
legislation, I am the founder of Animals Elect America, an organization that
attempts to promote the creation of animal issue related political action
committees in states across the country and a founding member of Citizens for
a Humane Los Angeles, a local organization working to politicize the
humane community in Los Angeles.
In my opinion, animal welfare,
animal rights, animal justice can only occur when there are adequate
legal protections for non-human animals and those who seek to protect them.
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Rich Mc
Lellan, M.D.
Silverlake
Neighborhood Council
Director
of Animal Welfare |
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