ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

Hi, colleagues of ARCO's Abolitionists forum.

I would like to expose some of the facts that have happened lately in Spain since I think they are very important to bare in mind by abolitionists worldwide.

I work in an abolitionist organization some of you already know, Igualdad Animal / Animal Equality. We are vegans, we promote veganism on an ethical basis solely, we reject speciesism and any kind of animal slavery. We have openly critizised "welfarist" reforms, sexism campaigns and those groups who suscribe to welfarism.

We have consistently refused to collaborate with speciesist, welfarist & new-welfarist organizations and this has obviously gained us some enemies among them, something we already knew that it would happen. And this commitment toward abolition has had several responses on the speciesist and new-welfarist world I would like to share if it can be of help for others.

Some organizations / individuals have tried to isolate us by stating false claims about us. This is one of the typical ways: hidden comments that you'll not be able to adequately reply to since they haven't been formally written.

Equanimal, one of whose members has recently registered in this forum, an organization who support welfarism and speciesist projects sent one of their coordinators to our protests with a notebook and a pen just to get contacts among our activists and the people we have called for our protests. They have left their propaganda in the same room where our spokeperson -Sharon Nuñez- was going to give an abolitionist talk, in order to make sure that those who came to our talk would receive their propaganda. They have announced one of our protests as if it were theirs, without any mention to us and even putting their own email as contact and therefore, increasing the false attribution. They have published their own actions as comments in our YouTube channel, in order to take advantage of the attention we were getting toward our first open rescue ever done in Spain.

They came to our abolitionist Animal Rights Day protest despite we have explicitely told them that they aren't welcome. We don't want them in our protests and we have the right to decide how are we going to work and with who are we going to do our protests. They started to spread their propaganda in our protest and to promote their own protest with the welfarist groups.

The try to co-opt us by confusing the general public about our different messages. They have said some people that both organizations "are the same" and that "we work together", both claims being plain false, we are not the same, in fact there are profound differences, and we have never worked together. They have stated to some people -who has later become one of our activists- that we are only interested in the philosophical arguments against speciesism, something that it's equally false and that tries to portray us as if we were some kind of philosophical club who is only interested in abstracts and theoretical issues (in fact, we are one of the most -if not the most- active organizations in Spain, doing more than 3 protests every week in the streets and with at least 3 stalls, at the same time that we recognize the value of animal rights theory that guides our actions and decissions).

They claim to be "abolitionists" now too -specially since we have started to bring attention toward the abolitionist vs welfarist debate- despite they have helped PETA -yeah, the same killing healthy non-human persons organization-, they support the reform of battery cages, speciesist GAP, they have promoted speciesist and pro-vivisector, pro-zoos and pro-animal eating Jane Goodal, they have joined the protests of pro-hunting groups like ADEGA and their initiative Matar por Matar Non against a specific kind of massive killing (at the same time that this initiative supports hunting)... Further more, they have registered "abolicionismo.org" as a way to make sure they have some quota on that term and that they will also be portrayed as abolitionists -despite they are not-. It's curious that they give so much importance to this issue when they have written that they think it's just a label (it may be for them, not for us).

They have also desperately tried to work with us, to find any way to join our protests and claim that we are part of the same boat in the same trip, to negate our differences since this obviously causes them some troubles and puts them in the position of having to reply and explain why do they do this and this. We have repeteadly refused to even talk with them about how to work together (since we don't agree to work together in ANY way) and yet, since we have cleary said "no" to them, they have decided some days ago to ignore that and come to our protests whether we want/like it or not.

They try to take advantage of the supposition that we will not show their tactics as if we were worried that this could harm us or would put the "movement" against us for being divisive and because we are damaging the image of unity image of that movement (in which we think we don't fit anyway), but we have decided to make it public to show how they really are and some of what you may find as abolitionist.

This message is not about bashing other organization, but about expousing a defined and clear tactic carried out by non-abolitionists against the rise of abolition in Spain.

Abolitionists of all over the world, please be cautious about how other groups / individuals will try to attack you and convert your claims in part of their own futile marketing campaign.

Although I have complete faith in Jose, in the interest of fairness, I'll ask before banning,:

EQUANIMAL, do you have anything to say in response to this shocking allegation??