Progressive activist pols and groups are flooding our e-mail accounts with requests to sign on and support their various worthy causes. But how “progressive” and “inclusive” are they? Everyone with an ounce of honest concern and common sense recognizes the need to protect the livability of our planet, lessen the injustice of inequality, ameliorate the desperate lives of political refugees, and give succor to the aged, infirm, and impoverished, but the very essence of progressivism is extending freedom, protection, and opportunity to all sentient beings. By failing to do that, these activists are susceptible to the charge that they’re cruelly denying kinship to all, just as the rights of anyone who wasn’t male, white, and well-born were once denied.

It doesn’t diminish the importance of protecting individual human rights, free speech, property rights, or public safety to insist that an agenda isn’t progressive unless it also furthers animal rights and the protection of all sentient beings.

Yes, all charities must have a well-defined cause to attract support and to concentrate their campaigns effectively. But when moving from discussions of single issues to a broader focus, is it not reasonable to insist that politicians and opinion-makers place consideration of the rights and welfare of our fellow animals high on all progressive agendas?

Science has established that nonhuman animals reason and communicate. They procreate as humans do, nurture their young and protect their mates, use tools, and have rich emotional lives, experiencing terror, sadness, joy, anger, and affection. So what is the justification (other than economic opportunism or the indifference of human animals) for imprisoning them for no crime, impregnating them and then depriving them of their children, denying them the means to live as nature intended as well as the companionship of others of their species, and then killing them for their body parts? These questions surely deserve a place on every progressive agenda. And when they’re absent from any agenda, it’s not a progressive one.

Most of us PETA members support many fine groups that serve non-animal causes and we shall continue to do so, but when an organization or a politician that claims to champion the “underdog” asks for your signature and your money, ask about their policy toward animal rights and welfare. If they can’t speak to that point, tell them that you can’t contribute your name, effort or cash until they commit to true progressivism.

Frank Cullen spent six years as a Cambridge, Massachusetts, elected (and reelected) official and served on various commissions and boards at the city and state levels.