RITES OF PASSAGE

For 20-year-old Cecilia Rodriguez, it all started with a bite into a Big Mac. “I was sitting in my car outside the Golden Arches,” she says, “and I was thinking, ‘Well, what’s in this hamburger? There’s lettuce, there’s secret sauce and here’s a little meat patty.’ I just thought about where everything originated. And this little meat patty was a cow. I figured, ‘What’s the difference between me eating a cow and eating my cat?’ I felt like a hypocrite. So I made the decision not to eat meat anymore--and I haven’t.”

That was a year ago. But the simple decision to forgo meat, after much research and soul searching, has evolved into a life-changing decision. Today, Rodriguez, an art student at Pasadena City College, is about to become, for the first time in her life, an activist. Rodriguez is attending her first meeting of the Los Angeles-based Last Chance for Animals, an anti-vivisectionist organization.

“I was making all of these personal changes,” she says. “I’m not wearing the same things or using animal-tested products. But there’s not enough people doing things about it. I just said, ‘Well, all these animals are dying, being tortured and maimed while I’m waiting.’ Finally, I just had to do something.”

“Last Chance for Animals is a nonviolent, direct-action organization,” explains spokesman Jack Carone, who opens the meeting. “We don’t agonize over whether a person is more important than a dog.”

The group’s Direct Action Training Manual has chapters titled “Direct Action Code of Behavior” and “If We Are Arrested. . . .” Would Rodriguez put herself on the front lines of a demonstration?

“Yes,” she says. “We’re killing animals needlessly every day. It just doesn’t seem right. “