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Dear Friends,

Please accept our respectful greetings,

We seek your help in raising awareness of a precedent setting case regarding the Hindu practice of Protecting Cows, which is currently being heard in the New York State Court of Appeals. Last Spring a local Judge banned a Hindu family's cows from their Village home, even though he found that their practices where not causing a nuisance and were not considerably different than the Amish, who regularly drive their horses and buggies through the Village.

The ACLU has called the Village's opposition to their practices, 'Religious Persecution, Plain and Simple".

We ask for your support and blessings for this family in their fight against the cultural chauvinism which banned religiously revered cows, even while allowing a beef cow and dairy goat farm to operate across the street from the family's home, in Angelica NY.

To learn more about how the cultural practice of cow protection is being discriminated against in the USA, kindly visit the website, http://www.NoMoreInjustice.org Included in the media section is a recent news story published in the Buffalo News.

Please let your local newspaper know about the appeal, and ask them to publish something about the story in their paper, because the local Indian community would find the story very interesting. Last spring the New York Times covered the exile of these sacred cows and the AP Newswire coverage ran internationally.

This family has struggled for 4 years to establish cow protection as a bonafide religious practice, which is based on scientific principles and which provides many practical benefits to humanity. The struggle has left them feeling isolated and in need of moral support. Please visit their website and let them know that you support the important cultural practice of cow protection.

If you can help please contact the Voith's

A friend of the Voith Family.

Note: The Voith family are in a most precarious circumstance right now, with their cows having been exiled from their property for the past one year. This is a very unfair case, which is clearly discriminatory against Hindu Dharma. We feel that the issue of cow protection is vitally important to human society, and thus we can not ignore this blatant discrimination against mother cow.

The biggest help they need right now is moral support. Just knowing that others care and believe in what we are doing would go a long way! They are very isolated geographically and their time is largely spent doing physical work to ensure the care of their cows who are housed 20 minutes away at a local dairy farm. This does not leave them much time to reach out for support to the Hindu community and thus they sometimes find themselves feeling alone in this fight against injustice.

They have an attorney who is working on the case pro bono, and their appeal is scheduled to be filed on November 22nd of this year in the NY State Appellate Division in Rochester. They had hoped that Hindu organizations would come together to file an Amicus Curiae Brief delineating for the edification of the Court the relevance of this case, and of cow protection to those of Hindu faith.

An Amicus Brief would speak loudly to the Court to stop the stonewalling they have received thus far and force them to apply the principles of the American justice system fairly to Hindu Religious and civil rights. They have had some contact with the Vishva Hindu Parishad. The organization paid for their transcript costs of $750, and contacted an attorney about the matter. It is still not too late for an Amicus to be filed, but it would have to be acted on quickly and filed at the same time as their appeal.

They are also in need of help raising money to offset the monthly expenses of boarding and feeding their cows while the appeal is underway. Their expenses are about $500 monthly and this combined with the cost of traveling twice daily to milk is becoming very difficult for their family to sustain. They have many ideas for gift items (mugs, calendars, greeting card), which could be sold through their website to help them raise the funds, but they lack skill and time to complete these projects on our own.

As the appeal progresses, they could use help in dealing with the press, so that the story gets widespread and in-depth coverage.

The above are their most immediate needs. Their longer term need is to find a place to live where people appreciate their work of promoting the protection of cows. They need to find a place which would facilitate their family to interact with the public, and where they could showcase this important Hindu cultural and religious practice. If you could help them in any of these ways, or if you have other ideas, they would be very glad to discuss any and all options with you.

I forgot to mention something which is perhaps the most important way that you could help them. Their ultimate goal is to change the Western public's derogatory opinion of the Hindu cultural and religious practice of protecting cows. It is time to put an end to cultural chauvinism against the cow. People should be educated about the many scientifically provable benefits that come to society from protecting the cow; versus the destructive environmental, economic and social consequences stemming from the cruel practice of exploitation the cow.

Their intention is to use the publicity arising form this case as a vehicle to change public opinion in favor of cow protection. This case offers a great opportunity to influence public opinion. The Village is obviously biased against the Hindu practice of maintaining and protecting cows, because while they are aggressively prosecuting the Voiths, they are simultaneously allowing cows to be raised for slaughter right across the street- nay across the fence- from their property.

With proper guidance, this case could raise many edifying topics rarely discussed in depth in the popular media; Unfortunately, because it is only the Voith family saying these things, the media often does not cover these points effectively, but with a little help the ether could be quickly filled with uplifting sound vibrations about the need to respect life, animal rights, civil rights, examining the environmental damage from exploiting the cow, examining evidence that violence to animals leads to violence to humans and a further disregard of human suffering (for example the conditions of poverty and starvation).

It is an outrage that the Village is able to mire the discussion in the press with useless topics and get away with claiming that a socially beneficial and religious practice is a health risk, while allowing a beef farm for cow slaughter, especially when Voiths animal husbandry practices are exemplary and are meant to showcase that animals should not be cared for in the cruel and unclean ways engaged in by those who desire only the profit from the animals slaughter, not the animal's well being.

These points and many more issues of cultural chauvinism against Hindu Dharma can be advantageously discussed in the press, the judiciary and the educational circles with help from those in knowledge of Vedic wisdom.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Mukunda dasa [aka Mark Whiteley]