If You Ever Doubted The Power Of Steemit, Read This Post!

Earlier this week, I posted about a disheartening situation in my Appalachian community. At a local festival, one of the vendors was giving away live baby chicks to children--whether a parent was present or not--as prizes for winning little games. This is not only idiotic and kept many parents from letting their kids near that booth, but it's against Virginia law. Thousands of people passed by that booth and saw what was happening, and not one of them realized it was illegal even though most were disgusted by it. I ended up having a lovely and productive conversation with the Chief of Police in that jurisdiction, learned that he indeed investigated. Kudos to Chief Shawn Short of the Cedar Bluff Police Department. He stepped up when many others would have simply blown this off. Who cares about baby chickens anyway, right, when they're eating dogs and torturing strays in third world countries?

I'm not ignorant about situations in other parts of the world. I know horrific and heartbreaking abuse of animals (and humans) occurs daily. Hourly. Each minute. But this is America, and as a world leader, we should be leading. Not excusing. There's a great deal of resistance in my rural farming community to any kind of progressive thinking when it comes to animals. All animals--domestic or farming--are "property" to people here, to be used or killed at will. It's very difficult to explain how essential the Five Freedoms are to the moral code of humanity when animals are viewed as wholly non-sentient and alive only for our convenience.

But this time something was different. We brought the problem to public attention, many locals complained about our post and some became abusive, and chaos ensued. Then some Steemians stepped in. Comments began appearing on the post from countries all around the world. The issue became elevated beyond the plane of local bully tactics and ignorance...and guess what? A big thing happened.

As a rescue organization, we've had difficulty in the past getting information out to the community. We don't have funding for major PR projects like mail-outs and pamphlets. Our Facebook posts about simple matters like the law attract incredible drama...or no attention at all if they aren't controversial in some way. Local media outlets shy away from animal issues altogether. This week, someone made a decision to write the question about the chicks at the festival to one local paper, but someone somewhere had to make a decision to publish it with the answer. This is huge. Virtually unprecedented in Tazewell County, VA. This Q&A is part of a weekly column that runs on the front page. I have to believe that county officials chose to address this topic publicly because of the international attention Steemit brought to the equation.

I've publicly thanked Mike Dennis and everyone else who played a role in addressing this in the newspaper. Like Chief Short, he stepped up. And I will always believe Steemit played a huge role in breaking through the wall of ignorance and hostility our region is known for.