Magazine’s April issue included former resident Delcianna Winders
By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter
Benicia residents who opened the April issue of O Magazine and saw Stephanie Ellis’s picture and story on page 147 in a feature on confident women may have looked across to page 146 to see Delcianna Winders.
Turns out Winders, director of captive animal law enforcement for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, also has Benicia ties.
Though Winders now lives in New Orleans, her father, Paul R. Winders, is owner of Around Town Realty, based in Vallejo.
Delcianna Winders lived in Benicia from 2001-03, when she worked at Mortgage Strategies, obtained her real estate license and became a lender after her graduation from the University of California-Santa Cruz.
She left Benicia to enter New York University School of Law to pursue a career in animal rights law, her father said.
Like Ellis, Winders had some connections who know the O Magazine staff.
“The wife of a friend of my brother works for O Magazine and found me on Facebook,” she said. “She told me that they were brainstorming a feature on confidence, and that she thought I was a good candidate for possible inclusion.
“I provided them with some preliminary information about my thoughts and experiences with confidence,” she said. “Shortly thereafter, I got a call back informing me that they thought I had a unique viewpoint to share and that I had been selected for inclusion in the magazine.”
After that Winders met with an O Magazine photographer.
“The photo shoot lasted around five hours. It was a bit surreal to see myself and Hugo in the magazine, but it also was very exciting.”
Winders is depicted outdoors, in the company of Hugo, a rescued basset hound she calls “the love of my life!” Above her is the heading “The Crusader.”
Her involvement in animal welfare, which features prominently in the magazine’s article, began early in life, Winders said.
“When I was about 14 years old, I cared for two pigs I raised from babies. When they were slaughtered for food, I could no longer separate the meat on my plate from the animals it had come from,” she said.
“I stopped eating meat pretty much immediately, and I started reading all the books I could get my hands on about factory farming.”
She said her research led her to some uncomfortable discoveries.
“Once I learned that hens are kept in cages so small that they can’t even spread their wings and that male chicks, who are useless to the egg industry, are ground up alive, I stopped eating eggs.
“And when I learned that male calves are taken away from their mothers so that humans can have the milk that was intended for them and then are forced to live in tiny crates — often chained by the neck — I stopped consuming dairy products as well.”
In O Magazine, she is quoted saying, “I wanted to right these wrongs.” What she learned inspired her to become an attorney, and take the fight into the courts.
She said PETA has documented factory farm employees’ abuse and outright cruelty to the animals in their care. “Investigators collect months of footage depicting a pattern of routine abuse.”
Her organization’s secret filming of atrocious acts against animals that couldn’t defend themselves, including unspeakable acts performed in front of indifferent supervisors, have helped authorities build a strong case against the abusers, she said.
Investigations have led to criminal convictions, such as those obtained against West Virginia turkey farms whose employees beat the birds and stomped them to death.
She worries that now, in the wake of so many successful investigations, undercover camera work is being banned instead of encouraged.
“Legislators should be passing laws to require cameras on all factory farms and in all slaughterhouses in order to catch the animal abusers like those PETA has caught in its undercover investigations,” she said.
“The ‘ag-gag’ bills make you wonder if the legislators have their own farms or rich constituents with farms that they don’t want anyone to see inside,” she said.
“There are no government inspections of farms for cruelty violations, and workers who report abuse are often ignored. In every undercover case, PETA investigators have alerted supervisors — and often even corporate management — to the abuse, but the cruelty continued.”
Winders has turned to talking about the stories PETA has uncovered, an endeavor that was described in the magazine article. “I began to realize in college how important public speaking is,” she said.
But she had to work at becoming a confident speaker.
Winders told O Magazine that as a child, she was so shy that she dared not speak to her preschool classmates. Naturally shy, she has had to work to become more outgoing.
“I taught a student-directed seminar on factory farming, which really helped to build my confidence and public speaking ability,” she said.
“Over the years, I’ve continued to hone my skills through experience, giving talks about animal issues at law schools and other venues, teaching animal law at two law schools, doing media interviews regularly, and so forth,” she said.
Though the O Magazine article describes her confidence, she said, “Of course, I do still get nervous at times.”
But her career, and her passion for it, strengthen her.
“When I do (get nervous), I just remind myself how important it is, for the sake of animals, to share the knowledge and information that I have, and that’s more important than any fleeting discomfort I may have.”
Winders gets back to Benicia periodically to see her family, “not as often as they’d like, but fairly often — three to four times a year.”
She said she’s happy to have lived in a city that has been recognized as one of the best “dog cities” in the nation.
And she hopes her page in O Magazine sparks a conversation about animal welfare.
“I hope my piece will inspire others to think a bit more about animals and how our own individual choices — such as boycotting circuses that use animals or choosing soy or almond milk over cow’s milk — can make a difference for animals.”
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