I saw many of your colleagues at the Board of Supervisors meeting, the same one that I was at. I saw many of your colleagues all lined up, cameras rolling and ready to go the minute the debate started on the floor. I saw many of your colleagues all stay, the entire time. I saw many of your colleagues watch me speak, and film me speak, as they filmed everyone speak. I saw many of your colleagues gasp in offense and snicker at suggestions by random public commenters that many branches of the media sensationalize news. I saw many of your reporter colleagues all dolled-up and on their cell phones texting, or out in the hallway while their cameramen filmed the entirety of the shit-show. I say this because they are the faces doing the live coverage, from the scene, and interviewing people onsite. I saw one of your colleagues going around like a parasite to an animal and jumping on every public-commenter that was “for” the legislation, or who had an outrageous and all-encompassing negative claim to make about millions of dogs, and getting their name, contact information and statement. This same man didn’t bother to approach anyone else. I saw many of your colleagues focus on the select speakers who brought in poster boards or articles that displayed a horrible incident, and then tried to pin that incident on every dog and its owner. I say this because I was literally wearing a t-shirt that was a walking counter-billboard to all of the exploitative material that was held up while people were deeming all of our dogs guilty out of hand. No one wanted to film that, or show it, or ask me about it.
I was quoted a sentence by a nice guy from the L.A. Times and then quoted separately in a FOX 11 article by a woman that I didn’t even speak to. I say this because they hacked the quote up, and worse, called me a breeder! This was then picked up by aggregate websites and erroneously reprinted verbatim. I had to reach out to them each individually and try to get it changed, and while doing this I also mentioned that this is just a prime example of how aggregate news sites immediately repeat inaccurate “attack” data relating to breeds when any “newsworthy” incident occurs. They each did change the “breeder” language but no one had any comment to my parallel point. When FOX 11 finally updated their article, instead of simply taking “breeder” out and putting “Pit Bull advocate” or “of SwayLove.org” in its place, they simply took my entire mention and quote out altogether.
I do not say these things because I care about acknowledgement for myself, but I do care about acknowledgement for information and for differing points of view. So… To those media members looking for quotes about Riverside, feel absolutely free to use any of these:
“Even though the talk is on breed-specific spay and neuter, and the dog population and poor adoptions, these are all covers for the desire to ban a dog that state law says you cannot ban.”
“There is roughly 4-6 million Pit Bulls in this country, so my question is a simple one… Why isn’t anyone ever willing to focus on the astronomical amounts of dogs, Pit Bulls, that haven’t done anything?”
“Throw out whatever extremely low ‘offending’ number you want regarding what dog has killed a person. 99.9 infinity 9 percent of these dogs have not done this.”
“Pit Bull is a very murky term. How are these dogs to be identified and who is doing the identifying? What are their qualifications? The Animal Control Association offers no course in breed identification. This job of identification is not based on any science and the person doing that job usually has no qualifications to be doing such a job.”
“Victoria Voith put out a study that involved over 900 shelter workers and they misidentified their own impounded dogs over 70% of the time, when matched alongside actual DNA test results.”
“Only ¼th of 1% of a dog’s genetic makeup relates to appearance.”
“It’s obvious profiling, and they are then guilty based on someone’s visual opinion, having nothing to do with an act they actually committed. Nowhere in a civilized society can you get away with that type of reaction.”
“You should look at the many roots of the problem, not scapegoating an entire group of anything.”
“What is a detriment to public safety is people who allow their dogs to roam freely and without supervision. That’s irresponsible. What is a detriment to public safety is people who chain or confine their dog to a specific area, unsupervised, and then allow children to enter that premises, unsupervised. That’s irresponsible. Show me an ‘attack,’ in your county or elsewhere, that doesn’t fit 1 of those 2 scenarios. It’s hard to do. Yet you choose to ignore these facts to focus on the appearance of a dog instead of the behavior of its human.”
“Riverside County already has a ‘dangerous dog’ law. They should be following it, it’s breed-neutral.”
These were all stated during my public comment, but no one there reporting on this exact issue felt like even attempting to portray any portion of what I or others said. Hopefully there are more of you out there that will find these things worthy of consideration.
Thank you,
Josh Liddy