Vick at the Office, Part 2

Well to be fair, this is more of a Part 1-revisited, so if you totally understood the story the first time, feel free to browse through the archives (maybe cast your vote for this week’s Vivisector of the Week), but if you had some questions about the whole thing, here’s a quick guide to PETA’s reasoning behind providing Michael Vick with information about why animals deserve respect, and some key facts about how it all went down:

1. PETA believes that almost anyone can come to understand that animals are capable of suffering and deserve respect, if given a chance. If we didn’t, we’d have a pretty hard time getting up in the morning. Only time will tell whether Michael Vick ends up being one of those people.
2. We made it clear both to Michael Vick and the judge that, given the crimes Vick has admitted to, he needs to serve hard time and be banned from any contact with animals. We’re glad he paid attention when we gave him information about treating animals with kindness, but the guy still needs to go to prison.
3. This is not a race issue. We don’t care if he’s orange.
4. This is not a race issue. White people who fight dogs need to fry.
5. This is not a race issue. Are you deaf, or just desperate?
6. We need to give offenders a chance to open their hearts, eyes, and minds to the suffering they’ve caused. We would not be doing our jobs properly if we spent all day preaching to the choir.
7. Vick is working with children. This makes it all the more important that we arm him with facts about respect for animals and how to treat them.
8. After he took the course, Michael Vick pointed out that NFL players have a bad record of violence and said that he wished he’d taken it years ago. So do we. That’s why we’re pushing the NFL to include a similar course in empathy for animals for all of its new players.

I hope that clears a few things up. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions at all.