How about a nonviolent protest against all animal exploitation inside or outside of any non-vegan food
store or food restaurant? Not a single issue campaign-protest, but a protest
that shows that all animal exploitation for food, clothing and other purposes
is wrong. No a campaign that e.g. focuses on fur, and confuses people to think that there is a moral distinction between fur and other animal use.
Based on what I read in that article and other thoughts, I wrote this:
Based on what I read in that article and other thoughts, I wrote this:
We could
stand with signs depicting images of certain animals, and saying e.g.: ‘This
animal wanted to live but was killed to be used for meat. We have no
nutritional need for meat and other animal foods, and it all involves
unnecessary suffering and death. Go vegan!”
Another sign: “This animal wanted to live and be with her family. This animal was used for dairy and got slaughter when she was 5 years old. Each year they forcefully made her pregnant, and when her baby was born she was ripped away from her within a week. She mourned immensely, just like any mother would by losing her baby. Her male babies was slaughtered when they younger than 6 months for veal, or 18 months year old to become meat.” In parallel we could hand out Abolitionist vegan fliers to people passing by.
Another sign: “This animal wanted to live and be with her family. This animal was used for dairy and got slaughter when she was 5 years old. Each year they forcefully made her pregnant, and when her baby was born she was ripped away from her within a week. She mourned immensely, just like any mother would by losing her baby. Her male babies was slaughtered when they younger than 6 months for veal, or 18 months year old to become meat.” In parallel we could hand out Abolitionist vegan fliers to people passing by.
The benefits of these campaigns are many:
-Raising awareness, making people opt out of animal exploitation and go vegan (including choosing not to buy their animal foods-product at the store/restaurant).
-Creating
media coverage and visibility among the public. Especially if you manage to get
a movement of many vegans that do this outside of many different stores in parallel.
-Getting
and inspiring vegans to do vegan education wherever they are. Creating a
movement of vegans how arrange vegan stalls and protests outside of
stores/restaurants, etc., serving products of animal exploitation.
-Getting
vegans to come in contact with us and learn more about Abolitionist veganism.
-Showing
vegans involved in SIC’s, that you can do demonstrations and protests, create
awareness and make people go vegan without engaging in SIC’s.
-Educating
vegans about the difference between a SIC-protest and an Abolitionist vegan
protest.
Some things
that “Direction Action everywhere” do are a bit misguided, but we could learn
from the good they are doing. They are very effective and reaching many through
what they are doing, e.g. their protest against all animal food, including
attacking them for serving “humane animal foods”, directed towards ‘Chipotle’.
-" strong, confident, and inspirational social movement that can resist social erosion and corporate influence to create real and permanent change. In short, we need to start being assertive"
Of course we can also arrange vegan stalls; but protests are also good and seem to in many instances get some more coverage and reaching some more people. E.g. there were not that many people who noticed the stall I had on a street with lots of traffic in Oslo.
Pauline Wooding I totally agree with you, Anders. Excellent post. I think this is what is needed now. It will make people stop in their tracks and break out of their comfortable complacency - even if just for a few minutes. I've been thinking that this is more the way to go, with activism needing to be a bit more visible than it is. A few people simply declining to consume animal products feels passive and not making sufficient impact. I agree that it could be a protest outside any outlet that sells animal products (peaceful, of course), as they'e all as bad as each other.
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Thank you for the chance to have this interesting discussion, Anders.
Smara AnAnimal:
I like and agree with your points above. Not sure if “offense” is the right word though.
“According to historian Paul Goodman, the antislavery movement grew by 45950% (not a typo) in half a decade after William Lloyd Garrison shifted the rhetoric of the movement away from reaction to assertion.”
Assertion is a better and more appropriate word, I think. From looking up the definition of “offense” it is usually connected with violence. Whether an unequivocal, peaceful, and just for all vegan message can cause offence to nonvegans is of course irrelevant.
I think that a peaceful, non-invasive, well thought of and planned, vegan-antispeciesist, non-SIC, non-obsessive, non-ridiculous, non-brainless and non-speciesist/non-sexist/non-racist etc. demonstration can have positive results--along with the ‘traditional’ (which can be very original nevertheless) vegan education of course. However, the ones I have seen so far suffer either from not being really peaceful or not vegan-antispeciesist, or from the lack of one or more ‘nons’ from the ones I mentioned here.
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Another post by Smara:
I think the demo in the picture of the link you gave looks wrong for many reasons.
1. It looks hostile, like “we won’t let you pass until you squeeze between us, because we dislike you so much and want to make your life difficult”.
2. No one will sit in front of those people the way they have arranged themselves to be able to read the signs and see the pictures.
3. They imply that the problem is Chipotle and not the public who consumes the animals and their products.
4. It is a SIC about farmed animals, and if I see well it is mostly about the use of their flesh.
5. They don’t allow dialogue with the public, and they don’t seem to have anything for them to give them to take home.
6. They don’t give a vegan and anti-speciesist message about that all nonhuman animal use is wrong.
7. They are unoriginal and uninspiring.
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