Jo (hi, Jo!) and I are often asked why AnimalEmancipation does not support single issue campaigns. With that in mind, we have written some notes on the various problems we see with SICs, some of which are political and some of which are practical. We hope that other advocates will find them useful as they think about how best they can help other animals and organize their work accordingly. As always, we do not want anyone to stop working. However, we do encourage people to focus their work on abolitionist veganism and shelter/sanctuary/adoption work that makes it unequivocal, unambiguous and explicit to the public that all sentient animals are moral persons.
SICs are defended by advocates in various ways, and rather than write a 5,000 word essay elaborating each (the first draft of this blog was actually a 5,000 word essay), we've chopped it down to dealing with those arguments in defense of SICs that are most problematic. I know people are mad at me for not just promoting veganism but also encouraging advocates to educate themselves. But I hope this blog won't offend too many people!
�SICs raise awareness.� This may be true, but not all education is the right kind of education. For example, welfare organizations have historically miseducated the public about what we owe other animals in terms of abolition of their property status and the moral necessity of veganism. It does not follow that a campaign that raises awareness raises the right awareness, and in a speciesist society, SICs tend to further entrench speciesist paradigms. Most people assume that animal use is perfectly fine. If we tell them fur is not fine, they are very unlikely to connect that to veganism. The best way to avoid this problem is to address all use from an abolitionist vegan standpoint up-front. We can always address specific uses once the primary 'animals have a right not to be used as property; go vegan!' message has been imparted.
As a corollary, �advocates shouldn't criticize other advocates.� This is a standard chestnut that gets floated every time someone disagrees with someone else in the advocacy community; it is an effort to dismiss substantive criticism. I read it often in defense of SICs. It does not follow that any campaign, even a campaign that is strongly abolitionist and vegan in nature, of necessity raises the right awareness. We should always critically evaluate all education activity to ensure that it is both morally correct (in terms of our intents as the educators) and understood by the audience (even if they do not agree with the message). I am not proposing we should spend hours debating what color to paint the bike shed. I am saying that no animal advocate should ever consider his/her/zir work to be above criticism.
�SICs help animals in the here and now.� This is also problematic. First, not all SICs are successful. Attempts to ban fur are among the longest running failures in SIC history. Second, if they are successful, many are skirted. Chicago's very short-lived ban on foie gras didn't free geese; it encouraged businesses to sell foie gras illegally or to give it away. The resulting press and giveaways introduced foie gras to a whole new customer base that probably would have never tried foie gras if it had not been for the ban. Third, even if they are successful and not skirted, they are often local and they do not necessarily free any animals. Animals will simply be repurposed or sold for other uses or to different geographies were particular uses are permitted.
If we wish to help animals in the here and now, vegan education is the best way to do so (c.f., my previous blog); shelter, rescue and adoption work are also excellent ways to help other animals. I am not saying there are no moral complexities to nonhuman animal solidarity work of this kind; I am saying that if you want to help a nonhuman animal in the here and now, don't waste time with an SIC. Head down to your local shelter and save someone's life. No balaclava or bucket of red paint is required.
�People will make up any old excuse not to go vegan.� Many people do rationalize their nonveganism in various ways. However, this is not an effective defense of single issue campaigns. In fact, SICs, like other forms of regulating animal use, are likely to send the message that the moral problem that animal use poses can be solved by regulating or modifying that use rather than ending use. Many people will not 'go feminist' overnight. It often takes a lot of education to explain sexism, racism and other forms of violence. So it is with speciesism. Because work is difficult, it does not follow that we should not undertake it.
�SICs promote vegan values without mentioning veganism.� This is very problematic (and so, a longer discussion is required). Although an advocate's veganism may encourage him/her/zir to promote an end to specific uses, the fact is that the public is not vegan. It's not about advocates' values; our task is to educate the public. �Not not promoting veganism� is not the same as promoting veganism clearly and unequivocally. More important, as Roger Yates argues, speciesism is an ideology (because I'm a Gramsciist, I would say it is a set of social relations motivated by different ideologies, but as per my last post, abolitionists often disagree). Regardless, if speciesism is a coherent ideology (or a coherent set of relations that involve similar ideologies), then the best way to fight speciesism is with a coherent anti-speciesist ideology, not with confusing piece-meal approaches that may actually reinforce speciesism socially.
For example, let's say I think it's a moral imperative to promote atheism. Should I start a single issue campaign to ban Communion (a particular ritual in a body of rituals in one particular subgroup of a particular faith in a world of many faiths) or should I focus on explaining atheism to people? Obviously, the latter is going to be both the right and the more effective thing to do, and so it is with veganism. Most people only have one religion; they use nonhuman animals in hundreds of ways daily. As an advocate, I may have a specific conversation with a specific person about cheese, eggs, leather, circuses or other animal products or uses, but as an advocate, I always make it clear that veganism is what is most important to nonhuman animals as moral persons with the right not to be used as property. That is substantially different from creating a campaign around a singe issue.
"SICs that don't negotiate treatment necessarily make it clear that we are opposed to use.� This is simply untrue. In a deeply speciesist society like ours, the general take away from an SIC (at best) will be that it is wrong to use/treat that animal in that particular way not that it is wrong to use other animals and that we should all go vegan. Moreover, if we want people to go vegan, we should just ask them to do so upfront and help them to do so. When we are educating others, there is no value to miseducating them first (with an unclear SIC) and then �properly� educating them second (by educating them about veganism after a while). Abolitionist groups should make it explicitly clear that they oppose animal use because nonhuman animals are moral persons.
�SICs end the property status of nonhuman animals." This is also untrue. A given SIC could call for an end to property status of particular animals or particular species (this would still be problematic from a speciesist standpoint). However, the vast majority do not. Instead, they almost all focus on bans on a particular use/treatment. Even if these types of bans are wildly successful, they do not free any particular nonhuman animals. For example, if I were a slave, "banning" my use for dishwashing would not free me (it would not end my status as property). A ban on my washing dishes would not end my use, it would just regulate my use. I could still be used as a slave for other purposes. Campaigns that regulate use, regulate use; they don't end it. By definition, abolitionists focus on campaigns that promote an end to animal use in light of the moral personhood and rights of animals, not campaigns that regulate that use in light of human prejudices. It's certainly possible that some incremental changes may 'erode property status', but it is not clear why there is an advantage to invest time and resources into dicey campaigns that may not erode property status (and that's if they are successful, which they may not be).
�SICs help bring people into the movement.� HSUS has a large campaign around 'taking action' that leads people to believe that doing anything other than going vegan means they are helping nonhuman animals. SICs may bring new people into the movement, but so does vegan education. Moreover, given that SICs often miseducate the public, what this results in are new advocates who miseducate the public further. Tricking people into the movement in this way does not provide a sound social basis for change based on a coalition approach. It lays the groundwork for future fragmentation when the 'coalitions' that were improperly formed split apart because there is no common ideology that opposes animal use, supports animal rights, supports abolition and sees veganism as the moral baseline for that movement. Reaching out to people is very important, but in honest and effective ways based on truly shared values.
"Without SICs most animals will be wiped out." Almost a direct quote from a long-standing but very misguided advocate in defense of an anti-fur campaign (without even a glimmer of understanding that 'most animals' are actually arthropods). This is problematic for a few reasons. First, many animal species face extinction generally as a natural process, and many more face it as a direct result of animal agriculture/animal use. The notion that we could always stop all of the former is simply wrong. The notion that we could stop many of the latter extinctions without stopping animal agriculture is very unlikely.
Second, these kinds of campaigns, intentionally or not, suggest that the lives of cuddly, intelligent or otherwise 'human like' mammals who face a highly publicly visible extinction have more value that the lives of individual animals who are in no danger of extinction, who are not like us and/or about whom the public doesn't really care (e.g., many arthropods). That's specieist on its face. Third, we will not stop anthropocentric use of the ecosystem until human beings see other animals as moral persons and rights-holders. If we take the extinction of species and our shared habitats seriously, the answer is not SICs, but abolitionist vegan education.
�The Endangered Speciest Act gives nonhuman animals rights.� This is also untrue. ESA regulates the use of nonhuman animals as state property. The treatment as free-living state property and in a vivisector's lab is different, but property is property. Defending campaigns that regulate the use of state property are as problematic in terms of speciesism as happy meat campaigns are, if we take nonhuman animals to be moral persons. ESA protects some animals � as resources � for various reasons. It does not confer anything like legal or moral personhood upon nonhuman animals. Even if it did, it would still be problematic and speciesist insofar as it focuses on animals only in terms of their importance to the state and human beings more generally. Francione has a great Tweet on this here.
�Talking about specific uses is an effective gateway to vegan education.� This is a bit problematic, although the least problematic of all of the objections to SICs. It assumes (to a certain degree) that we have to ease people into a discussion of veganism. In some cases, this may make sense, and others not. However a sustained focus on SICs is unnecessary to introduce people to veganism in North America. Veganism and animal use are all over the place in popular culture these days. Animal use and liberation has figured prominently on two prime-time Fox television programs (The O.C. and Family Guy), as well as in the New York Times, the Guardian and other highly public vehicles. Talking about a specific use may be effective in certain specific social circumstances (c.f., the previous paragraph). However, a mass campaign that focuses on a specific use is more likely to be confusing, the available evidence suggests that is is completely unnecessary and finally, we're going to have to educate people about veganism, why not just do it up-front?
�SICs encourage advocates to get active locally.� This may be true, but it is a 20 year-old solution to a problem, the scope of which has been significantly reshaped by two things: economic globalization and the Internet. SICs may make sense in very, very specific, imaginable contexts, but SICs are not intuitive to younger advocates for a lot of good reasons. Younger advocates know that the real battle today is not with the local Mom and Pop Meats and Furs, but between international cartels: huge and sprawling agribusinesses with global supply chains, agribusinesses like HSUS that sell certification schemes for "humane" animal products as well as indulgences to a nonvegan public (as well as their various, increasingly international, partners), and abolitionist vegan advocates collaborating internationally. The boom in "humane" animal products makes it clear that people are already trying to come to grips with the moral problem of animal use big picture. In that context, it is little surprise that SICs don't resonate with younger activists who can write a pamphlet and ask a vegan friend in Guatemala to translate it and hand it out there. Besides, people can be just as active locally by promoting veganism.
So, with all of these problems to SICs, it remains a serious question why organizations still engage in them except insofar as they find it beneficial to them. I will not speculate that it is entirely an attempt to remain relevant in an industry in which HSUS and its growing cartel of humane brands is rapidly sucking up donors and volunteers. That kind of opportunism assumes a coherent strategy that not all animal advocacy businesses clearly have. It may also be confusion, an imaginative misunderstanding of how SICs actually work, or a misunderstanding of the struggle on the ground today or other reasons. But none of this would be substantive enough for AE to back an SIC, and we do not think it is sufficient justification for any abolitionist.
If a campaign does not support the rights of nonhuman animals not to be used as resources and does not support veganism, Jo and I do not support it. If an organization does not engage in explicitly abolitionist work, then we do not support that organization. That doesn't mean we cannot have a meaningful (if critical) dialogue with other advocates who do support these kinds of campaigns and organizations. In fact, we often do. But we make it clear where we stand, both to the public and to other advocates that we only support what is clearly abolitionist vegan.
If you are not vegan, you should go vegan today! If you are not an abolitionist but want to learn more about the approach, you can do so at www.abolitionistapproach.com.
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