Writing about the recent election in the United States, Immanual Wallerstein reminds us of the tendency towards reaction, even in social justice movements. His critique provides the basis for a similar critique of the contemporary animal advocacy movement.
�When, however, after the Civil War, the U.S. Congress adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which made unconstitutional the exclusion from voting of African-American male citizens, the women's movement was dismayed that they were not included. Wendell Phillips, one of the leaders of the U.S. abolitionist movement, famously told them in May, 1865 that the demands of women's suffrage should not be pressed at the moment, for "this is the Negro's hour." Many women suffragists did not stand by mute. As a response, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony supported the presidential campaign of George Francis Train, a known racist, who however advocated women's suffrage. The outcome was a profound split in the feminist movement.�
For those who have a spare 10 minutes, I highly recommend the whole short and readable piece available here. The similarities between the collapse of a united pro-feminist, ant-racist and anti-capitalist struggle in the United States that could have coalesced around Emancipation offers a number of parallels to today's animal advocacy movement.
Today, regardless of the goals claimed and some of the higher level rhetoric espoused, the movement remains mired in a racist, sexist, speciesist and violent opportunism. It focuses not on advancing the rights of nonhuman animals, but on lining the pockets of industry and those claiming to fight industry with more regulation. Activists are encouraged, not to rescue and care for nonhuman animals as persons and to oppose their slavery. Instead, they are encouraged to donate money for the promotion of a kinder slavery for those who are still in shackles and to euthanize those who are free but unwanted. Is that really who we are?
Today, the movement focuses not a broad discourse of equality, but on tactics that foreground petty and vile displays of sexism and racism (coded but understood) that trivialize both human and nonhuman animals, indeed all animals in one go. Activists are not encouraged to promote veganism as a baseline for those who take nonhuman animals seriously as part of a braoder, unifying effort to respect and promote the basic rights of all sentient beings. Instead, they are encouraged to get naked, wear lettuce fronds or chicken suits in order to promote KFC. Is that really what what we want?
Today, the movement focuses not on promoting the rights of nonhumans on the basis of nonviolent vegan outreach as a moral imperative, but on harming the oppressor economically (or physically) with carnivals of threats, abuse and hysteria one week, while enriching that oppressor the next with free marketing for even the smallest, slightest changes in the frequency of lashes and the number of bars on the cell. Activists are encouraged, not to promote the abolition of the property status of nonhuman animals, but to attack or reward suppliers in what is an impractical, irrational and immoral effort to twiddle supply when the problem is now, always has been and always will be a matter of reducing demand for nonhuman animal products and labor. Is that really the best we can do?
�But our hearts are in the right place! And we're promoting veganism and the end of animal slavery someday by promoting anything but veganism and the end of animal slavery today!!� Today, the movement stands in the same shallow and shadowed backwater that it did almost 15 years ago when Gary L. Francione paraphrased Frederick Douglass, describing the animal welfare movement as wanting raining without thunder.
My questions are serious, not rhetorical. Is that all? Is that all we owe nonhuman animals: the fattened cow led to slaughter alone and terrified, to the fish yanked from the sea and clubbed, to the seeing eye dog who will live a life as someone's slave? Is that all we hope to be and to do ourselves? If not, then why isn't the animal advocacy movement working on anything different? They'll know us not by our words alone but also by our works. If our works promote a kinder, gentler slavery rather than an immediate, unconditional and unequivocal end to that slavery, then regardless of what we tell ourselves or others, there is no meaningful difference between "liberation" and "exploitation".
If you think you owe nonhuman animals something more than half-truths, inconsistency and ambivalence, now is the time to get started. Today is the day. None of us needs an organization to hand-hold us and tell us what to do. To summon a different future from the present moment, we only need to be educated, disciplined, thoughtful, polite and, most of all, unequivocal in our praxis (that sorely misunderstood union of consistency between our words and our works) that nonhumans have a right not to be used as property and that veganism is the baseline for respecting that right.
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