We Are One – How Animal Cruelty and Human Rights Interconnect
Consider this:
“Would God ever ask you to be cruel for Him?”
“Would God ever ask you to make another living being suffer through your actions?”
“Would God ever ask you to seek vengeance for Him?”
Filmmaker Kevin Mukherji reveals how animal cruelty, human rights and environmental rights are all related. The documentary looks at humankind’s treatment of animals and features appearances by former president Jimmy Carter, activist Maneka Gandhi, lawyer for the SPCA-LA amongst other leaders in their fields.
In the film, we see that how we treat each other as humans is connected to how we treat animals. Mukherji takes us on a fascinating and compelling 90-minute journey that argues the relationship between seeing people and animals as “objects, property and possessions,” dangerously and wrongly leads to violent behavior, subjugation, and exploitation of others who are weaker or are dependent. Mukherji shows us how child exploitation, human labor and sex trafficking, modern slavery, the sexual abuse of children, women treated as property, and animal cruelty — are all connected by those humans who objectify and commoditize other humans and animals, in order to exploit and abuse them. By objectifying and commoditizing humans and animals, people lose their empathy and compassion, and stop treating living beings with the respect, kindness, moral consideration, and empathy that all living beings deserve equally. The film reveals how the use, misuse and abuse of “power” to those who are weaker, dependent or reliant – causes some people to abuse their position of power. The underlying message is that humans can use their power to change life for the better – better for the animals, the environment and humanity.
Narrated by Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker and featuring President Jimmy Carter, Maneka Gandhi, Wayne Pacelle, Nathan Runkle, and Harold Ramis among others.
Why animal cruelty? Why should we care about this? The answer is …. Looking at the problem of animal cruelty is the correlation of what is going on in our civilization. It is a microcosm. Why? It is the root of a desensitization process that allows people to be violent against people. It’s the root of an attitude, an attitude of entitlement, that it’s ok to gratuitously torture an animal. It’s the root of compassion, how we feel towards another living thing that is not ourselves, but another species that’s not our own. When you reverse the cruel behavior, and teach empathy, you can stop the violence against people. Animal cruelty is the root of the real problem, and eliminating it – is also the cure. It starts with how we treat “other beings.”
Film Premier: 2018
Film Length: 1 hour, 28 min.
Watch The Film
Stream it for free on Amazon
Quotes from the Film
“We have learned to ignore our violence. Take the first small step. The simplest of demands is to listen. To have an open mind. To open your heart. To act only with nonviolence toward all living beings.”
“You always want to give the best of you to the world. The best of you is always the gentlest, the nicest, the politest, the kindest – to humans and animals. The worst of you is the bully, the meanness, the cruelty – to humans or to animals.”
“The film asks, what is the connection between how we treat animals and the weaker — and how we treat our fellow human people? Can their be an escalating form of behavior? Can it be that what led to our treating of people as commodities came from treating animals as commodities? It’s the notion of I can do whatever I want with ‘my property’ that leads to violations of the moral rights of animals and people.”
“Not that long ago we held slaves, and women, children and animals were deemed property – and animals still are considered property today. The film exposes how the designation of ‘property’ to living beings causes their vulnerability, abuse, exploitation, and suffering, by people who want to feel powerful. We need to change animals legal status from property to one with rights and moral consideration.
“We must think about our own diet and how it is contributing to animal suffering, climate change, global warming, decimation of the environment, all of these calamities are a derivative of animal agriculture.”
“We eat to excess. We are gluttons. Somewhere in the past we started treating food animals as non-feeling, consumable commodities. Not by our needs, but by our own whims. We are so deeply disconnected from life.”
“Animals don’t kill wantonly or in large numbers, only humans kill for senseless reasons and in large numbers completely unnecessarily. It’s a condition of profound ignorance and a sickness. We have the capacity to make moral choices and should exhibit our moral capacity.”
“Because cruelty to animals is often a precursor to who becomes a psychopath or sociopath, that is caused by having a lack the empathy for another living being.”
“Many of our serial killers, violent criminals and murderers, started with animal cruelty. It’s where their cruelty begins. Because they regard others as objects. It often starts in young boys, they become desensitized to living beings, not having any compassion for life. It’s about loss of empathy for all ‘others.’ “
“This attitude of stomping on those weaker than us, is the same attitude that allows us to stomp on the environment, to go to war, to destroy our habitats, and hurt each other and animals.”
“All species have their own right to life. We don’t have the right to take another life away.”
“Animals have the same will to live that we do. We should be good and decent precisely because we are powerful.”
“No one animal on this planet is more important than another.”
“Maybe ‘no animals were killed in a movie,’ but thousands of animals are consumed by one person in their lifetime if they eat animals. We are a society and culture of contradictions. We value some animals as pets, but we see other animals as ‘meat machines.’ But all animal life and human life is equal.”
“The abuse is rampant – electric prods, kicking, stomped on, screaming at them, torturing them, then farm animals are dismembered and skinned alive – because the bottom line in slaughterhouses is speed and profit for people who choose to eat animals.”
“Cows are forced to produce 10 times the amount of milk a day that is natural or normal, eating dairy causes terrible animal cruelty.”
“We should practice principles of kindness to all animals, not only some animals.”
“We do not see the animals who are slaughtered, so we lose respect for the life given.”
“10 billion animals are raised for food and killed every year—it’s just staggering. We don’t kill them at the end of a decent life, instead we torture them during the majority of their lives by confining them in tiny crates, where we treat the animals as a commodity or a thing.”
“Up to 20 million animals are killed or put to sleep every year in shelters because people abandon them or no longer want them and surrender them. That number does not include the number of animals poisoned by neighbors, killed by cars, die in pet stores, die in puppy mills, or die as a result of neglect and cruelty.”
“Human beings have the power to overcome the need for power by hurting the weaker, and instead to use your power to change life for the better – for the animals, the environment, the Earth, humanity.”
“Think of how you treat all living beings. How you treat human beings. You are me, and I am you – our needs and desires are equal. If you value yourself, why would you hurt something that’s essentially part of you?”
“We can be the voice for those living beings who don’t have a voice – use technology, upload and share videos, share photos on social media, become a voice for those who are voiceless like animals.”
“Trying to create peace through war will move us in the direction of self-destruction. We need to begin to turn humanity away from war as the answer to solving conflicts between nations; and instead becoming absolutely committed to diplomacy, mutuality, communication and shared interests.”
“Violence toward “the other” is violence toward ourselves.”
“It’s very unfortunate when people decide to use and propagate the most abusive elements of culture, and the most abusive, restrictive and discriminatory elements of religion to put people and animals down and abuse them. It’s ironic and wrong to do it in the name of religion.”
“The great teachings of religion and philosophy say we are very interconnected, we are interdependent on one another. If we are so interconnected, and are so similar to other species – especially in the capacity we feel pain and suffer the same way. We should be more egalitarian in the way we treat other species.”
“The key is understanding Dominion (in the bible) means taking the responsibility and obligation to be good stewards, and be kind and compassionate and have empathy for all of the Earth’s co-inhabitants and all living beings.”
“God never wants anyone to be violent or to hurt another, it’s only the twisted ‘rationalization’ by people who try to justify their violence by thinking that causing suffering is ok with God. It’s never ok with God.”
“We are the shepherds of the Earth.”
“At one point, human slavery was accepted behavior by all cultures in every corner of the globe, and now animal slavery is accepted in virtually every corner of the world, but I hope people can evolve to seeing the moral wrong in hurting animals.”
“The Food and Agriculture of the U.N. says 18% of all greenhouse gasses are from farm animals, and it’s larger than all the transportation systems combined in the world.”
Film Credits
Directed by: Kevin Mukherji
Produced, Edited and photgraphed by: Kevin Mukherji
Executive Producer: Forest Whitaker
Narrator: Forest Whitaker
Guest Appearances
- President Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the U.S.Madeleine Bernstein, J.D., SPCA- LA
- Maneka Gandhi, Peace Activist
- Debashish Banerji, Ph.D, Philosopher
- Wayne Pacelle, President of the Humane Society of the U.S.
- Nathan Runkle, President of Mercy For Animals
- Harold Ramis, Filmmaker
- Jim Clemente, J.D., FBI Profiler
- Kerry Clark, M.D., Internal Medicine
- Farida Deif, Human Rights Watch
- Erick Avari, Actor
- Qumaru Nisa, Vegan Activist
- Lorri Houston, Animal Acres
- Aaron Kipnis
