Recently, ARZone invited me to be a guest in their podcast series. The recording was arranged to take place at 10pm on a Sunday evening. Not the best day and time for me! But the only time available given those involved live in the UK, Ireland, the United States and Australia. So, it had to be convenient for everyone involved. Praise the Lord for Skype!

The ARZone folks you will hear in this podcast include Carolyn Bailey, Barbara DeGrande, Tim Gier, Ronnie Lee and Roger Yates. Ronnie and Roger are old friends and colleagues of mine. Please forgive the silly banter between us.

Anyway, my podcast on ARZone is published here and I invite you to take the time out to listen to it. I need to tell you though it is a two-hour conversation! So, you will need, at least, a pot of tea or coffee beside you and some vegan sandwiches or biscuits. Here’s a list of some of the topics we discussed in no particular order:

• Vegan campaigning
• Political organising for animals
• Vegan public educational campaigns vs. political animal rights campaigns
• The radicalisation of British animal welfare organisations in the 1980s, including the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
• The cultural history of veganism from post-World War Two stoic asceticism to current trends in urban vegan chic
• A sense of community among animal rights people or lack of
• Personal transformative moments, including mine
• The importance of studying other social movements
• Why are there not more vegans today?
• Why ‘animal lovers’ are a potential source of animal rights supporters
• How I got involved with animal rights, including working in a chicken slaughterhouse
• The European Union ban on the battery cage
• Steve Wise and his legal strategy
• Are vegans special people?
• Why meat, eggs and dairy are the new tobacco
• Traps to avoid and not let yourself fall into, including psychological trauma
• Is the British animal welfare/rights movement making progress?
• Buddhism and animal rights
• The Hastings Vegan Dining Club
• Professionalising the animal advocate
• Animal rights 75 years from now
• And why I’m guardedly optimistic……..

But be prepared for the odd outbreak of cheap, vulgar British humour!

The Animal Equality inspiring protest in Puerta del Sol, Madrid.

The Spanish animal rights organisation, Igualdad Animal (Animal Equality), bring attention to animal exploitation with a dramatic protest on International Day for Animal Rights on December 10.

Four hundred activists from several countries each hold in their hands carcasses of farmed animals (e.g., chickens, pigs, lambs) although one is holding the body of a dog. The protestors stand silently in the organisation’s t-shirts in ordered rows.

The image of the supplicating protestors asks us to see how we treat animals but also there is a sense of forgiveness about what we do to them. The protestors hold out the dead animals in supplication demanding the viewer to see the responsibility of our actions. We are not made to feel guilty. Although we should. Nor are we confronted with self-righteous indignation, which is all too frequently the currency of the animal rights protest.

Instead, we are asked politely to stop, look and think. In doing so, we participate in the protest rather than passively observe it. There is a shared complicity with the protestors. No one is innocent. We are all responsible for animal exploitation. We must all act. We could be standing there, too, with dead animals lying in our outstretched arms. Most likely for many, they are standing there with dead animals in their shopping baskets.

Convocatoria 10 de Diciembre 2011 – Igualdad Animal / Animal Equality from IgualdadAnimal | AnimalEquality on Vimeo.

Compare and contrast the simple sophistication of this protest with those which are easy and unimaginative. Generally, they make their point at the expense of someone else, including body size, economic class, gender and race. There is no understanding, even recognition, of the intersection of oppressions. Instead, there is the excuse that ‘it’s for the animals’ which, somehow, magically makes possible any action permissible.

Of course, their objective is to make the link between our bodies and those of the animals we consume. After all, according to Darwin and today’s dominant culture of material science and evolution, we are all of us animals. Embodying animal protest with our bodies may make us feel that we are making the point, even becoming ‘one’ with the animals’ exploitation, and, surely these protests are successful in this regard. But I remain unconvinced as to the effectiveness of the message and what is trying to be said. All too often, it is all about manufacturing personal transformative moments when people recognise for the first time animal exploitation and start the journey down the path toward vegetarian, vegan, cruelty-free living. This is why the animal rights movement is more like an evangelist cause rather than a sophisticated political initiative treading the corridors of power.

One unexplored aspect is that with some of these actions there is unwittingly an implication that the animals would do to us (if they could) what we do to them. The ‘world turned upside down’ has a strong tradition in art and agitprop but its message must be used with care and respect. Otherwise, all too often, it becomes simply a gratuitous protest lacking any real meaning other than an invitation to voyeurism. Of course, we want to people to look and what are we inviting them to see? These intentionally sensationalist protests border on the pornographic. Attention is drawn to the people in the protest. The animals are absent. This is one reason why the Animal Equality protest is so powerful. The animals are far from absent. They are being held up respectfully for us to see. It is a simple evocation of how we treat animals. Further, it reminds me of the contrast between anonymous violent and illegal actions of some protestors with those who use open rescues as an open, nonviolent and turning upside down the legality of animal status to witness our instrumental use of animals. With the former, the people are the story. Whereas   in the latter, it is the animals, which is, of course, how it should be.

Igualdad Animal is to be congratulated for staging a moving and dignified indictment of our inhumanity to animals in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid.

ADDENDUM

Igualdad Animal released two additional films of the protest. Here they are:

International Animal Rights Day 2010 (Spain) from IgualdadAnimal | AnimalEquality on Vimeo.

Día Internacional de los Derechos Animales 2011 || Igualdad Animal from IgualdadAnimal | AnimalEquality on Vimeo.

Marti’s ethic was one of active, engaged, empathetic care, not selfish or selfless care-taking. And while she was critical of many, her compassion always extended to them. She was a genuine philosopher, a lover of wisdom, of learning, and of debate. In true feminist form, her philosophical vision sought to challenge aspects of our common ways of thinking about ethics, even those that don’t immediately appear to emerge from masculinist assumptions. Since her earliest work, Marti’s scholarship drew on connections and brought out new possibilities for living more harmoniously with the movements of the natural world. Throughout her writing Marti advocated a nonviolent, emotionally responsive, holistic, and nondominative ethic by which humans may live in harmony with nature and nonhuman creatures.

A big part of the fun of Our Hen House is listening to Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer banter and bicker with each other.

The good folks at Our Hen House, Mariann Sullivan and Jasmin Singer, recently interviewed me and our chat, which ranged over a number of issues, was published as part of Episode 97. You can listen to it here.

Our Hen House is a fantastic resource for anyone who cares about animals. It’s fun, upbeat and always interesting. But there’s a serious side, too. The Our Hen House Web site is also a rich source of information and resources on animal rights and vegan living.

In our conversation we explored such issues as the Animals and Society Institute, similarities and differences in animal rights and veganism between the UK and USA and gay rights and animal rights. I also spoke about my four key values — truth, compassion, nonviolence and interbeing — which I explore in my forthcoming book, Animal Dharma.

I recommend listening to this episode not only for my interview but also for all the other interesting features it includes. And while you’re at it, I suggest checking out previous podcasts.

Marti Kheel

Along with Carol J. Adams and Batya Bauman, Marti Kheel in the 1990s and thereafter made a tremendous impact on my thinking about our relationship with animals.

They introduced me to ecofeminism and my understanding of what animal rights meant to me deepened both professionally and personally.

It is with this is in mind that it is with great sorrow that I note here Marti’s recent death from leukaemia.

If there is one thing that I think we can to do to remember Marti it is to read her excellent book, Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective. Here’s one of my favourite insights:

Outside the field of ecofeminism most nature philosophers continue to ignore the relevance of gender to destructive practices toward nature. A holistic ecofeminist philosophy, in contrast, begins by naming this reality. It seeks to identify not only the dualistic ideologies that perpetuate the abuse of nature, women, and marginalized others, but the ways in which those ideologies are intertwined with psychosocial identities. Ecofeminists must also turn their critical analysis to the field of nature ethics, remaining alert to residues of masculinism within other nature philosophies. Although identifying the influence of gender on moral conduct and thought will not eliminate masculinism, it can provide a first step toward destablizing its influence. (p.218)

The Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona held toward the end of October the first conference on animal law in Europe. The organiser, Professor Marita Candela, kindly invited me to speak. I wrote about the conference on the blog of the Animals and Society Institute. Also, I had posted onto the same blog a report of two Animal Studies conferences I had attended earlier in the month. They were both excellent.

The text of my talk in Barcelona, Animal Rights and Public Policy, is available to read here.

On my return from Barcelona, I began immediately to move to a new office. This involved moving the office I had set up at home and materials I had put into storage into one location. The bulk of the stuff I moved belongs to my archive. The collection now consists of some 2,000 plus books, six four-drawer filing cabinets of papers of various kinds, audio-visual materials and artefacts (e.g., badges/buttons, display materials, artwork). It’s great to have all this material under one roof. I use my archive as a resource for the work I currently do for client organisations and the books I am currently writing and researching. Further, I plan to catalog further and digitise my collection to make it more widely available. Presently, my collection of books is catalogued here. With the dotage years approaching more quickly than one would like, I will prepare at some point a Request for Proposals from interested parties (e.g., universities, archives, organisations) who may be interested in acquiring the collection. It is a truly unique collection which I would see form part of an institution that uses for educational and research purposes.

With no immediate travel plans and the move out of the way but not all the unpacking and sorting, my focus turns increasingly to working on my book, Animal Dharma, and meeting the needs of my clients, including those I volunteer for.

Anyone who hasn’t been hiding under a rock this past week has heard about “Occupy Wall Street,” a movement that seemingly has come out of nowhere, beginning in New York City a few weeks ago, and now spreading each day to more cities small and large across the United States. Is it the Arab Spring come to the U.S.? An incarnation of the 1960s student movement? A progressive version of the Tea Party?

Bee goes on to consider the presence of a concern for animals as part of this protest, including as an integral part of an emerging social movement with broad objectives challenging the present social and economic norms. Bee quotes from various people involved with and commenting on this initiative, including yours truly. She concludes,

A core belief of the Animals and Society Institute is that institutional change for animals and future success of the movement depend on our ability to position animal issues in the arena of public policy, including action in the mainstream political arena. Perhaps the activists will come to see the same is true for the other worthy causes they espouse.

She speaks for me in this regard.

Kim Stallwood Busy Minding Animals

Our European Director, Kim Stallwood, is busy organizing and participating in a variety of activities related to international efforts on behalf of animals. He sends this report:

Minding Animals International functions as a bridge between academia and advocacy. MAI consists of a network of more than 2,500 academics, artists, activists and advocates, dedicated to the study and protection of all planetary life through the advancement of Animal Studies. It organized a highly successful conference in Australia in 2009, and the next will be in Utrecht next year.

As the volunteer deputy CEO of MAI, I will be attending a meeting of its board in London on October 6. My ASI colleague, Ken Shapiro, also serves on the board but is sadly unable to attend. I’m honored to represent ASI’s interests in MAI.

Also, I will be attending two one-day conferences immediately after the board meeting. They are Animal Citizens, which will be held at the London School of Economics, and Animal Ecologies in Visual Culture, which is organized by Antennae, the online journal of nature in visual culture.

On October 24-25, I will be speaking about Animals and the Law at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Kim will keep us updated on his activities, and can be reached directly at kim.stallwood@animalsandsociety.org.

The understanding behind The HSUS and UEP wanting to make such an agreement is generally to be welcomed. There are, of course, aspects to it that give me considerable concern; however, I wasn’t a participant in the discussions and can only comment as an observer. Nevertheless, I am a participant in the campaign against factory farming since the mid-1970s and subsequently witnessed its development in the UK and US. Of course, on the face of it, banning cages for egg laying chickens is, for a vegan like me or anyone opposed generally to factory farming, as straightforward as anything can be. Nevertheless, I have come to appreciate the complexity of achieving this simple change is considerable. Significant progress has been made in the European Union which is scheduled to outlaw the battery cage by January 1, 2012. Now, this ban is for the barren battery cage. In other words, a cage is a cage is a cage. Alternative so-called enriched cages are proffered as an alternative, which is something I — and Compassion In World Farming whose lead I follow in such issues — reject as a satisfactory alternative. [And, coincidentally, The HSUS.] In short, if people are going to eat eggs, well, they’ve got to eat less and only eat those from chickens in organic, free range, nonlethal conditions. But, as a vegan, I, of course, don’t recommend anyone to eat eggs, anyway.

And herein lies the tension between abolition and regulation. Much ink has been spilt on this purported conflict not only in the animal rights movement but also in other social movements. For example, Gary L. Francione and Robert Garner explore this issue thoroughly in The Animal Rights Debate (Columbia University Press, 2010). One of the more nuanced reviews of this book is by Ben Mepham.

Turning to The New York Times oped, “Obama and His Discontents,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I was struck (prompted by my correspondent) by the comparison between the animal welfare/rights debate and the present American political conflict between Democrats and the Republicans and their even more extreme political sidekicks, which is all framed within the context of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation — a compromise that freed only the slaves in rebel territory, as Coates notes.

Coates concludes about President Barack Obama that he is

of course, is not an activist but a politician held accountable by a broad national electorate. He is thus charged with the admittedly difficult task of nudging the country forward, even as he reflects it. That mission necessitates appreciating the art of compromise, but not fetishizing it.

Now, I can be as guilty as the next person of reading into something that which I wish to read. Nevertheless, I read this op ed to say that abolitionists and pragmatists must work together in order to achieve any change. This is the message I’ve been saying for decades. See, for example, my chapter, “Utopian Visions and Pragmatic Politics,” in Robert Garner’s anthology, Animal Rights (Macmillan, 1996).

Success for any social movement, including animal rights, is predicated on balancing utopian visions with the pragmatic politics. It is simply the nature of how things get done. Neither one nor the other are entirely right or wrong. They are both needed. It is the fetishising of either that becomes problematic. It is a smart social movement that is capable of deploying both in creative and innovative as well as in a politically sophisticated and smart way.

I guess what all this boils down to is how one chooses to measure success or accomplishment. Further, there’s the context. I have more anxieties about animal rights groups treading the regulatory path when they proclaim themselves to be, er, an animal rights group. Conversely, this is why I’m comfortable with CIWF and how they implement this mission to end factory farming. Compassion was never an animal rights group. It was started by a farmer who was concerned about factory farming. It’s mission is to end factory farming. Whereas a group like Farm Sanctuary, say, which positions itself as a vegan, animal rights group, has, I believe, a conflict of interest with being involved with regulatory issues. On the other hand, HSUS is not and never will be an animal rights group. Therefore, it does not have issue with being involved with regulatory issues. The trick to success is getting these groups and as many as possible of all the others to play as musicians in a complex orchestra challenged with playing music outside of their repertoire.

There is a further point to make about the ideology of welfare and rights. They each work in some contexts but not in all. For example, as philosophy and as strategy, they both work but with some inherent challenges, particularly when the margins are pushed. In the mainstream political context, however, their values as ideologies informing what could and should be done politically in the terms of laws passed is even more challenging. It is much more difficult to implement the rights ideology (than, say, the welfare ideology) in the present mainstream political climate. So, with rare exceptions, compromise (i.e., welfare) is almost inevitable. But this should not mean we should not work in the mainstream political arena. We must. What other option is there available? I simply do not buy into the argument to work exclusively for vegan education. I am realistic enough (and, admittedly, cynical enough) to recognise not everyone is capable of or wants to go vegan. People still smoke cigarettes even when they know they are a waste of money and will most likely cause diseases that may kill them. So, what is to be done? Make meat, eggs and dairy a prescribed substance like tobacco and other legal and illegal addictive substances? Maybe. Maybe not. I am not sure on this one. The jury is still out for me. There is mileage, however, to position meat, eggs and dairy like tobacco and alcohol in the terms of their societal cost and instituting regulatory state actions to restrict their sale and consumption. But the vegan abolitionists will not like that strategy as they are not prohibitions. Our history documents well enough that prohibitions do not have a very successful track record.

In fact, I do not think the animal rights movement has tried hard enough to work within the political mainstream. If we were to become, as a social justice movement, less obsessed with personal transformative moments and lifestyle purity and more sophisticated about the political, economic and social power which keeps the animal industrial complex in place AND understand this within the larger political, social justice context, well, then, I think we might get somewhere.

Question 1: If you could give a message for New Zealand animal activists what would you say?

The single greatest challenge we face is understanding animal rights is more than just an optional, cruelty-free vegan lifestyle choice. Moral and legal rights for animals are also the responsibility of government. We must embed animal rights into public policy as a key value.

Question 2: What has been the campaign highlight of the past year?

It is unfair to single out anyone campaign highlight because each day every single act for animals is a noteworthy achievement.

3. What keeps you going?

My four key values in animal rights are (1) Truth, our ethical relationship with animals; (2) Compassion, our motivation to helping animals; (3) Nonviolence, our values in the relationship we have with animals; (4) Interbeing (the interconnectedness of all), our commitment to social justice for animals. My challenge is to learn continually how to put my key values into practice. This is what keeps me going.