WCAU
The 3 year boycott of Burger King (1980 to 1983) was resolved by the
company's accession to withdrawal of veal in 1983. G Cave, H
Schofield, T Zagar and A Hershaft had the first four groups involved
in the boycott of Burger King. The writer was asked to do media for the
small coalition. One day the writer was typing press releases for Philadelphia tv
and radio stations.. and came to WCAU.. which is on City Line
Ave. When she went to type 'city' she found her fingers typing
'cave'. She took that as a message to call Dr. George Cave
of State College, an animal rights activist. During the call he told
her he had just finished an interview with WCAU on
Pennsylvania's decompression chamber, a painful method of
killing 'surplus' pound animals. A short time later, she wanted to
listen to the Larry King Show on Mutual Radio. For some reason
she could not get it that night on WTOP in Washington, but it
came in clearly on WCAU, a distance away in Philadelphia.
The guest that night was Ray Cave of Time Magazine. Again,
there was another Cave Philadelphia connection, when
William Cave of Philadelphia's American Antivivisection Society
was a guest on the radio. Later S Grafio took her to see Bawa
Muhaiyyadeen, a Moslem mystic and vegetarian, whose aura was so bright it filled the room with white light, whose love was so strong that babies
crawled to him from their mothers. She realized in unwinding this koan
that Baba was telling her (city typed into cave) that the city is a convex infliction
upon the land.. that the cave is a concave recess.. that at times inaction says the Gita is better than action.. Sometimes the path of the Tao the path of water is better than the path of fire.
(CAU in ancient Roman script would look like CAV)
(CAU has the sound of COW)
* Baba also gave her a physical reminder of this. She had sent out
2300 press releases which yielded no media... later on, when she had
not done any media, the phone began ringing off the hook.
Robert Schuller: Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. Only God
can count the apples in a seed.
*Burger King is now owned by a Texas capital consortium
which includes Goldman Sachs.
It is the only major fast food chain which has a veggie
burger option but it is still advertising the concept of
animal flesh to billions.
Shortly before she was asked to do media for the
boycott, Baba gave her a dream in which Baba was
traveling in the US on a Greyhound. The busride began
on 4th St. in DC. When it arrived in Pennsylvania, there
was absolutely nothing in the restaurant she could offer
Baba to eat.
Greyhound was instrumental at that time in ending
the boycott of Burger King which had at that time
a cooperative relationship with the bus company.
Now Greyhound has changed owners. It is owned
by Laidlaw of Canada. It is hoped that Laidlaw
can end quickly the clubbing of Canadian seals.
ASKING FOR GUIDANCE
Baba had told His devotees if they had a question to which
they did not know the answer He would reply if a. it
was about an individual's own sadhana b. if the devotee
were surrendered to the answer, and if c. it entailed an
immediate fork in the road.
There are many who immediately know in their hearts what
course of action to take, but there are times when one
is not sure.
Baba said to take 4 symbols of equal size (e.g. 4 pieces of
paper) and write on one 'yes', a second 'no', and the 3rd
and 4th 'wait'. Then pray and select one at random.
When the writer was asked by a small coalition of 4 groups
to do media for the Burger King Boycott, she asked Baba
by this method and got 'yes'.
Several months went by. Dr Rao of Lawrence Kansas told a friend to tell her that boycotts were
not ahimsan (nonviolent) because they called down corporate
wrath. This was a wise criticism, and she asked Baba again,
and again got a yes to go forth.
More time passed. Bob Pinkus, editor of Vegetarian Living
who had convinced both the writer and Connie Salamone to
become vegan, said that boycotts increased corporate sales
because they operated on the principle "don't think of
a white elephant", which increases thoughts of white elephants.
She asked again for a third time and got another yes.
The river of life flowed on. Next Lou Ann Yonish, coordinator
of Vegetarian Action whose group was targeting restaurants
which served veal, said this was the wrong target. Another
casting of the chits (symbols) in prayer.. and another 'yes'.
This time it was Lou Ann on the other end of the phone
who made the selection.
Alice Herrington, president of Friends of Animals, felt
there was no ethical distinction between baby and adult animals
and that it was a form of age chauvinism to concentrate on
veal.
Dudley Giehl, founder of Animal Liberation and Michael
Rothschild also participated in the chits.
Altogether 6 times, Baba or the querant's form of God
was asked, and 6 times a yes was given. The odds of this
happening randomly are 1 in 4096.
All of the criticisms of the boycott were valid. Yet God
is omniscient, and like someone on a hill who can look down
on an intersection and see traffic patterns those in the
cars cannot, God gave guarding and guidance.
