Daniel Shaull’s Sacrifice
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From Voice of the Voiceless:
A man set himself on fire Wednesday outside Ungar Furs in Portland, Oregon. After dousing himself with gasoline, he attempted to enter the store, shouting “There are animals dying! Animals dying!” After police extinguished the flames, he was taken to Legacy Emanuel Hospital where he later died.
The man was identified as 26-year-old Daniel Shaull from Kansas. Among the local activists I have spoken to, none are familiar with Shaull by name, nor recognized him as being a part of the active, long-running campaign against Ungar Furs. Yet the location and witness reports strongly indicate this man sacrificed himself to bring attention to the horrific treatment of animals on fur farms. [...]
Amidst a range of speculation as to the man’s true motives, I think it is important to assume this is a genuine action by a person driven to make the ultimate sacrifice by the severity of animal suffering. When every legal channel to affect change is closed, people will increasingly be driven to actions which bring both attention to the plight of animals, and a disruptive effect to those who kill them. [...]
To those who claim the animal rights movement is “violent”, this action should be yet another reminder that every casualty to date has fallen on our side. Daniel Shaull is just the latest victim.
Emphasis added. Read the entire Voice of the Voiceless article here >>
Reminder: You don’t have to set yourself on fire to make a difference for animals. Just go vegan today. Stop eating animals, stop wearing animals, stop treating animals as if their lives don’t matter. Animals’ lives matter to the animals. And animals’ lives matter to people, too.
Personally, I don’t think suicide is a good idea. I don’t condone such action. But anyone with even the tiniest amount of compassion must admit that something has to be done to stop the fur business:
You can’t seriously use the word ’sacrifice’ in your heading!? This act was an obvious result of severe mental illness. If he hadn’t been obsessed with your cause, he would have done it in the name of some other agenda. Although you cover your butt by saying you don’t condone his actions, using the word ’sacrifice’ connotes righteousness. As an aside, I wish, for just a day, that all animal rights/environmental activists and their sympathizers would invest their abundant energies and coffers in helping their fellow human animals. Why is it that people find it easier to defend any other cause/species but their own? His life would have been better spent in the defense of helpless children in need of food, shelter, and education. Maybe our warped ideas of luxury, e.g., leather, fur, and meat, can be better corrected through the positive example of sacrificing some of our misdirected compassion. It will be a very, very long time before we eliminate the use of animals for our consumption/pleasure, but selfish acts like Mr. Shaull’s help us in absolutely no way. Oh, and…VIVA CHOCOLATE SOY MILK!!!
This is tragic… But the way I see it – there now is one less voice to speak against the outrage. Live to fight another day -
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JR – Many animal rights advocates are also human rights advocates too. There’s nothing about working for animal rights that inhibits the human rights movement – nothing!
Careful about glorifying this man. I knew him back in Kansas and as a vegetarian can say he wasn’t very positive about this lifestyle. I imagine it was more impulsiveness from his mental illness problems and excessive meth abuse. He’s the last person on earth any group proclaiming moral values would want to be associated with, this is probably the only kind or good thing I’ve heard of him doing. So I hope for the sake of good causes animal rights groups distance themselves from him before they really know who this man is.
I used to work for a foster care program years ago, and I had to attend a presentation for work. The presenter mentioned that the first advocates for child welfare were the people from the ASPCA.
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JR
“but selfish acts like Mr. Shaull’s help us in absolutely no way.”
I’m wondering what gives you the right to call him selfish? We don’t know what kind of life he had or why he did this. To call someone who you somehow have been able to diagnose as having “severe mental illness” a selfish person is pretty low. I like how you dive right into chocolate soy milk after insulting a person who was probably suffering intensely in one way or another….
Additionally, to bash animal rights and eco activists for not doing enough for humans is short sighted. Human suffering is often directly linked to our animal and environmental abuses. It is all connected.
Regarding the use of the word “sacrifice”:
It may be helpful to read the Wikipedia article on “self-immolation,” the term generally accepted for the act of setting ones self on fire in protest. The article states that the word “immolation” literally means “sacrifice.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-immolation
Shull’s true motives will never be known. He may or may not have been a true animal advocate and he may not have intended to sacrifice himself. But I don’t think it’s fair to jump to the conclusion that he had a severe mental illness, particularly because mental illness is so often defined merely as acting differently than the majority, which is exactly what virtually all protest is – acting differently.
I certainly don’t mean to idolize him or make suicide look like something heroic. I don’t believe suicide is ever a good option. But I have enough respect for other people that I’m unwilling to discount the potential meaning that he intended through his action. I’m unwilling to sweep his death under the rug and simply call him “ill.”
I knew him quite well. Such a tragedy where his illness led him. Its kind of stupid how people are calling it all this bs. If you knew him or anything about him you would know he was very disturbed mentally and institutionalized a lot of his life. If you don’t know him from personal experience and obviously don’t know your facts and what you’re talking about, then maybe you need not speak about him.
I happen to believe that even persons who have been institutionalized/diagnosed/medicated/etc have the right to make their own choices and deserve respect for those choices, so long as those choices don’t harm others. I don’t think choices have to be entirely rational in order to be respected.
Until someone shows me that Daniel considered himself mentally ill, I refuse to use that term and I consider it derogatory.
He is a hero in my book.
Well in no way is it meant to be derogatory. Its just making me mad people are speculating so much when they didn’t know him and what he was dealing with.
I think everyone has a right to take there own life. After all it is there life. Religious folks do muddy the water with their dogma. David Hume the great philosopher could not even get his essay on suicide published in Britain because of the opposition of the Church.
Why he took his life is another matter and a matter of some conjecture. The fact remains he has every right to take that which is his:his own life.