Guest guest Posted March 21, 2008 Report Share Posted March 21, 2008 Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. Beings are more than the sum of our economic appetites, and our country is more than an economic machine. -- Bill Moyers For America's Sake < > WHERE ANIMAL RIGHTS CAN GO FROM HERE A Dialogue Between the Abolitionist Online and Lee Hall Of the world's best-known animal advocacy groups, Friends of Animals has long been the one that consistently advances the abolitionist paradigm. Lee Hall, a vegan activist since 1983, has written and taught in the areas of immigration and animal law, and became the legal director for Friends of Animals in 2002. In addition to contributing to many paper and online publications, Lee authored the entries on both vegetarianism and environmental justice for the Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice (Sage, 2007), co-authored (with Priscilla Feral) Dining With Friends: The Art of North American Vegan Cuisine, and most recently penned Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror. Claudette Vaughan recently spoke with Lee for the Abolitionist-Online about this new book, about the innovative advocacy style of Friends of Animals, and about where the animal-rights movement can go from here. ________________________________ Abolitionist-Online: Thank you for writing the book Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror. It forced me to think and I believe Jeffrey Masson, who wrote the Foreword, said much the same thing. Can I begin by asking you to provide our readers an over-arching summary of your book? Lee Hall: Much is said, Claudette, about whether adjustments in corporate animal-husbandry methods can ever lead to the end of industries. As you know, it's often called the rights-welfare debate: Some activists want to press directly for animal rights; others want to push for reforms, commonly called animal-welfare reforms, inside the industry where animals obviously lack rights. To sharpen this debate, the book usually avoids the term welfare and talks of husbandry when describing adjustments to the conditions inside the industries. It's potentially confusing to call industrial adjustments " animal welfare " provisions because attending to animals' welfare really isn't part of what industry does. Animal-rights activists should have nothing against true welfare; but do we work out husbandry adjustments in the name of animal welfare? Within the use structure, can any being's " welfare " seriously be advanced? So first, let's disconnect animals' welfare, a word that commonly means well being, from animal husbandry, a word that denotes manipulation. Next, I think we can agree that providing for animal welfare is needed as long as domesticated or dependent animals continue living here. Then let's get down to the nitty-gritty: How do we work at the roots so that the need for this charity is relieved? Advocacy's discourse needs to shift from dealing with, as farm campaigners put it, the " 98% of animals with whom we interact " and start getting real about ending these interactions. Next, how does militant activism fit into this picture? I think it's just been assumed that militancy signals radical beliefs, and that an animal-rights lawyer's place is defending the positions of militants. I want to be clear here: People should be defended; and I'm not justifying the government's crackdown on dissent. I appreciate the lawyers who defend peoples' constitutional rights. Yet for an animal-rights theorist, it's essential to ask: What is the vegan position? What should an animal-rights theorist say about intimidation? So I set out to explore this in depth. I found that militancy as a method or policy within the animal-advocacy community is not aligned with rights-based thinking. While the militant claims the goal justifies the means, rights thinking questions that claim. Rights thinking doesn't hide its cards or permit the exploitation of its principles. Veganism is based on non-violence, which isn't just a tool to be used " tactically " or selectively -- any more than veganism itself is. Even on its own utilitarian terms, militancy is problematic for animal advocates. In fact there are two major ways the animal users are able to manage activists. The primary one is to negotiate animal-husbandry concessions; the other is to portray activists as capable of using violence. Notably, militant activism tends to focus on worst-treatment scenarios, just as mainstream campaigns for husbandry reforms do. The book's message to an abolitionist? Consider the possibility that militancy undermines animal rights just as husbandry negotiations do -- on both the ethics level and in actual results. When reading Capers in the Churchyard, Lee, I sensed your concern that activists using legal methods to get their animal-rights message across have been demonized by the same broad stroke brush as others who use illegal means. Is that correct? Undoubtedly a conception was growing that animal activism equals intimidation or chaos; some have an image of the activist community as being made up of twenty-something-year-olds who are getting it out of their systems before getting into the System, or simply maladjusted. So for example, some years back, a school district moved to ban the word " vegan " from students' clothing as it was thought to denote gang violence. Needless to say, it's absurd for a school to ban the word " vegan " and laws are absurd when they attempt to scare us out of using our rights to educate and associate. One can oppose absurd law yet also comment on intimidation in activism. If students intimidate each other and connect that conduct with veganism, if riot police are called to concerts, this is what the public hears and peaceable vegans get lumped in with the toughs. The problem isn't veganism, but that some people misappropriate the word. The idea that one has to be willing to do something dangerous (and risk a lot of money, given the restitution provisions) to be accepted into this or that scene is also very troubling. We need to avoid isolating vegans into cliques that make onlookers feel unwelcome or excluded. Isn't it also fair to say in America the way to get rid of left-wing dissent is by reductionist means? First start with the " obvious radicals " then it becomes so reduced over time that anybody with an opposing view to industry and government are deemed " violent radicals " -- which of course is untrue. In " They'd Have Been Wise to Invent It: A Guide to 'Eco-Terror' Discourse, and the Money Behind It <http://www.friendsofanimals.org/actionline/fall-2006_07/They'd_Have_Been_Wise_T\ o_Invent_It.php> " you said much the same thing: " Increasingly, those who want more than minor reforms can be equated with violent tendencies. " Please expand your thoughts for us. Yes, and the real irony here was that the founder of veganism saw it as the essential peace movement. Does violence -- which makes expanding circles of activists vulnerable to state control -- make sense as a method? Vegan Society co-founder Donald Watson talked of " conscientious objection " both in its common meaning and also in the context of ending humanity's war on other conscious life. Abolitionism, in or out of the human context, will never be complete without a successful peace movement that offers respect to all conscious life; this was Watson's message. Watson was a straightforward thinker who spoke of abolishing humanity's enslavement of all other animals whether for vivisection or consumption or other uses, without hesitating to include birds, fish, worms, bees. Without intimidation, Watson swiftly got the concept into leading dictionaries, several languages, product symbols, and the consciousness of millions of people who now live as abolitionists. That's direct action. Everything we do in the movement has a teaching component. And young activists shouldn't be wasted -- by spending their time persuading grocers and schools to offer supposedly cage-free eggs, by risking jail, or both. Activists should be aware of legal trends -- the effects of various activities on criminal law. The book lays out these trends. But most of all it's asking what message we want our lives to send to the world. We are only here for a little while: What kind of humanity do we want to model? If the other animals are ever going to have a chance, humanity must outgrow our domineering tendencies. And it's important to show we can do it, just as it's important to demonstrate that we can live and thrive on a non-violent diet. Please say more for the Abolitionist-Online readers on the debate between abolitionism and industry concessions. You are a well-known abolitionist, lawyer, and feminist. In your own words please outline why campaigns for industry reforms won't work. Bringing feminism into the question is helpful, I think, because a key issue addressed by feminism is hierarchy -- the systematic domination of some identified group by those who benefit from that identification. Once that's seen as the issue we face, things become clear. Does one demonstrate how to stop dominating animals by asking for a better set-up at an egg farm? Clearly, no. That's merely an adjustment within the domineering relationship, and is quickly reduced to an argument over whose plan for the animals is best. One can only relinquish the domineering relationship by deciding not to consume the chickens or whatever's being taken from the chickens. Although we need not oppose adjustments to industrial conditions, we work in a different sphere. Animal rights, in our view, will be found on the tundra, in the forest, in the oceans, streams, and sky. It will not be found in the shop, lab, factory or farm. Handing authority to exploitive institutions in order to get respect for other animals never did and still does not make sense. Radical (root) change will not develop through a top-down approach, from corporations or lawmakers whose economic interests are intertwined. When our activists decline to follow the trend of constructing factory farming campaigns or departments, this is precisely why. We assert that the customary uses of nonhuman animals ought not be regulated, but ended. So our activism doesn't seek out and reduce various painful methods of using other animals as raw materials and killing them when their usefulness ends. We are here to offer a positive vision: that other animals should be left free to experience their lives --with all the pain and pleasure, autonomy and uncertainty, risks and adventure that freedom involves. I work with Friends of Animals because that's what the group stands for. Why is this so unusual in the movement? Perhaps, Claudette, people are attracted to animal advocacy precisely because they so enjoy having, or interacting with, nonhuman animals. Yet an effective animal-advocacy movement would continually question that same desire to have and to interact. Do you think that by bringing into the animal rights movement ex-vivisectors and ex-animal control people, that their seemingly incapacity to work from a tabula rasa situation has them reverting back to old ways and habits again, thus watering down rights in favour of concessions? It's certainly problematic if a vivisector or lab technician identifies with advocacy yet still works in a lab (and let's count cognition labs; they're invasive as any other). They're taking the insider's approach, which generally boils down functioning as animal husbandry experts. But we all should continually examine our lives and our thinking; no one works with a blank slate who wasn't locked up throughout childhood. We're all responsible, as we're all in the group of beings who've entitled ourselves to dominate, use, own, and kill other animals. Humanity can be defined as the Owning Class. Thus it's logical that we should cultivate a form of class consciousness in the animal-rights movement. Activists who focus primarily on conditions miss the point. They'll argue that a well-funded zoo or lab is a better place for animals than a struggling refuge and they'll insist that the animals go to the zoo or other institution -- agreeing with the parties who consider other animals commodities, exhibits or instruments. You could say they've become class collaborators. Progressives would get this point straight away if someone argued to return human refugees to the control of those who enslaved them. Can't we apply that consciousness beyond our own species? Send the apes to Chimp Haven; Jane Goodall approves! So you have activists listening to people who think government and industry know best. We need to cultivate a consciousness that barely exists so far in the movement. Whether to seek abolition or industry concessions is the debate the animal rights movement had to have. Maybe just because of where the discussion is at the moment, however, there's a simplistic tendency to equate legal activism with concessions, and abolitionism with more militant tendencies -- or even, in the U.S., equating abolition with sympathy towards militant actions from others. That's why militancy should be examined in this same debate. I would say that retaliatory activism has to be questioned just as husbandry negotiations do. Until we actively confront domineering conduct and replace it with vegan principles we'll have some activists canceling out the work of others without the latter's consent. Intimidation and veganism are not two prongs of the same movement. Intimidation in the name of animal activism claims the goal justifies the means; whereas vegan living sees the route and the goal as the same, and is conducive to animal rights. Adding militancy to arguments over conditions doesn't transform those arguments into animal-rights action. From my experience as a grassroots activist, getting arrested in the battery hen sheds en masse to expose conditions in a factory farm has always been treated as a great threat to animal industry, government and the status quo, regardless of who's doing it. Could this debate paralyze activists who have not really labeled themselves either welfarists or abolitionists before -- and how do you think this will play itself out in the political arena? There's value in knowing what an egg farm is like, factory or free-range, which is another form of factory. But people who consider themselves animal advocates or vegetarians might still eat eggs and justify it by believing the conditions are good. Explain that the small, idyllic pasture-based farm is thoroughly exploitive, and the whole matter is addressed at once -- we're not just critiquing the act of consuming high-volume, low-cost products. Donald Watson grew up wanting to challenge the existence of the animal farm: not factory farms -- which didn't exist in Watson's youth -- but the idyllic farm. It was an uncle's country farm that Watson called Death Row. So why move the argument and oppose the worst? If one opposes exploitation itself, the worst scenario is encompassed in this broader argument. We get one chance to make a first impression that illustrates our commitment to those for whom we advocate. There's great promise in a mass gathering for a shared goal. But if that goal could be read by the activists, industry, or the public as exposing the conditions to be cleaned up in order for the products to be acceptable, then there's all this great energy but corporations could turn it, martial-arts style, to their own benefit. They've figured out there's money in adjusting the conditions, substantial money. In recent years, campaigners pursued celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. Such activity trades resources, years, activists, and money in exchange for public attention, even if it doesn't incur mass arrests. This year, Puck did as the campaigners asked. More public attention. Are the animals better off? Back in the 1980s, veal was being renounced. The argument that ought to have arisen then, of course, involved the dairy industry. But campaigners went in reverse and now there's a market for " pink " or " rosé " veal; and where's the education about dairy cows and how their calves will keep being born and sold for whatever price the market will allow? By scoring a " victory " with Puck, campaigners perversely bolstered a new market range. And now, animal-husbandry investigations are being associated with animal rights. After the group Mercy for Animals produced a videotape, Denny's restaurant chain announced it would drop a supplier " accused of animal-rights violations " against turkeys. As Mercy for Animals is " a voice for the rights of all animals " , industry can assume they're scouting out animal-rights violations. Also, the implication that we can somehow make farm animals comfortable bypasses the reality that other animals -- those in their habitat, who otherwise could live full and free lives -- are molested, displaced, and killed at the behest of animal farming interests. In the U.S. , officials want to eradicate unowned pigs because they could spread disease to commercially owned pigs. The same thing with Ireland and Britain , wiping out badgers because they allegedly spread TB to cows. Any sensible vegan could tell them the way to deal with TB in cattle is to phase out cattle operations. Alas, animal advocates are so intensely focused on the conditions in corporate buildings, whereas the badger's interest in living is a true animal-rights issue. This underscores the holistic quality of good vegan activism: Opt out of animal farming, and you simultaneously respect the natural biocommunity. Animal agribusiness surely causes free-living animals more grief than any other human practice. I think advocates have got used to thinking that " incrementalist abolitionist steps " actually can be found in the egg factory. Some abolitionist literature, after all, has suggested as much. Let's consider a shift in linguistics, in our theory, and in our real interventions. Animal rights can be meaningful only in populations of animals where human dominion is not the paradigm. Free-range concepts, alternatives to battery cages and all, if they really did make any significant difference, would allocate still further space to human businesses. Is that animal rights, or does it go in precisely the opposite direction? The vegan's political strength is the same as the political strength of the peace activist. As we've seen lately, if the peace movement allows its message to be diluted, the military-industrial complex need not take it seriously. Similarly, if activists aren't sure whether they can prevail, and thus find value in compromise, they're absorbed into the dominant system. Industry will suggest that earnest vegans are liabilities, then use the energy of the compromisers to perpetuate its own success. And it will insist everyone had a fair chance to dissent or to come to the table and iron out agreements. So let's go back to the old yet profoundly important question: What if they held a war and no one came? What if no one came to the war on other animals? Bureaucratic groups addicted to wheeling and dealing over which animal products should be approved by suppliers, retailers, and dining services aren't going to convince us to barter away respect for other animals' most basic interests. Nor can they ever put abolitionists into the margin of our own movement. So let's stop seeing ourselves as marginal activists and know that abolitionism can and does work. It works each time another person commits to vegan living. That's direct politics. It will play out successfully if we want it. It was extremely interesting to note in your " Guide to the 'Eco-Terror' Discourse " that anti-environmental think tanks adamantly oppose strengthening the Endangered Species Act. The free-enterprise groups see other species as raw materials, and don't want any of them getting uppity and trumping corporate interests. Where there's pressure to have animals listed as imperiled due to global warming -- melting ice caps, loss of coastal land -- free-enterprise proponents are concerned that such legal moves would hamper corporate prerogatives to drill for oil, expand airports, build resort hotels on sensitive habitat, log forests, whatever they want to do to turn a profit. And inevitably, given the greenhouse gas they create and the deforestation they cause, animal agribusinesses will face increasing scrutiny. It's increasingly hard to avoid reality: Our planet is mad as hell and would like to eject these companies. If activists worked to strengthen the Endangered Species Act while concurrently working to stop or at least severely limit breeders of " designer " and/or " domestic " cats and dogs, has that the potential to save thousands of lives and it's abolitionist even if it doesn't change the property paradigm. Your views, Lee? Lee Hall: I like where you're going here. The law resists taking away anything from those at the top of the social hierarchy. So I think if we say it's morally and ecologically important to respect free-living animals while putting a damper on domestication, you have potential to do something that could work into a challenge to the commodification of life. A tension grows, of course, even as we talk about this. National economic growth interests are ultimately represented in laws, in a world of several million species and finite resources to share. The U.S. federal government is now proposing to pass a general law that would undo any state laws of the types that husbandry campaigners pour loads of donors' money into. (When will donors get wise? Only when we vegans get through to them with the real message: Stop funding endless adjustments in farming regulations that can be delayed for years and then rescinded, and for heaven's sake eat something else!) Yet unlike husbandry legislation, and unlike illusory protections for domesticated animals who remain under human control, environmental protection has abolitionist potential. Even if you do focus on the most endangered, there's potential protection for an entire biocommunity -- the context in which individual beings can exist. In Britain, the only wolves left are contained within enclosures; were the big predators not deprived of their natural existence, the integrity of the biocommunity could be respected, and perhaps in the bargain we could stop thinking of humans who stalk other animals as though they were doing something to restore balance. Insofar as we push environmentalists to respect the ecology not for anthropocentric or national interests, but because it is home to other beings whose lives depend on it, it could be a good thing. It's got better potential than an effort to get measurements into a statutory definition of " cage-free " eggs. In her book Speciesism Joan Dunayer calls the Endangered Species Act speciesist because it doesn't afford animals a right to exist as persons not inanimate objects. What are your views? Dunayer rightly notes that the Act deems conscious beings objects of trade, valued merely on the basis of scarcity. It invokes their " aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific value " to us. Of those values, the ecological and perhaps the historical values are more in touch with the actual biocommunity than the rest, but these beings' inherent value goes unmentioned. There are signs that priorities could change, if enough of us insist. In the preface to the casebook Wildlife Law, professors Dale Goble and Eric Freyfogle observe that environmental law, " once focused on direct threats to human health, " now is also " concerned with assaults on non-human life. " This suggests some willingness to perceive nonhuman animals as having value unto themselves. Law professor Catharine MacKinnon, in the 2004 essay " Of Mice and Men: A Feminist Fragment on Animal Rights " , called for exactly that kind of discussion in animal law, observing that the primary model of animal rights to date " misses animals on their own terms. " It certainly does. But do we have standing to complain that environmental law fails to acknowledge other animals on their own terms when animal advocates themselves have yet to do so? Taking animals on their terms would mean a momentous shift in the advocacy model -- a shift to abolitionism. There are many grand assumptions on what the law can accomplish for animals yet when the mechanism of law is studied closely we find it less capable of ensuring " rights " or even " justice " than protecting property. How will activists get the paradigm shifted in law for animal rights, Lee? Lee Hall: First, what do we mean when we say animal rights? Can we explain the term in a way that most anyone could understand? This, perhaps, should be our first mission. There's a little section in Capers called " the handy pull-out guide to animal rights. " The point there isn't to be glib, but to say: Rather than allow conventional legal thinking to shape our idea of what animal rights is or isn't, we can express the positive essence of an idea and our commitment to it. Rights as we've known them come with an inherent dilemma: As you're suggesting, Claudette, the institutions we call upon to formally extend them -- courts and other legal authorities -- are the same ones that have systematically denied them. And another thing. Rights theory is based on fairness, on treating similar cases in similar ways, and therefore animals who are perceived as most similar to current living persons under the law would get through the court's door first. Even if apes are declared legal persons, others will have to wait. The judicial route to fairness is long and resource-costly, and because it relies on human concepts of similarity, it arguably relocates the border between persons and nonpersons rather than blurring it. And this is why, while we do support attempts to secure legal rights where they might be obtainable, we spend most of our work educating about a vegan worldview, for each person who accepts this view treats all conscious beings' interests with respect in an immediate way. So we could see veganism as the do-it-yourself animal rights kit. No one needs legal expertise or knowledge of hundreds of pages of theory to get the incremental abolitionism moving. The North American Vegetarian Society's annual Summerfest is vegan; increasingly we're seeing vegan events at sanctuaries and shelters. In Britain and in pockets of other regions, feminists, gay youth groups, peace camps, and many others have held fully vegan events. Animal rights theorists have said that changes for animal rights will be incremental but nobody is actually going into the specifics of it all. Say more about the specifics. Let's consider two different incremental efforts, one as the apex of the pyramid, another one the broad base. The first seeks personhood for some groups at a time; for example, it asks that nonhuman apes be understood as legal persons with respected interests in their territory. As we've already noted, there's value in a combined environmental and animal-rights focus. I think, though, that the advocates pushing for this must envision it themselves if they expect any national or international legal body to envision it. When asked about a scenario where other animals are permitted to live in freedom in their own territories, Peter Singer, president of the Great Ape Project, said: Tragically, we've destroyed so much habitat that for some species, this is not a great option. Chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans, for example, have few safe havens now. So -- in the real world, anyway, rather than in some utopia -- it might still be best for some species to live under human control and protection.[1] Recall that the nonhuman great apes are the beings thought, by Singer and others, to have the strongest bid for rights under human law. But if " some utopia " wherein their own connections and interests could truly be respected is out of the question, then advocacy on their behalf equates to a call for certain standards of human control. Sorry, animals, back to husbandry again. Is this Animal Liberation or a page out of Orwell? If other apes must forever live under " human control and protection " they become a permanent underclass. It seems that humans are, in a sense, expecting to domesticate other apes. In our non-utopian and very corporate world, advocacy is increasingly turning to view commercial institutes as appropriate for other animals, apes included. In short: Why ask for personhood if one is not willing to struggle for territory? Anything else is just Personhood Lite. Anyone can be pragmatic and tell us the habitat's practically gone and that life is being commodified; I want to be surrounded by people who believe a world with room for animal rights is a world that's still possible. Oscar Wilde said a map that does not include Utopia isn't worth glancing at. Few ape advocates have that map. Apes have been extended some measure of legal respect in New Zealand , but no apes were being vivisected there. Let's consider the United States , global leader in ape vivisection. The Chimpanzee Health, Maintenance and Improvement Act, known as the CHIMP Act of 2000, condones chimpanzee vivisection. Proponents of the Great Ape Project followed Jane Goodall and supported it. When really tested, they condoned the legal classification of nonhuman apes as appropriate research specimens. And even if that weren't the case, in the United States the current makeup of the Supreme Court would be an obstacle to nonhuman rights. Even if the court idea were to work, we'd still need a vegan movement because it's the only way we can address domestication. It makes no sense to go into court and demand legal personhood for purpose-bred animals. Thus, veganism is the broad-base approach to abolition. Though we don't know what a court will decide, we can empower ourselves right now and model what a human being would look like if animal rights were a reality -- by being vegan. As the idea spreads, it incrementally abolishes exploitive industries. Depending on our abilities, there are various ways to take these steps: We can set up a speaking or leafleting event. We can get vegan cookbooks into our local library or bookshop, and review pro-vegan books. We can convince a restaurant with a few hold-out items, such as dairy desserts or cream, to become confidently vegan. (Our New York office has had success with this.) We can pressure retirement funds to divest from animal agribusiness. We can start a garden, or set up a pool of buyers for a veganic grower. Encourage people to join a group that takes veganism seriously. Link the group's website, and don't forget to include the Vegan Organic Network. You've mentioned your concerns about the Great Ape Project, with which, I understand, you once volunteered. I see, though, that you do support the idea of apes' personhood. I support the removal of any conscious nonhumans from the category of property. The effort must be careful, though, not to sell other animals down the river. The Great Ape Project started in 1993 with the book The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer eds.). It sparked hope that people could broaden their definition of slavery and continue to work for its abolition. An offshoot of the book was a volunteer-driven initiative called GAP. Alas, its proponents didn't seem to attend to the logical conclusion of the book's own thesis. Many have continued to cultivate an interest in exhibiting nonhuman animals in homes, laboratories, and zoos or similar settings to facilitate studies of language and other cognitive processes. In our view, it's now obvious that these studies should be stopped. Further, the international project has never offered a consensus that equality beyond humanity should include all conscious beings. The GRASP project at personhood.org, now under the auspices of Friends of Animals, calls for a more inclusive reading of equality. It seeks legal rights for all apes, great and small. Indeed we feel the time is ripe to be inclusive of all primates given that a panel of 22 scientists, lawyers, and philosophers in 2005 reported the results of a debate, continued for more than a year, over the wisdom of inserting human stem cells into monkey brains, during which time the team's scientists weren't sure how to ethically separate humans from other primates <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8572943/> . We'd be equally amenable to a case on personhood for burros or bats. We view all conscious animal life as having interests relevant to that consciousness -- interests that should be respected. The popular agreement that apes have cultures, however, highlights the point at which exclusive human personhood is the most vulnerable to early change. Some advocates dismiss the primates' rights effort as hierarchical thinking, because it doesn't include all animals at once. In that respect, every example of expanding legal rights to date has been imperfect. Today's human anti-slavery movement doesn't include all animals at once. Should its activists stop their work? If not, then why would any abolitionist ask people to stop working for the extension of legal rights to nonhuman primates? That would itself be a species bias. The critics could be right, Claudette, but I think they do need to be prepared to answer such questions; so far, they haven't. We're not naïve about this; we know that the use of nonhuman animals underlies an enormous proportion of our current economic and social interactions. The law will embrace a serious animal-rights concept only after a profound change in humanity's worldview. A group that supports animal rights generally is in a good position to make an argument for primates that doesn't set back the general cause. I think it was a huge mistake not to keep the " reverence for life " principle that the animal rights movement represented originally and on that basis build credibility needed for total no-kill solutions for all animals. Today's campaigners seem fixated on animal death and slaughter techniques as part of an over-all campaign " for " animals, to help " reduce " their suffering. Did you know it's come to light that PETA, for example, installed a walk-in refrigerator on their property to store dead bodies of animals, and that their " Community Animal Project " means contracting with a crematorium? This came to light after dozens of homeless animals were discovered dumped in a dumpster by PETA staffers, after these staffers were sent out by PETA headquarters and assigned to take animals from a North Carolina shelter. It is open knowledge that the group carries out killing (one of the most disrespectful customs is the use of the term 'euthanasia' for mass killing) and that they've done so for a long time. The group leaders acknowledge this. So advocates generally know killing goes on, bodies are stored, and so forth. Why is this tolerated? Killing is not advocacy. If a group of people goes about systematically rounding up cats and dogs to kill them, that group should not identify itself with animal rights. It should be straightforward enough to call itself an animal-control agency. We're told that institutional killing is needed because the burden is simply too heavy for no-kill shelters. I know well-meaning people believe this. Indeed, no-kill shelters acknowledge that they are overburdened, and that resources fall short. But wouldn't the logical response involve more of the resource-rich groups endorsing and supporting no-kill shelters and private sanctuaries? Describing the no-kill idea as unworkable only adds to the pressure faced by private refuges, true shelters, and supporters of decent proposals such as trap-neuter-return. And the killing functions as a key part of the cycle that facilitates the breeding of pets. In my view the trouble lies with the bureaucracy of mainstream advocacy. Foucault was expert at recognising how such systems are at fault. Notice how badly the animal rescue side of mainstream animal advocacy is treated by its often-rich bureaucratic side. I wonder why this is and what your thoughts on the matter are. Adding up the members and money won't tell you how principled a group is or how successful it is in changing humanity's attitudes about the inherent value of other animals. Becoming large often means losing touch with places and issues outside the offices. A sad result is the way small pockets of feral cat advocacy (those who endorse neutering, not killing) and true shelters and refuges are abandoned, isolated, told their work is in vain. Obviously I do see value in having an organizational base for change. Some of us have attempted working independently for years, lighting our own small fires, sending up our signals, waving our torches, but the wind can quickly blow these out. We are, after all, living in a world where major issues play out on a global scale. Today's activists must confront cloning and biotech, climate change, anti-terrorism laws and the global prison-industrial complex. And although I know the power of a few people of integrity -- thanks to an independent activist I became a vegan -- sometimes you do need to be able to put together high-quality reports to get policy changed; you need resources to keep a refuge afloat or to sponsor festivals and back the grassroots efforts. We're working to pull together some of the best community initiatives, and not fall into the model of growing a brand name rather than a movement. This is not a platitude. If a group declines to go along with the predominant bureaucratic model, it's surely no path of least resistance, but an element of activism in itself. Returning to " Capers in the Churchyard " , you have explained why you think violence jeopardizes what the animal rights movement originally set out to accomplish: win the hearts and minds of a critical mass of people, change their eating habits over to plant-based solutions and change the law to make animals " persons " not things. Can I ask you this? What do you say when people ask you how activists can change the face of the monolithic food industry non-violently? Lee Hall: I'm surprised that anyone would think activists could change the monolithic food industry violently. Commercial interests have the state's tremendous coercive authority at their disposal, and violence immediately makes activists vulnerable to that authority. That's why investigators plant people in a community to stir up militant actions; and if an action can't be distinguished from that of an agent provocateur, it's probably a bad idea. And although the food industry shapes demand, consumers can exert influence by opting out of animal products, by forming and relying on vegan initiatives. Vegans can't seriously be dismissed as people out to threaten livelihoods when they're really asking to reroute human energy to ethical living in place of uncaring businesses that are often as inhospitable to their workers as they are to the planet and its life in general. The situation of workers too would vastly improve in a culture that values the ecology and peaceable, meaningful work. So prevailing over the food industry requires neither concessions nor fighting; it means growing a numerically significant vegan movement. And in 24 years of activism I haven't met a single vegan who reports having been intimidated into it. I recently spoke with people who gathered for a vegan meal and talk at a college. One participant repeatedly argued the militancy point. I understood the sincerity of the speaker, and discussed the various objections posed. We went on like this for several minutes. Eventually, the person just exclaimed: " Well, yes, it IS war! Humanity is NEVER going to be respectful to animals voluntarily -- human nature just isn't like that! " Veganism was quite clearly based on the idea that that peace is possible. We get out of bed each day and resolve to be optimists. It's mainly because we think there's no point, as the apt saying goes, in being anything else. There are 3 viewpoints on political violence that you didn't mention and I wonder if you would have a look at them here. Number one: The New World Order needs conflict to operate; it needs the " good guys " fighting the villains, bringing democracy and " peace " to the world in a legal sense while they themselves use pre-emption and all kinds of illegal tactics to get precisely what they want. We know through reading your " Guide to 'Eco-Terror' Discourse, and the Money Behind It " and Robert F. Kennedy's Crimes Against Nature: Standing Up to Bush and the Kyoto Killers Who Are Cashing In on Our World where real violence lies, where the deals are struck. By naming a few animal and eco activists, does your book play into the hands of these people thus allowing circumstances to scapegoat (is there a better, non-speciesist word for " scapegoat? " ) a few vocal and militant animal activists? Yes, there are levels of coercion, and we should keep the effects of militancy in perspective. Still, the question is whether people -- and no person is insignificant -- want to emulate that New World Order or cultivate alternatives. We have activists saying the state does such-and-such so activists should fight on those terms; we have activists saying there's going to be collateral damage or that targeting non-combatants could be a viable tactic. I'm commenting on people who are already highly public with their views. Clever critics will focus on the violent rhetoric, shifting public attention to a few people or even a few lines in a speech. The focus should be instead on the cloning, GMOs, pesticides, global warming, ecological refugees, mass extinctions. The urge to create " soldiers " and " heroes " focuses on human personalities. The hierarchy that's established this way is minor in the grand scheme, yet quite assertive within activist communities. Young idealists are disabled by fines, restitution orders, prison terms, authorities who want to collar " terrorists " , and massive peer pressure. The pressure on young people to take forcible action also echoes the way national wars are handled, where the older people often advance the justifications and the younger ones are sacrificed. Have young militants a clear idea of the goals of the animal-rights position when this happens? The guidelines and the spokespeople they follow strongly suggest otherwise. The book gets into that in a detailed way. For now I'll just note that violence is the norm in our culture and has been justified as noble for thousands of years. The idea that intimidation or destruction is revolutionary ignores the key reality that they're really the status quo. I think that's what John Lennon meant, pointing out that revolution should be disconnected from destruction. A second thesis on violence your book didn't mention: In any " new " revolutionary movement the direct action aspect usually takes around 15 years to either produce a good result or degenerate into thuggery. It either works in that time frame or it has to reemerge further down the track, reinstigated and reenergised by new blood. In our era we have seen it work in some instances and fail miserably in others. My own opinion is it worked against apartheid in South Africa (Nelson Mandela's No Easy Walk to Freedom, chapter 7: Our Struggle Needs Many Tactics) and it failed miserably with the tactics of the modern IRA of today. The book regards veganism as an ethical case for peaceful conduct. A vegan culture would not be imposing itself violently on another culture and subjugating people in the first place; Donald Watson envisioned it as the first civilization that really merits that name. It's hard to say what did or didn't overcome subjugation when resistance has included a variety of tactics. To my mind, the historical timeline suggests massive international support, songs, strikes and boycotts forced apartheid to crumble. We can't prove that definitively; as a scientist would say, there was no control group. But refocus the question: Veganism isn't about choosing between two reactions to repression. That's what proponents of peace are so often asked: " But what would you do in the situation where [fill in a grotesque example from history]? " Now if one says that the oppressed group should have responded differently when faced with terrible pain, their children dying or sold out from under them, one's argument can be heard as insultingly simplistic. The book asks a question about social change at a deeper level: How should we consciously act so as to avert these atrocities in the first place? In the animal-rights movement, the oppressed can't free themselves from systematic domination; they rely fully on the controlling class to change things at every phase of the movement. It's critical, then, to strive to present ideas so reasonable minds can understand and accept them. People might say non-violence is a luxury, and, acknowledging my own privilege, I've given that objection serious consideration -- and I've come to the view, Claudette, that waving off what people think is self-indulgence. If we are serious about organizing for power, we've got to reach out to the progressive element in the media and in every community. One of the strongest dissenters we have is Michael Berg, parent of Nick Berg, a U.S. civilian abducted in 2004, reportedly to avenge the Abu Ghraib detainees. Last year, when the al-Qaeda leader who presumably beheaded Nick was killed, Michael Berg refused to rejoice. " As long as people use violence to combat violence, " said Berg, " We will always have violence. " It's clear that this stand is no luxury: Berg's been threatened and shot at. Berg still wants justice, but of the restorative kind. So, for example, the one who wielded the knife, instead of being overpowered and destroyed, would work off this terrible debt and regain personal integrity by caring for amputees. You and I -- and Michael Berg too, who's vegan -- work in the animal-rights movement because we want to bring ourselves to restorative justice. We'll be doing this throughout our lives, don't you think? I'm not endorsing guilt; the point is to take responsibility. We hope others, those who are still profiting from exploitation, will follow us in this. We can guide them, but attacking them doesn't invite them into the movement. As for the idea that some are evil and deserve violent retribution, perhaps it's a good idea to stand back and ask who is in the position to cast stones. Militant activists have family members, teachers, friends at school who eat pizza or drink coffee with cream or buy substances that were tested on animals. If the activists followed the logic of retribution, they'd be clubbing their parents. That's not an option so the target is the experimenter or some stranger -- someone defined as cruel or evil, an enemy, scum. It's the minority of young people who have a vivisector in the family but nearly everyone is surrounded by people going to the local Safeway. We are all in the class that has benefited from the oppression of other animals. Our work is to bring us all to a better way of thinking. A final specific of violence not mentioned in your book: People of non-violence die violently for political reasons and this is no strange coincidence. In my view, the assassination attempt of Pope John Paul 11 and the assassination of John Lennon ( " Give Peace A Chance " ) could suggest that these people are more of a threat to those running the existing violent order than Bin Laden could ever hope to be because Bin Laden is providing them with the " bad guy " scenario needed so desperately to keep plundering the world's resources. I know you have said in your writings, Lee, that non-violence is more revolutionary than violence, but you didn't say that non-violence is not required in the New World Order's world to accomplish their aims and agenda, and thus this is the " revolutionary " nature of non-violence. Conspicuous by its absence. Recall Lennon and Ono's " Imagine " : No countries, nothing to kill or die for. Imagine the idea spreading, not just in religious circles, but everywhere, that we don't return violence with violence. The nation is out of its league in this idea, an idea that has inspired some of the most profound activism and art. No countries, no borders, no nationalism -- a truly liberating thought and one we've been carefully trained to avoid and fear, as it calls into question the state's very existence and our licence to kill. Apart from our agreement to acknowledge it, the country doesn't exist. Imagine we all stop believing the leaders who want us to see the country as a reality, and war as natural and eternal. The status quo isn't our fate. It's held together when everyone does as we're told. We have the power; the state merely has authority, which is a far weaker thing, because authority is the artificial kind of power that's backed by violence. One thing small children know instinctively is that a parent who resorts to hitting has lost the argument. I'd prefer not to live in a world that's controlled by a violent parent or anyone who follows that model. I have no intention of following such leaders -- on any scale. We need a general paradigm shift, the commitment of critical numbers of the populace to change because a critical number of us want to change, because it's right and reasonable and the ethical thing to do, and a key move to the only really sustainable way of living on this planet. 1 Quoted in Rosamund Raha, " Animal Liberation: An Interview with Peter Singer " in The Vegan (Autumn 2006). Veronika Terrian Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. We must be the change that we wish to see, not the darkness we wish to leave behind. *Mahatma Gandhi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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