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If you’ve heard of American lawyer and author Steven Wise, it’s likely due to the peculiar lawsuits he filed in 2013 in New York State court. What makes these suits eccentric, and their plaintiffs certified media darlings, is that the plaintiffs are not human – but rather chimpanzees. If these legal proceedings are successful, something unprecedented and seemingly against the laws of nature will occur: a chimpanzee will walk into a courtroom as a thing, and walk out as a person.

While it is enormously reductive to speak of complex social change only in terms of historical turning points, every social movement, for better or worse, can be distilled to a series of watershed moments. Today, those who have dedicated their lives to improving the lot of animals on this planet find themselves at a fascinating point in time.

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On one hand, historic wins seem to be piling up. In 2013, the Toronto Zoo retired the last of its elephants, Ringling Bros. recently did the same, SeaWorld has stopped breeding orcas, and the United States government has decided to retire the last of its research chimpanzees to sanctuary. We are greeted daily with social media stories of heroic humans toiling on behalf of their nonhuman comrades, and of corporations and governments seeing the light. There is, indeed, a lot of good news out there.