Jabari Brisport, a 32-year old Brooklyn native, has spent his entire life in New York City, but now he’s setting his sights on Albany, the state capital. The Caribbean American public school teacher, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, is running for State Senate to help make New York City a more humane home for all of its residents – human and non-human.
During an interview with TheirTurn, Brisport describes his progressive platform, which includes reforming New York City’s housing, education, health care and criminal justice systems. He has an equally ambitious agenda for the animals, including a statewide ban on the sale of fur and ending dairy subsidies.
Jabari Brisport’s campaign is featured in the New York Post
As a college freshman at NYU, Brisport was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack while walking in Greenwich Village with his black boyfriend. During the interview, he explains why this traumatic experience compelled him to become an advocate not only for minorities but also for animals.
Jabari Brisport, candidate for New York State Senate in 2020, protests at the opening of the Canada Goose store in 2019.
Brisport is running in the 25th State Senate district, which includes Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, Red Hook, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sunset Park, Gowanus, and Park Slope and other neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The primary election takes place on June 23, 2020.
For more information to find out how you can help his campaign, please visit Jabari for State Senate.
Four dairy consumers talk about why they eat it and why giving it up is so difficult. Will videos about the health risks and animal welfare issues along with samples of cashew-based cheese convince them to switch to non-dairy products?
During the two hour discussion, participants watched a 1.5 minute video in which Dr. Michael Klaper, an expert in nutritional medicine, explains why dairy products, which are made from the bovine mammary secretions of cows, are unhealthy for humans.
Participants also watched Grieving Mothers, a four minute documentary produced by TheirTurn about what happens to cows and their babies in the dairy industry.
Perhaps the only thing that the animal agriculture industry and animal rights activists can agree upon is the name of the device in which dairy cows are impregnated – the “rape rack.”
Female cows restrained in a device referred to as the “rape rack”
The “rape rack” is a narrow, chute-like device in which female cows are restrained while they undergo a process the dairy industry euphemistically refers to as “artificial insemination.” During artificial insemination (AI), a dairy worker inserts one of his arms into the rectum of a restrained cow and, with his other arm, inserts a rod-like device called an Al gun into her vagina. The Al gun, which contains bull semen, is pushed in further until it reaches the cervix (the entrance to the uterus). The semen is then injected into the uterus.
A diagram illustrates how to artificially inseminate a female cow.
Many supporters of animal rights argue that forcibly impregnating cows constitutes sexual abuse. “As public awareness of its barbaric practices increases, the dairy industry is desperate to whitewash them,” said Kathy Stevens, the Executive Director of Catskill Animal Sanctuary. “They can call this practice ‘artificial insemination’ if they wish, but impregnation against one’s will using forcible restraint pretty much sounds like rape to me.”
Artificial Insemination
In order to produce milk, cows and other animals used for dairy production must be impregnated each year because their milk production stops at around the time their calves would naturally stop nursing.
To maximize the amount of milk available for human consumption, babies are typically taken away from their mothers within 24 hours of birth, causing profound distress to both the mother and her newborn. Mother cows bellow and call to their babies for days following the separation. Some of the babies are sent directly to the slaughterhouse, to veal farms, or to feedlots; the rest become dairy cows like their mothers.
Dairy industry diagram illustrates the different ways to profit off of male calves, who cannot produce milk.
The psychological and physical stresses of life in the dairy industry rapidly weaken and/or sicken cows, quickly rendering them unprofitable to their owners. They are therefore sent to slaughter at a fraction of their natural lifespan. When the cows arrive at the slaughter plant, they often need to be dragged to the kill floor because they are too weak to walk.
A cow too weak to walk (downer) is pulled into a truck which will carry her into the slaughter plant.
A 2014 horror film entitled “The Herd” vividly depicts the torment endured by cows in the dairy industry. This film, directed by Melanie Light, portrays a fictional dairy farm in which the cows are replaced with human women.
In an interview with “Shock Till You Drop,” a website devoted to reviewing horror films, Light, who describes herself as a “vegan feminist,” said: “A lot of people don’t make the connection. Being female isn’t exclusive to humans . . .These cows, pigs and sheep are abused for their reproductive systems.”
Over the years, the term “rape rack” has gradually disappeared from the dairy industry’s vernacular. “It used to be common parlance in dairy farming. Today, farmers are far more savvy about terminology—as are other industries that use animals” says Katie Arth of PETA. “As a result, that term has vanished from the farmers’ vocabulary in the same way that ‘iron maidens’ and ‘restraint chairs’ have been renamed ‘sow stalls’ and ‘gentling devices.’ The industry now prefers to use euphemisms such as ‘breeding boxes’ to describe the boxes or chutes where female cows are restrained while a worker forcibly inseminates them.”
A restrained female cow undergoing artificial insemination
Your Turn
To learn more about artificial insemination please visit Free From Harm.
To learn about other dairy industry practices and undercover investigations done on dairy farms please visit Mercy for Animals.
There is nowhere on earth where will you find more grieving mothers than the dairy industry. TheirTurn produced a four minute video to explain what happens to them and why we must be their voice.
Your Turn
The inherent cruelty of the dairy industry is one of many powerful reasons to ditch milk products and become an advocate. Read more.
Each day, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of adults around the world consume food and beverages that are made from cows’ milk, and they don’t give it a second thought. But if you were to ask these dairy consumers how they feel about drinking human breast milk, the majority would probably express disgust about the idea. That reaction was played out in an episode of Friends, where Phoebe tastes the breast milk of Ross’ ex-wife.
Humans been so brainwashed by the dairy industry that we actually believe that drinking human milk, which is intended for humans, is revolting and borderline immoral while consuming cow’s milk, which is designed for calves, is not only normal but appealing.
Cast of Friends Recoils in Disgust as Phoebe Tastes Breast Milk
The dairy industry has also brainwashed us into thinkng that adults should consume milk products. But milk is a drink specifically designed for infants. That is why human and cow mothers stop producing it when their babies stop nursing. And that is also why female cows have to be impregnated over and over in order to continue producing milk for humans.
If human adults want to consume animal-based milk, then we should take it from other humans, not from cows who wail in despair when their babies are kidnapped from them at birth so that we can drink their milk. Or, better yet, buy healthy and delicious plant-based milk products.
For more information to find out how you can help his campaign, please visit Jabari for State Senate.
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