The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

VIDEO: Utah Animal Rights Activist Shows ‘Solidarity With Occupy Wall Street’

Posted on | November 25, 2011 | 24 Comments

“I’m down here from Occupy Salt Lake. We came here to show solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. It’s really great to be here and to give thanks to the people who are taking time out of their lives to rebuild a new community, a new economy and a new government.”
—Breana Reichert

Breana Reichert shows up at the 29-second mark of this Associated Press “raw video” of Thanksgiving Day in Zuccotti Park:

OK, good. Now we Google her name and — voilà!

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Wildlife Board shot down a controversial proposal Tuesday that would have changed the regulations for trapping coyotes. The decision comes after critics roundly condemned it as unethical, inhumane and impractical. . . .
“We feel that it’s unethical, it’s cruel, it’s inhumane,” said Breana Reichert. She spoke to the board on behalf of a campus group called UVU Animal Allies.

In January, then, Reichert was protesting on behalf of coyotes. And in February:

When Co-President of the Animal Allies Club Breana Reichert wants to eat at the cafeteria or other food services on campus, her choices are limited.
As a vegan, she chooses not to consume any products or by-products that come from animals. . . .
“Animal rights has many ties to feminism, workers rights, environmental awareness and should be right at the top of the list,” said Reichert.

Go back to December 2010:

SALT LAKE CITY — Two Utah Valley University students spent the night in jail for a demonstration in support of the federal DREAM Act.
Federal Protective Services arrested Diego Ibanez and Agustin Diaz Tuesday night because they refused to leave Sen. Orrin Hatch’s office at the Federal Building in Salt Lake City. . . .
Two other students, Breana Reichert and Jessica Zelaya, waited for a similar response from Sen. Bennett, though they left the building without being detained.

So Reichert, 21, had a background in animal rights and pro-illegal immigration activism before anybody ever heard of the Occupy movement, and was one of 19 people arrested when police cleared the Occupy Salt Lake encampment in Pioneer Park on Nov. 12, a day after a man was found dead in a tent at the camp.

Reichert’s biography serves to demonstrate how Occupy Wall Street — while supposedly targeted on misconduct by financial institutions, income inequality and other economic “social justice” issues — draws its support from a broad spectrum of left-wing activism.

An anti-Israel activist turns up as an Occupy Miami spokesman and a vegan animal-rights activist from Utah turns up at Occupy Wall Street on Thanksgiving Day.

The politics of protest represents the anti-social impulses of the alienated and disaffected, who have been indoctrinated to believe that Sixties-style protest is a noble duty. The Occupy movement functions as a magnet for these confused and/or hate-filled people.

 

UPDATE: Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom calls attention to one protester’s account of the now-infamous pepper-spray incident at University of California-Davis:

Well, we were protesting together, and the riot cops came at us, and we linked arms and sat down peacefully to protest their presence on our campus. And at one point, they were -— we had encircled them, and they were trying to leave, and they were trying to clear a path. And so, we sat down, linked arms, and said that if they wanted to clear the path, they would have to go through us. But we were on the ground, you know, heads down. And all I could see was people telling me to cover my head, protect myself, and put my head down. And the next thing I know, I was pepper-sprayed.

Jeff’s analysis of the incident and reaction is spot-on:

Case dismissed.
And no, it is not acceptable to scapegoat a couple of riot police or a university Chancellor just to quell the emotional demands of mobs, or to sate a public outcry manipulated by a hostile press. . . .
The left is looking for its Kent State moment. Hell, they’ve been longing for it.

It is vitally important to understand that the Occupiers — as well as the journalists who for the past two months have heaped fawning coverage on their movement — have all been indoctrinated in the civil-disobedience mythology of the Sixties.

Once again to borrow the old Rodgers and Hammerstein lyric, “you have to be carefully taught” to believe this stuff, i.e., in any conflict between protesters and police, the protesters are always virtuous heroes and the police are always villainously wrong.

Category: #Occupy, Progressivism, Utah

Comments

24 Responses to “VIDEO: Utah Animal Rights Activist Shows ‘Solidarity With Occupy Wall Street’”

  1. Kristi
    November 25th, 2011 @ 5:08 pm

    Good point. I don’t mind someone sticking up for animals–something I have done myself–but there are too many fringe influences at #ows, there have been from the start, and now that the thing’s a couple of months old, the special interests are starting to take over and run the show. 

    They’re anything but speaking for “99%” of Americans.  If they were the 99%, why would they keep asking me for money? Pfft. 

  2. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 5:18 pm

    It’s people like Breana Reichert that represent the greater threat to this Republic.

  3. Bob Belvedere
    November 25th, 2011 @ 5:57 pm

    Dead solid perfect, Stacy.

  4. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 6:28 pm

    Interesting how she manages to get time for all that sanctimonious activism in between her classes.

  5. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 6:34 pm

    I’d give your criticism a little more consideration, Mr. McCain, if you weren’t criticizing the behavior of an animal rights protestor at nearly the same time you are tweeting about the fox in the woods that your kids are going to do their level best to blow the head off of using their shotguns.

    What I get instead is a very strong impression that your family is pretty damned insensitive to animal suffering.

    What a pity if your son’s aim were so good that there was nothing for him to save as a trophy.  I suppose I will have to await one of your updates for that news.

    Enjoy your holiday, Mr. McCain.  

  6. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 6:39 pm

    You’re missing the point.

  7. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 6:50 pm

    No, I’m really not.  Leftist protests at numerous leftist-oriented events.  Film at 11.

    As if those on the right don’t lean right on many issues, from immigration to abortion to taxation to gun rights to employment matters.

    Some people are hard-left, people like McCain are hard-right.  I could point out the myriad topics on which McCain takes a conservative, forward perspective and blogs at length, but I don’t need to.  He’s passionate about numerous right-wing issues the same way the person he is criticizing seems to be about left-wing issues.  No real surprise.

    I just think it’s a chickenshit, thoughtless act to criticize someone who believes in animal welfare while nearly simultaneously cheerleading his sons’ efforts to kill a wild animal for sport on a weekend at which we are supposed to be giving thanks.

    Or perhaps, Mr. Weimer, you missed MY point.

  8. Proof
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:21 pm

    What is the carbon footprint of someone who flies from SLC to NYC just to “show solidarity” with OWS?

  9. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:25 pm

    The rights of foxes inevitably infringe on the rights of our chickens, who supply us with eggs.

  10. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:38 pm

    Oh no, when you slice, you slice like a frickin’ hammer.

  11. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:44 pm

    Yeah, I get that from my wife a lot.

  12. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:48 pm

    Then when the fox begins to circle your hen house, fire away.  Your tweet said he’s in the woods.  

    Last I checked there are other sources of chicken eggs.  If I hit your tip jar, think you can give the fox a break?

  13. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:56 pm

    We may need more air freshener.

  14. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 7:58 pm

    Sound’s like Ron Paul’s approach to National Defense.

  15. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 8:13 pm

    A fox in the woods around our place, just minding his own business? Don’t think so.

  16. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 8:48 pm

    I have had a passing interest in animal rights activists since the Animal Liberation Front started committing terrorist acts in the late 90’s.  The members of ALF are a radical few, but I have noticed among the relatively peaceful PETA types there really is no love for animals.  I have yet to meet one who even had a pet.   They just do not like the idea man has dominion.  

    The only root cause I can see is a failure to connect with people combined with the fantasy that animals lack the negative qualities of humans.  The realization makes you wish a bear would gnaw off a limb, just for the dose of reality.       

  17. Anonymous
    November 25th, 2011 @ 8:55 pm

    Vegan feminist?  No meat in  her diet.  IYKWIMAITYD.  Hiya, Stacy.

  18. JeffS
    November 25th, 2011 @ 11:11 pm

    What say you go into the woods around Stacy’s house, and convince the foxes not to munch on domesticated animals? 

    Perhaps you could negotiate a “No Fox” zone, so that the chickens are safe, and the foxes know where to, and where not  to hunt? 

    This would save you considerable anguish, protect the fox population, and feed Stacy’s children. 

    Do it for the children, man!!!!!!

  19. JeffS
    November 25th, 2011 @ 11:12 pm

    They just do not like the idea man has dominion. 

    I call those types “anti-human humans”.

  20. JeffS
    November 25th, 2011 @ 11:15 pm

    Breanna is clearly a professional agitator.  Lefties like her pick a cause, and train for bigger operations while working locally. 

    And no doubt she paid for her ticket to NYC turning in soda bottles for the deposit.

  21. JeffS
    November 25th, 2011 @ 11:16 pm

    IYKWIMAITTYD.

  22. Progressives Have Only Two Speeds: Liar And Stupid » American Glob
    November 26th, 2011 @ 12:34 am

    […] already seen the liars. Meet the stupid, courtesy of Stacy McCain… “I’m down here from Occupy Salt Lake. We came here to show solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. […]

  23. M. Thompson
    November 26th, 2011 @ 12:59 am

    Professional agitators are a class of real enemies of this nation.

    And, man, do I feel like a commie bastard for branding an entire group like that.

    Several years back, when I was at a Major Midwestern Research University, I wanted to ask the entirely too earnest organizers for things like Ralph Nader’s Public Research Interest Group how the felt it was to be a tool of a wealthy hypocrite, but I thought I didn’t need to get into a fight or be kicked off by the University for violating some arcane point of their code of conduct.

  24. Anonymous
    November 26th, 2011 @ 8:56 am

    When dealing with something whose natural behavior requires it to prey, I feel no need to wait for it to do damage to me before removing it.

    Which pretty much explains my attitude towards the Copperhead Party, come to think of it.