Taking to heart Lord Mahavir’s message of nonviolence, I became a vegetarian and a vegan, and then a peace activist and animal rights advocate.
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to make the world a better place. Early on, I committed valiant acts of violence in defense of others who could not adequately defend themselves, taking on bullies in the schoolyard as a child and going after rapists and violent gangs as a teenager.
As my worldview expanded, however, I learned that not only were the biggest problems well beyond my fists, but that as Lord Mahavir said, “Anger begets anger and forgiveness and love lead to more forgiveness and love.” I disbanded my own gang of vigilantes and began to study counseling and school psychology with the goal of helping children with special needs when they were young and most malleable. It was not until I was halfway through college, however, that I learned about Jainism and my life changed forever.
We cannot save the world all at once but through small vows, or Anuvrat, we can make progressive vows to stop cruelties in our daily lives or vows to stop individual acts of cruelty in our communities.
I had never met a vegetarian before and I believed all the typical fallacies, namely that killing animals was a necessary sin and that humans could not survive much less thrive without consuming meat. Now, I was not only presented with an entire community that had eschewed meat for thousands of years but monks who were so dedicated to Ahimsa, or nonviolence, that they waited for berries to fall off the vine so as not to molest the plant. I felt small and cowardly. How could I claim to be protecting my community while consuming other Jiva, or lives.
After class, I went to the school cafeteria and loaded up a plate full of chicken carcasses, but this time, I could not take a bite and pushed my plate away. I never ate meat again.
A year later, I learned how infant cows are torn from their mothers so we can consume milk meant for them and how in the egg industry male chicks are killed, suffocated, or ground alive at only one day old because they cannot lay eggs. I went vegan as a result. The weight of the cruelties in this world seemed bigger than I could bear, but I knew that I could no longer engage in these cruelties myself.
Shortly thereafter, I received an email from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, commonly known as PETA, notifying me that Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus was coming to town during spring break. Enclosed were pictures of baby elephants being chained and beaten, forced into the unnatural contortions seen on the big stage. I made a small vow, or Anuvrat (in Jain parlance), to dedicate my spring break to peacefully protesting outside the circus each day. Following these demonstrations, I felt empowered and made another vow, to see the end of Ringling Bros. Circus’s exploitation of animals before I died.
Before I knew it, I was graduating with my Master’s in Anthrozoology — the study of the interrelationships between human and nonhuman animals — and receiving a graduate certificate in Jain Studies from the International School of Jain Studies in India. Shortly thereafter, I was employed by the largest animal rights organization in the world and led the campaign against animal circuses worldwide.
A few short years later, I organized the last ever Ringling Bros. Circus protest at the exact same spot I started: Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY. After 146 years, the circus giant had fallen and one of my vows was kept. I was not even 30.
During my tenure at PETA, I led its Animals in Entertainment Campaigns through groundbreaking victories, such as the Iditarod dogsled race slashing its purses by a half million dollars — a race that has killed more than 150 dogs, most commonly after inhaling their own vomit — and SeaWorld announcing the end of its sordid orca breeding program and its circus-style dolphin shows.
I also restructured PETA’s Outreach and Action Teams into a new division called Grassroots Campaigns, supervising a team arming activists throughout North America with tools for effective campaigns, and overseeing the Grassroots Protests, Action Team, and Vegan Mentor Program within this new division. Through the launch of PETA’s Action Leader program, I helped introduce the concept of strategic campaigns to activists around the globe.
However, my proudest victories have always been through my local nonprofit organization, Humane Long Island. Here are a few of them:
- Shutting down Cole Bros. Circus after 66 peaceful protests every year from Elmont to Greenport on Long Island and getting the circus’s permits denied to perform in Islip
- Stopping a slaughterhouse from opening in Islip—saving 40,000 birds from slaughter each year
- Ending wild animal acts at dozens of fairs
- Stopping a sordid aquarium chain—which had license suspensions and revocations in other states—from opening in the Town of Oyster Bay
- Stopping the massacre of thousands of geese and thousands of deer, and rescuing tens of thousands of fish, birds, and amphibians through our direct rescue efforts.
For this reason, in July 2021, emboldened by the support of my wife, Juliana, and the Jain principle of aparigraha, or non-attachment, I resigned from my full-time position with PETA to put my full energies into a campaign to open Long Island’s first center for animal advocacy and farmed animal rescue as well as a national resource center for domestic fowl rescue, volunteering full-time to achieve it ever since.
We cannot save the world all at once but through small vows, or Anuvrat, we can make progressive vows to stop cruelties around us in our lives or vows to stop individual acts of cruelty in our communities. Over time, these vows add up and we will be astonished at what each of us can do for our sentient community. If it was not for Lord Mahavir, I do not know where I would be today. Thanks to Jainism, today I am a peace activist making our world better in a very tangible way.
To learn more about Humane Long Island or to support their efforts to open Long Island’s first center for animal advocacy and rescue, please visit www.humanelongisland.org.
