Ok, maybe that headline is harsh. Let me start by saying when it comes to animal rights, Russell Simmons is a hero. He knows that his voice and the message it carries reaches far and wide. He truly cares about animals, their suffering and ultimate liberation. He is also a yogi so he treads lightly on the earth and speaks softly. He never censors himself when it comes to something he is passionate about, but he also believes that you catch more bees with honey (Not that he believes in catching bees!) That is why his twitter has been jumping during fashion week with kind hearted tweets about how shocked he is that Michael Kors and several other designers are doing everything they can to bring fur back.Never does he name call. Never does he diss. He calls the designers ‘unconscious’. He calls them ‘well -meaning’ and ‘sweet’. Frankly, it makes my stomach turn and for that, yeah, its true he’s a pu**y. I want him to call them what they are ‘MURDERERS!’, ‘SADISTS!’ and ‘COWARDS’. For every kind word Russell has toward these designers I have quite a few choice ones to counter with. I call them callous, uncaring, greedy men and women who obviously have no soul. Call me an angry activist if you will but I have no shame in my game. Anger is the driving force of every movement that injustice is a part of – and I think there is room for all of us.
Currently, there are no federal laws providing protection for the millions of animals(including chinchillas, foxes, minks, and raccoons)who suffer unimaginable, worse than Nazi cruelties on fur farms. The fur industry remains completely unregulated so they have every legal right to keep the animals in crowded, filthy wire cages, where they often develop deeply disturbed self-harming behaviors and become sick or wounded, and fur farmers kill them by breaking their necks while they are fully conscious or by using anal or genital electrocution.
How fashion forward! How fabulous! How fierce! NO, how sick is that? These designers can do everything in their power to try to de-glamorize suffering but they all have blood on their hands and deep guilt on consciousness as humans and the worst kind of karma.
Russell’s activist ways are his own and I respect it. I respect the quiet, respectful approach to bring about change but its just not me. I’m a take no prisoners, balls to the wall, in your face, angry as all hell animal rights activist. The animals simply do not have the TIME for pleasantries or making excuses for those who either buy fur or use their skins for vanity’ssake. They can’t SPEAK for themselves. If people KNOW what fur is, the deep and needless cruelty it represents and still continue to wear it then I say give them a selfish reason not to wear it. For those furwearers I say, you want a war? You got it. I’m calling you out, FendiValentino ,J. Mendel, Oscar de la Renta, Badgley Mischka John Galliano ,Karl Lagerfeld Carolina Herrera, Marc Jacobs, Julien Macdonald Jean Paul Gaultier, Giorgio Armani, Gianfranco Ferre, Michael Kors, Vera Wang, Roberto Cavalli, Donatella Versace, Zac Posen, Dennis Basso and even you Justin Timberlake..how disappointing that you feel that William Rast really needs fur tails to be cool.
Human consciousness always moves outward from the male-centric place it has been for too long – it moves toward understanding what unites us in our nature. That is why women, and then foreigners and then blacks, and then gays, and then children, and then those with special needs, all had to fight and all gained their rightful place in human society and in human dignity. Animals have no voice but are part of the same irreversible trend of humanity understanding it doesn’t stand alone, that it has responsibilities and is part of a greater whole to whom it owes respect and dignity and ri
