From the article you linked to --

*getting off the merry go round*
 

This is what gave me that ickey feeling in this thread, the lynch mob mentality for this guy. I'm no fan, and I was torn when he did it cause I liked his skills, then he did what he did and I was like *great*. It's hard for us to see this, POC get this (I do at least) feeling of impending doom when we see our people in bad light, press, arrest reports. The media paints them in such a horrid light, they are convicted before they stand trial,. I don't know if you notice this when a POC does wrong, voices are altered it's more dramatized, a white man does something and voices are more sad, people seem shocked and have that sense of "wow not him, he's so homegrown or guy next door"

So when I read the responses I was wow, people are more angry that Obama called Vick than that idiots rants about Michael Vick dying for what he did. A white man calls for a black mans death and *silence* a bunch of people angrily ask he be killed, punished more, sadistic fantasies are confessed and no one is shocked or disgusted.

I don't get it, then again I do because no one calls for a white man's blood like they do that of a MOC.

AND THAT's what made this whole thread oogey and STILL does......


I hope he proves you all wrong, and that you all can see, sometimes POC fuck up, but yeah if given a chance some of us do change, I hope he is one of them, then again even then I don't think folks would be happy.
Gross.


P.S.

If any of you have not gone into the Racism thread in the Red Zone, you really really should, maybe then you would *get* why we feel this IS about...

Race...

Thank you for the dialogue.

on a lighter note...
 

you can download the book:

The Lost Dogs: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption

Snow;

A couple of things:

1) A white man calls for the death of a black man. In other breaking news, the surface of the Sun is hot. Just another day, so of course there is silence.

2) Part of why many POC face-palm whenever some person of color does something that makes headlines in a negative fashion is because we know--not think but know--that at some point we are going to be asked some question along the lines of "why do black people love dog fighting". In the eyes of the majority, Michael Vick--a man who is incidentally black--isn't guilty of animal cruelty. A black man--who is incidentally named Michael Vick--is guilty of animal cruelty and since blacks, particularly black men, are held to be something just this side of a wild beast a clear and strong message must be sent. So that other blacks--men and women--will know where the boundaries are.

You and I both know that this is how the game is played in this country.

Cheers
Aj

"Best Friends Animal Society" is also known as "Dogtown"
 

Best Friends permanently shelters a number of Michael Vicks' pit bulls. In his blog, Francis Battista, the co-founder of Best Friends addresses the topic of forgiving Michael Vick. He does a much better job than I have so far.

".....He could begin with an apology to the animals. He would acknowledge that he found within himself something horrific and frightening — something that he can’t explain, excuse or defend, something that no amount of jail time or loss of public stature can offset.

It’s much easier to forgive someone who can’t forgive himself.

Francis Battista

Co-Founder, Best Friends Animal Society"


Full blog entry can be found here.

Jesus Fucking Christ how many times does he have to apologize???

Should he go to EVERY dog owner's house???

I hate this thread, it's ickey content is gross on so many levels.
 

He apologized here are some of his OWN words from his blog..

"What I did was horrendous. Awful. Inhumane. And I've no excuses for my actions. It makes my heart hurt now to think about what I've done. And I'm gonna be real honest, it took a while for me to get to this place. Sitting in a prison cell didn't make me feel remorse. It was meeting so many animal lovers, speaking with them and looking them in their eyes. Staring at them. Looking so deep into their eyes that I began to feel their pain. Allowing that pain to enter into my body is when I started to understand how bad it really was. I have been trying hard to connect with people who feel this pain,because for my whole life I was disconnected from the suffering of animals. And you might say, "come on Mike, how could you do those things to those dogs?" And you're right...I
ask myself those questions every day. What kind of person does this? How does a human-being treat dogs or any animal with such pain and cruelty? And the hard part for me is the answer to these questions. Because the answer is ME. And I am trying so hard right now to become a better person, because who I was, I am ashamed of."

*You* don't think Vick has gotten it, but in all honesty how do *you* know? like I said in my bolded post, he could prove ya'll wrong it ain't gonna matter, it's pretty fucking obvious cause a call for his death was voiced I don't see you having as much passion about it as you do an animal.

So yeah we aren't gonna agree.


Read his blog (I forgot to post it in my post)


http://globalgrind.com/channel/news/...what-ive-done/


Maybe then just maybe (I doubt it) you will be satisfied with his regrets.

Tell you what I will answer your question when you answer ours..

What would be an a good enough punishment for Vick?

You seem to have skipped over that particular question as well, as for ignoring this I am not advocating his heinous crimes, but I sure damn well am not gonna sit here quietly and watch the grossness that has happened in this thread and if you say that grossness has not happened I will point each and everyone out.

Not meant to de-rail, but rather to talk about community recognition of punishment completed, and the different standards "we" seem to have about repentance/rehabilitation:

Paula Poundstone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Poundstone
"In 2001, Poundstone was arrested on a felony warrant for three counts of committing a lewd act on an unidentified girl under age 14. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office also stated that Poundstone was charged with endangering two other unidentified girls and two boys.[11] Few details were released, but the prosecutor indicated that the charges were a result of an incident in which Poundstone was driving her children while intoxicated. She accepted a plea agreement and pleaded "no contest" to felony child endangerment and a misdemeanor charge of inflicting injury on a child. In exchange, the three charges of lewd conduct were dropped by prosecutors....
Since then she has used the incident—and the resulting publicity—as the source for some of her comedic material." (my bolds)

She's on a national tour right now. Are there protests? What would the community response look like if she wasn't white? She isn't apologizing, apparently she thinks its funny?

I found this article this morning......it is a blog that was originally in The Nation

Michael Vick, Racial History and Animal Rights

Melissa Harris-Perry – Thu Dec 30, 11:29 am ET

Last night I had one of those awful television moments that sometimes afflict those of us who spend part of our life in classroom where we have 90 minutes to discuss a topic and the other part of our life on television where we are constrained to four-minute analyses. On Wednesday evening I joined The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the current flap surrounding Michael Vick and President Obama.

My goal was to offer some historical context for understanding the vastly different responses to Vick’s crime, to the severity of his punishment, and to the sense that he should be given a second chance to earn a living as a professional football player. I believe that to understand these different public responses we need to know how the Vick case evokes often unspoken, but nonetheless powerful, and deeply emotional interconnections between the rights of black Americans and of animals. Instead, having vastly underestimated the allotted time for the segment I instead seemed to argue that Vick’s acts were justified by the history of American racism. This touched off quite a flood of hate mail to my email inbox last night. So I’ve decided to make one more effort to discuss this complicated issue.

Last year I was teaching an introductory politics course at Princeton University when a campus animal rights group brought to campus a fascinating and provocative exhibit that linked animal cruelty to human degradation, imprisonment and slavery. The images in the exhibit were part of a larger international PETA effort. They were disturbing, but also very powerful.

Many African American students on campus were deeply offended, hurt and angry about the exhibit's comparison of animal suffering to the realities of the slave trade and lynching. The Organization of Black Students organized a protest and boycott. The campus animal rights group organized a teach-in. I had leaders from both student organizations in my class that semester. The tension, emotion, and analytic challenges raised by the exhibit became an important aspect of the class. A group of students even made a film about the issue for the final class project. As I sought to help guide my students through these interactions I opened up a new line of research on the politics of race and animal rights.

Recall that North American slavery of the 17th and 18th century is distinguished by its "chattel" element. New World slavery did not consider enslaved Africans to be conquered persons, but to be chattel, beast of burden, fully subhuman and therefore not requiring the basic rights of humans. By defining slaves as animals and then abusing them horribly the American slave system degraded both black people and animals. By equating black people to animals it both asserted the superiority of humans to animals, arrayed some humans (black people) as closer to animals and therefore less human, and implied that all subjugated persons and all animals could be used and abused at the will of those who were more powerful. The effects were pernicious for both black people and for animals.

Equating black people to animals was a practice that continued after emancipation. Consider the image below. It is a picture of an Alabama store during the Jim Crow era. The sign reads: No Negro or Ape Allowed in the Building.

This pair of images reminds that these comparisons continue in contemporary popular culture and often with particular relevance to American sports.

When the abuse and oppression of an entire group of people is justified as acceptable because they are defined as animals, then it stands to reason the society is suggesting that abuse and oppression are acceptable ways to treat animals. Michael Vick committed horrendous acts of cruelty. I have had dogs as pets for my entire life. I am sickened by his actions. At the same time I recognize that he is one individual in a larger society that is profoundly complicit in the abuse and mistreatment of animals. Ideologies of white supremacy have particular culpability in that attitude toward animals because it was part of the governing ideology of slavery and segregation.

Given this history we might think that African Americans would be particulalry strident animal rights activists, seeing their interests as profoundly linked. But the relationship between race, rights, and animals is more complicated. Dogs, for example, were used by enslavers to catch, trap and return those who were trying to escape to freedom. Dogs were used to terrorize Civil Rights demonstrators. In short, animals have been weapons used against black bodies and black interests in ways that have deep historical resonace.

Not only have animals been used as weapons against black people, but many African Americans feel that the suffering of animals evokes more empathy and concern among whites than does the suffering of black people. For example, in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina dozens of people sent me a link to an image of pets being evacuated on an air conditioned bus. This image was a sickening juxtaposition to the conditions faced by tens of thousands of black residents trapped by the storm and it provoked great anger and pain for those who sent it to me.

I sensed that same outrage in the responses of many black people who heard Tucker Carlson call for Vick's execution as punishment for his crimes. It was a contrast made more raw by the recent decision to give relatively light sentences to the men responsible for the death of Oscar Grant. Despite agreeing that Vick's acts were horrendous, somehow Carlson's moral outrage seemed misplaced. It also seemed profoundly racialized. For example, Carlson did not call for the execution of BP executives despite their culpability in the devastation of Gulf wildlife. He did not denounce the Supreme Court for their decision in US v. Stevens (April 2010) which overturned a portion of the 1999 Act Punishing Depictions of Animal Cruelty. After all with this "crush" decision the Court seems to have validated a marketplace for exactly the kinds of crimes Vick was convicted of committing. For many observers, the decision to demonize Vick seems motivated by something more pernicious than concern for animal welfare. It seems to be about race.

It is into this murky racial history that President Obama inadvertently waded this week. Whatever the quality (or lack thereof) of his argument about incarceration and its lifelong effects on those who serve time, I suspect the President could not be heard over the din of emotion, anxiety, and history around race and animals in this country. Last night I found myself similarly unable to articulate the difficult and complex relationships that can make it so difficult to hear one another across this divide. My goal was not to defend Vick nor to condemn him, but to try to understand our very different national reactions to him.

You used the term "that culture?" Could you define "that culture?" I'm not sure what culture you're referring to, and I don't want to make assumptions.

I think she means grew up around dog fighting. Subsequently, the dog fighting was "normalized" and he was desensitized to it. It would make sense then that he would have no remorse. (however, I think that some personality types would never become accustomed to this...especially since the message from the larger culture is that this is not acceptable behavior...so there is a place where a counter message is being presented that could make a difference).

P.S. I actually have no knowledge if Vick grew up around dog fighting...I am assuming he did based on suebee's statement.

I had never heard of Michael Vick until the charges and conviction of animal cruelty and dog fighting came out in the media. I think it comes down to money. He has skills and talent that people can make money from so it doesn't surprise me he is back in the NFL. Did Obama give a reason for his public support of Vick? Is Vick or the team he works for a big contributor to the Democratic Party. Of all the things on a President's plate it seems an odd thing to take time out to do unless campaign contributions play a big part in all this at some level. Or am I just way off here?

Melissa

Some of Vick's blog post sounds like PTSD to me.

from the National Center for PTSD article Criminal Behavior and PTSD:

And the article - Criminal Behavior and PTSD: An Analysis

Emotional numbness seems to be mostly associated with either depression or ptsd. Either way it sounds like he doesn't (or maybe didn't) have a whole lot of empathy - that he has more with people than with animals (which i think is generally true of most people) so if he truly feels regret now it's because he's been able to feel a bit of empathy for the other people who have feelings of empathy toward the dogs. If his trouble was a deficit of empathy, it seems people have a deficit of empathy toward him too.

With the shooting of Gabby Giffords, first people blamed, then people generally started looking at causes. With the shooter, people tend to talk about gun control or they tend to talk about the state of mental health assistance in this country. It's obvious that guy has something wrong with his head if you watch his youtubes. But I think white people have traditionally been more prone to jump toward a psychology-oriented conclusion about another white person. (Meaning white people tend to seek understanding when other white people commit crimes).

It's also a lot easier to to demonize Michael Vick because it's way easier to look at what he did and point the finger - than to look at what happened to that poor animal you yourself ate for dinner last night - whose lifetime probably contained even less joy and more suffering than some of those dogs.

I've noticed white people tend to like Hemingway (though maybe that's just the white people I know) despite his love affair with bullfighting and killing things.

'Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.'
- Chapter 2, The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

And Madonna seemed to advocate for bullfighting when this video was made:



(and by the way, this is a very sanitized version of what bullfighting entails). White people didn't call for her death after that video was made.

remember that cute little disney movie called "The Fox and the Hound"?



The reason they were destined to be pitted against each other was because the hound was going to grow up to hunt foxes. (A tradition originated in England).

In the US it's perfectly accepted to eat cow, chicken, lamb and pig - no matter what sufferings they endure before they end up on your plate. lobsters (cooked alive, mind you). Raw oysters are eaten alive and nobody bats an eye. There's a growing trend in the US for eating octopi and lobsters while they are still alive. Hunting is a huge "sport" here in the US. Few people have issues with horse-racing, but horse-racing also involves animal cruelty. Nobody called for Julia Roberts' death after she was seen at the races in the movie, "Pretty Woman."

Ever worn silk? Do you know where it comes from? Silk-worms make their little coccoons and settle down for a nice metamorphosis, and then people take the coccoons and heat them to death. Bugs are pretty fair game for most people though.

People failing to spay/neuter their pets is one of the primary reasons that most animal shelters cannot be no-kill shelters.

Hey, guess where dogfighting came from? Per NPR:

Anyway, animals are treated like shit in this world and I think it's extremely short-sighted to villify this one guy. It seems like a type of denial, a type of externalizing behavior.

Charlie Sheen can threaten his significant other with a knife, and he's still sitting pretty on 2 and a half men. White violence and black violence are not thought of or treated the same in the media or in the justice system in the US.

I think Vick says some really interesting things - instructive things - in his blog post.

It wasn't punishment, anger, revenge or shaming that helped Michael Vick feel anything about what he'd done. It was connection with people - it was people who took the time and who were brave enough to set aside talk of violence and revenge and instead sought that connection and understanding.

A while back now, there was a kid that made a gay-bashing game. Here, there was a thread about it. A few of us responded in anger. Diva had the presence of mind to reach out to the kid, who wrote back very politely and said he would remove the game. He had been fine with the angry comments on his game, but it was Diva's graciousness and respect, coupled with a genuine interest in his understanding the effects of his behavior, that caused him to change. Sounds like a similar phenomenon to me.

I know this post is kinda everywhere but hey so am I.

PS. Did I mention pate de foie gras?

suebee,

Just wanted to say that although you didn't indicate I was off track or anything, I should not have spoken for you. Not sure why I did that...maybe b/c it was an older thread and didn't know if you would come back here?

Regardless, I shouldn't have. Sorry.

Netflix is streaming Michael Vick's show called:

This makes me sick to my stomach I can't believe he has his own show.

Yeah that's how I feel about the Anthony woman who killed her kid yet got no time, she's free yet everyone forgot about her.

He's done his time, he too should get a second chance.

Yeah I don't like the idea of Casey Anthony going free but I do not believe in second chances for what either of them did. But that is just me.

I'm very happy he has his own show. He has been working hard (in partnership with the Humane Society and others) across the country to end dog fighting. This show sounds like it will be another way for him to get the message of redemption and forgiveness out to others.

People can and do change. Vick deserves praise for what he is now doing.

Hell yes! If white America is still angry with a Black man after he served the sentence assigned to his crime,

White america can see this as an example of it's racism (i.e. Black men are not redeemable)

And/or

Outraged people need to be visible in participating more fully in their judicial/sentencing system. I'd like to see who they are, and participation in developing community standards is a valuable process.

And so much more.

Thanks for posting this Lady Snow. There are some parts of this that really resonate with how I feel about dealing with people who have committed some criminal acts that we see as atrocious in our society. I've bolded the bit that really hit home to me. From that excerpt, it shows him saying that he learned more from educating himself on animal rights, changing his perspectives on animals and their ability to feel, and on rehabilitating himself, than from being directly punished for his actions.

I've noticed a few things with the way some here (both in this thread and others) talk about people who have been convicted of crimes, especially where violence is concerned. I feel that many continue to take an eye for an eye mentality, and the idea that people cannot change or that people don't commit crimes because of their own experiences. What many fail to understand is that an overwhelming number of crimes committed (and yes, many of them horrendously atrocious) are committed because of an individual's upbringing and social situation. This is why many of the people incarcerated for these acts are from marginalized communities; people who come from certain nations, certain neighbourhoods, certain economic backgrounds, who have suffered discrimination a good chunk of their life because of their race, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, gender identity etc. And we perpetuate the discriminatory laws, social practices and environments that often result in these crimes, by claiming that once these acts are committed, that those who committed them can't be rehabilitated, that they must be shunned perpetually, that they are by nature "monsters."

And yet there are countless examples of successful rehabilitation even among the most "atrocious" crimes. Institutions which take rehabilitation over punishment seriously, show very low numbers of repeated offense when compared to the punishment/banishing system.

If a person grew up in an environment where animals were not considered to have the capability to feel pain or despair, or where animals were not treated humanely, then it is no wonder that they continue the cycle of animal abuse. I remember talking to an acquaintance from Pakistan about his own experiences with animals as a kid, and where he partook in animal abuse. He had described an occasion where he and some friends had allowed a cat to drown by not letting it out of a body of water, and how they saw it as a sort of game to deter the cat from getting out of the water. He looks back on it as a really cruel thing to do and regrets its wholeheartedly, but back then he didn't see it that way, and it wasn't alarming to adult society, either. Does that make Pakistani society a society of "monsters" or "sociopaths" who should be punished by the "morally superior" western world? No. Because that is not how people see cats/animals in general where he grew up. He sees things differently now, and not for some racist reason of the west "bringing civility" or some similar bullshit, but because the original frame of reference has been widened and a greater understanding of the nature of animals and their capabilities occurred for him. As humans, we are extremely flexible and adaptable. We are forever learning new things, which utterly change our worldviews.

Many people who grow up in abusive or violent environments become abusive and violent themselves because they perceive it as a part of the currency of that environment. Does it mean everyone becomes that way? No. But many do. If we condemn people without giving them the opportunity to rehabilitate or educate themselves with information many of us take for granted, we will find ourselves continuing to overwhelmingly incarcerate people from marginalized backgrounds because of their backgrounds...which were, in turn, created by discriminatory social practices to begin with.

Does this mean the crime is "excused." No, that is fallacious thinking that assumes that in order for a person to "pay" for a crime they must suffer or be punished. But I don't think that does much good. Instead, what I'm saying means that people are convicted with the intent toward rehabilitation...not to punish them perpetually when they are entirely capable of change.

It's a horrible cycle that needs to end.

What's your point? I can tell you exactly what happened to those dogs......almost anyone can.

FFS
 

Yanno he could of served 20 years and I'm sure that STILL wouldn't of been enough, I stand by firmly in what I will ALWAYS say: had it been some white football player raping a woman this would of never happened OH WAIT it happens ALL the fucking time and I zero ZERO picketing, screaming, PETA or anyone calling out those injustices Vick on the other hand CONTINUES to be vilified, picketed, screamed at hell his very death in this thread was called for.

Somewhere somehow the value of animals now out trumps that of women and children.

Some went to a rehab and some were put down, he hung one from a tree as well, I think its public record if there is research done.

Sorry for snipping the post, but just to tag on to that: And that's the thing. What do people think would be achieved with him serving a longer sentence, being banished from the NFL and being perpetually shunned?

Instead, he seems, for all intents and purposes, to be a good example of rehabilitation and is doing work in favour of animal rights now. Had he been dealt with in the harsh way that some encourage, none of the above would have occurred and instead he'd be sitting in a jail cell instead of contributing something to society...which he seems to be doing now with his current activism. The whole punishment system is not particularly productive or socially progressive.

On a side note on the subject of PETA and sexism, I never fail to chuckle when it comes to PETA expressing outrage about any rights issue...coming from the organization that frequently objectifies women in order to get more hits on their website (Seriously, how many times are they going to pull the PETA porn site thing to try to pull in more male supporters? Pathetic, imo), I'm not sure how they expect to be taken seriously. I think for these extremists (and they really are...I don't think any credible animal rights activist should be taking them seriously) animal rights trump everyone's rights (zomg, Obama swatted a fly!).

That said, I'm not sure it should be turned into an issue of women's/children's rights vs. animal rights because...it really shouldn't come down to that. It shouldn't have to do with one rights issue vs. other rights issues, but that the public begin valuing women's/children's rights more than they currently do. Animal rights, unfortunately, sometimes come off as the token "good deed" for the middle and upper classes, much like donating to bogus charities they believe are actually making a difference for famine or disaster-struck nations (which in many cases, the money doesn't even get there). But it's a "feel good" for them.

The public should simply become more aware of the grave and manifold injustices taking place in these cases: for example Vick's case not being simply about animal rights, but also about racism, marginalization and prisoner rehabilitation/rights. And the ability of the public to look at how similar outcries don't always occur as far as well-known rapists (unless some grizzly murder is involved, it would seem), and other discriminatory issues that occur there. I think a big part of it is people being too lazy to change their own knee-jerk reactions to things, and so they pass them off as "not really racist/sexist/etc./everybody does it" and how that helps perpetuate racism and sexism in the modern west.

I cringe each time I see this thread pop up again. I’ve followed along at various times, but because it is such an emotional issue for me, I haven’t read the whole thing. But it does seem to have turned into a thread more about Michael Vick than about President Obama.

As someone who has worked with abused animals, including pit bulls, the horror of dog fighting for pleasure and money is incomprehensible to me. I know that no one here is validating Michael Vick’s violent abuse & profiting off the abuse of innocent animals (at least I hope not), but it is difficult for me to accept that he deserves “praise” for what he is doing now.

I can appreciate that he is working with the Humane Society. Maybe this has something to do with how I was raised; I was never rewarded for doing the “right thing” or what was expected of me. I was; however, punished when my behavior was found unacceptable. So, I can see that would be my “normal” and is bound to influence how I see the world.

I wasn’t raised by a family that valued the lives of animals. When I was young, my mother had my sister’s dog put to sleep to punish my sister. I’ve seen cruelty to both people and animals. In my experience, someone who abuses animals is way more likely to abuse their children and spouses, as well. To me, violence is violence, regardless of whether it is unleashed upon a woman, child, animal or man. I won’t argue whether violence to a human or animal is worse. For me, I don’t see any reason to compare them. Why would I? They are both wrong.

I hope that Michael Vick proves to be a loyal ally in the fight against animal abuse. Time will tell. I will stand with anyone who will fight to protect the innocent and the abused. I believe in rehabilitation and redemption. But, I also believe that we all live with the consequences of our choices and actions. I can’t forget the suffering he caused, his past doesn’t disappear. Neither does mine. All any of us can do is move forward and do the next right thing. Today is a new day.

Well said, Purepiesces. I have a bully girl who was used as a "baiter" dog in dog fighting. We found her dumped on a road side, holes in her body and severely underweight. She managed a tiny tail wag when we approached and then she tipped over. She didn't get back up again until five days later and two different vet clinics worked on her. I'm more than happy to share pictures of her before and after.

So I've seen up close the effects of dog fighting, and I have read the very disturbing details of the treatment of dogs in the Michael Vick case.

Lets let the true healing and awareness grow,and lets let cruelty not be consigned to a species or a type of person or to any convenient target. But lets make cruelty the target and work toward a more consistently kind and respectful way to treat all.


"You can judge a society by the way it treats its animals" - Gandhi

Article: Vick's Work