ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

beforewisdom · by **beforewisdom** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 4:55 pm

These essays are several months old, but I am catching up on my reading and these discussions probably got trashed with the hard drive crash.

LaVeck & Stein of Tribe Of Heart films ( "A Peaceable Kingdom", "The Witness" ) describes the issue of "Happy Meat", an issue that threatens to split the animal protection movement or kill it outright. At the bottom of LaVeck's and Stein's essay are links to 3 earlier, similar essays, each with some unique points that make them worth reading:

PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICAN CARNIVORE:
From Lyman to Niman in 10 Short Years
by James LaVeck and Jenny Stein
http://www.tribeofheart.org/tohhtml/pnac.htm

In "reply" Laveck's and Stein's points Bruce Friedrich of PETA has this essay:

Why Animal Rights Advocates Should Support Efforts to Ban the Cruelest Confinement and Most Abusive Slaughter of Farmed Animals
by Bruce Friedrich
http://www.animalblawg.com/wordpress/?p=139

James · by **James** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:46 am

http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2007 ... ights.html

A reply to Friedrich's article by Roger Yates.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) staff member Bruce Friedrich has recently caused a stir with his guest blog entry on ANIMALBLAWG [1]. The debate that followed the publication of the article raised the question as to whether PeTA is – or remains – an animal rights organisation. I doubt that they are. Being a human rights or animal rights advocate [2] surely means something much more than simply stating that one is?

Bruce Friedrich is an interesting case in this respect because he has a history of working for human rights groups, running a shelter for homeless families and a soup kitchen in Washington DC. Yes, a soup kitchen in the richest nation on the planet. In the exchanges that followed his article, Bruce cited the human rights organisation Amnesty International. Groups such as Amnesty tend to demand the immediate end to human rights violations. Their main campaigning stress – consistently – is the demand for the curtailment of violations of human rights.

So, if human rights organisations demand an immediate stop to rights violations, animal rights groups will do the same, right? Wrong. Many organisations, including PeTA, while insisting on the name ‘animal rights’ do not use consistent rights-based language. Animal rights philosophers and writers such as Gary Francione, Tom Regan and Joan Dunayer [3] do, and base their positions on opposing rights violations. Not, however, the major groups in the ‘animal rights movement’. While animal rights philosophy is built on rights violation claims as fundamental principles for judging right and wrong, the modern-day animal movement uses rights-talk rhetorically, merely using the word ‘rights’ in article headings, subheadings and group names. Mention of nonhuman animal rights violations is extremely rare.

Since social movements are claims-making enterprises, we can evaluate their philosophical stance based on their claims. For example, it is clear that Amnesty International is a human rights mobilisation – all their campaigning begins and ends with open and honest claims that human rights are being violated and they want it stopped forthwith. Does PeTA’s campaigning material share the same rights-based abolitionist focus? It does not. PeTA’s main web page [www.peta-online.org] includes a box marked, “Why Animal Rights?” What should one expect to follow from such a heading: maybe something about the importance of rights-based philosophy? Something about sentient nonhuman animals being rights bearers? Something challenging the gross rights violations that routinely take place against nonhuman animal interests perhaps? No such claim follows PeTA’s “Why Animal Rights?”

So, let us assume that there is some school kid, as there often is, busy putting together her ‘animal rights project’. Hey, great, she discovers a prominent www site promising to tell her the answer to, “Why Animal Rights?” Surely an important document for her project, she thinks. She clicks on the ‘learn more’ tag [leading to http://www.peta-online/about/WhyAnimalRights.asp] and she learns that this page refers to a book called Animal Liberation written by a philosopher called Peter Singer. If she reads to the end, she is encouraged to click again to know more about the philosopher Singer [www.peta-online/about/animallib-singer.asp]. This page is entitled, “What is Animal Liberation? Excerpts from Philosopher Peter Singer’s Groundbreaking Work”.

What excerpts? The first is one in which Singer discusses the parody of Mary Woolstonecraft’s The Vindication of the Rights of Women which is called The Vindication of the Rights of Brutes. At this point our poor student is being led up a sticky path because this extract does indeed imply that Animal Liberation seems to be about rights. We cannot be confident that when she reads subsequent paragraphs referencing Jeremy Bentham that she will realise that this marks the philosophical position of the author – utilitarian animal welfarism.

All hopes of philosophical clarity is lost when she decides that this text sounds perfect for her project and she’ll purchase a copy from PeTA’s online catalogue. What does that say about Singer’s groundbreaking text from the 1970s? Our student clicks on ‘shop’ and before you have time to gas thirty chickens she finds her way via the heading “general animal rights” to a page advertising Animal Liberation. It reads: “Referred to as the animal rights ‘bible’, this book includes in-depth examinations of factory farming, animal experimentation, vegetarianism, and animal rights philosophy. If you read only one animal rights book, it has to be this one”.

Unaware that this book does not actually include an in-depth analysis of animal rights philosophy, our student has been utterly misled by PeTA. However, we get fresh hope when our student remembers her teacher recommends a critical approach and tells her not to rely on a single source. Is all resolved, then, when our (wealthy) student also decides to purchase books by the animal rights thinkers mentioned above from the PeTA bookstore. Clickety-click-click, that’s odd. No Francione. No Regan. No Dunayer. Not under the heading “general animal rights”. Not anywhere. There’s some more books by Peter Singer, to be sure, but none by animal rights theorists. With such a cavalier attitude to animal rights thought, can we take a claim that PeTA is an animal rights organisation seriously?

Does it matter?

Yes, and it matters because social movements are claims-making enterprises. Animal rights advocacy, following animal rights philosophy, is about making claims that sentient nonhuman animals are rightholders who have their rights violated by human use. Animal welfarism is about opposing the infliction of cruelty and ‘unnecessary’ suffering while regulating ‘humane’ standards in animal use – ensuring ‘ethical treatment’ one could say. It matters, primarily, because animal rights thinking provides a robust theory to guide consistent action and claims against the violation of rights. When the stress is on cruelty, what happens when people are convinced that the cruelty has been eliminated? What happens when they think standards of use are ‘humane’ or ‘ethical’ enough? There is growing evidence that the consumer turns to cage-free eggs and vegetarians return to meat-eating: of the ‘cruelty-free’ sort, that is.

Finally what do PeTA, ‘the largest animal rights group in the world’, suggest to animal advocates faced with a question about campaigning priorities? Some people, as we all know most likely, will persist in asking animal advocates why they care about nonhuman animals in a world full of human suffering. What do PeTA suggest as a response to such questions. Assert that nonhuman animals, like human ones, are rights bearers and it is wrong to violate the rights of all rightholders without very, very good reason? Forget it. Not a chance. Bruce Friedrich, instead, recommends a welfarist approach and one which implies that humans are the only animals who have rights. He says, advocates may say: “I see what you are saying, and I do support groups like Amnesty International and Oxfam that fight for human rights as well. But don’t you agree that cruelty to animals should be opposed?”[4] In another response, Bruce suggests that talk should be directed toward the notion of ‘animal lovers’ [5]. Oh dear. I rest my case.

panthera · by **panthera** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 3:51 am

In the main ARCO forum several months ago, Roger brought up the question of whether animal orgs ever use the language of "rights." I remember telling him that I may have seen a bit of it on IDA's lit, but I hadn't liked it when I saw it. I felt it detracted from the message, and so when I left leaflets around my office, I didn't ever like for anything like that to show (this was way back in my earliest animal welfare days, back in 2005 I think).

His posts got me thinking, though, that maybe it was important to switch to talking explicitly about rights, even critical to do so. He pointed out that yes people would laugh at us, but that we'd have to keep right on making rights claims, so that future generations could get on with their work without being laughed at. That gave me some courage, and I've been paying more attention to what it is that I'm claiming.

Honestly, when I read (even now) Bruce's essay, I'm so strongly swayed! Yes, yes it's an outrage for all those chickens...and how effective it really can be to appeal to the "animal lovers" in the audience. I still do that in my regular email signatures

but then there's Roger with his

Is it nothing short of a scandal that the so-called ‘animal rights movement’ has existed in parts of the world for decades and yet one can rarely hear the claim that nonhuman animals are rights bearers and what humans do to them amounts to rights violations? Ask a member of the public or a journalist if she’s ever heard of animal rights and she will probably say she has – but if you ask what animal rights stands for you most often will be told that it is about the opposition to ‘cruelty to animals’. You will be lucky ever to hear the words ‘nonhumans are rightholders’ and ‘animal rightists oppose the violation of animals’ rights’ from such respondents.

I’m told over and over that the public ain’t ‘ready’ for that sort of talk. Indeed: well then, let’s get on with the job of ‘ripening’ them up.

from http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2007 ... ocacy.html

beforewisdom · by **beforewisdom** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 11:50 pm

Yes, the term "animal rights" is used inaccurately. I think people are learning. I've seen a few orgs starting to use the term "animal protection"

James · by **James** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 1:17 am

panthera wrote:Honestly, when I read (even now) Bruce's essay, I'm so strongly swayed! Yes, yes it's an outrage for all those chickens...and how effective it really can be to appeal to the "animal lovers" in the audience.

Which parts of Friedrich's article were you swayed by? Quote the relevant sections and we can respond to them.

Friedrich's central claim, that it is "speciesist" not to support welfare regulation, is unsound.

(1) Not supporting welfare regulation would be speciesist only if we would be prepared to support the same type of regulation in the human context. But welfare regulation (e.g. the CAK reform) intrinsically involves (because it necessarily falls short of basic animal rights) killing animals. Is anyone seriously suggesting that we would support regulation in the human context which intrinsically involved (because it necessarily fell short of basic human rights) murdering human beings?

(2) Friedrich compares disanalogous things. Trying to improve conditions for political prisoners is not analogous to supporting reforms which intrinsically involve killing animals. Hence because we might support the former, it does not follow that we are speciesist if we reject the latter.

(3) Friedrich merely assumes that we would support analogous reforms in human context. If we would not support them, then even if we assume that Friedrich is correct to claim that we are speciesist if we do not support welfare regulation, it would not follow that we are speciesist, precisely because we would not support analogous reforms in the human context. And of course no one would support analogous reforms in the human context. (Although of course Friedrich mistakenly assumes that improving conditions for political prisoners is somehow analogous to supporting different methods of killing animals.)

(4) Friedrich compares reforms in the human context that plausibly represent some kind of incremental progress with ones in the animal context that do not represent any incremental progress. CAK does not represent a shift in the paradigm, for it does not impose opportunity costs on exploiters that reflect inherent valuation in animal interests; on the contrary, it makes exploitation more economically efficient. Since we would not support reforms in the human context that do not represent any incremental progress, it follows that we are not being speciesist in rejecting ones that do not represent incremental progress in the animal context (like CAK).

(5) Friedrich's claim that we should support welfare regulation because it is the best we can do for animals at the moment begs the question by assuming that welfarism is not partly responsible for causing this situation. But since the situation occurs in the context of welfarism's being the dominant paradigm, it is prima facie plausible to suppose that the welfarist paradigm as such is (1) partly responsible for what is allegedly suited to justify its existence (i.e., the fact that we can't abolish animal exploitation immediately), and (2) de facto conditions unresponsiveness to what it is allegedly conducive to (i.e., animal liberation). Now if (1) welfarism is conducive to abolition then it should not be the case that (2) people are unresponsive to abolition while welfarism is the dominant paradigm. To the contrary, if welfarism is conducive to abolition, then people should already be responsive to abolition, precisely because welfarism is the dominant paradigm. But they are not. Therefore, since (2) is true (1) is false. I think that when people argue that welfarism is justified because people are unresponsive to abolition, they always ignore the fact that this unresponsiveness (to abolition) occurs in the context of welfarism's being the dominant paradigm.

(6) Friedrich's argument relies on its being a wholly contingent matter that CAK-type reforms are the best we can do for animals "at the moment." It may seem seem somewhat plausible that we should support welfare regulation if it is merely contingently the case that it is the best we can do for animals at the moment, or the best we can do, given the current options available. But once you show that the qualification "at the moment," which is what carries the weight in Friedrich's argument -- is what gives it whatever plausibility it has -- is redundant, things seem radically different. After all, can anyone imagine arguing that we should support regulation which intrinsically involves killing animals even though it represents no progress and cannot lead anywhere? And this is exactly the situation we are in. Because animals are property, animal welfare is structurally limited to CAK-type reforms -- reforms that merely make exploitation more efficient (while maybe reducing marginally amounts of suffering as a side-effect). Thus Friedrich's claim that we should support CAK because it is the best we can do for animals "at the moment" is redundant, for, with animal welfare, it is the best we are ever gonna get. His argument should not read: "We should support welfare regulation because it is the best we can do at the moment, as a contingent matter"; rather it should read: "We should support welfare regulation because, with animal welfare, it is the best we can ever do, necessarily." Once you remove the qualification "at the moment" and translate it into its correct form, Friedrich's argument loses whatever plausibility it had. It is no longer an argument for animal welfare; on the contrary, it is an argument against it.

I think that this realization, combined with the argument in (5) -- namely, that welfarism is the dominant paradigm for assessing human-nonhuman relations and so is prima facie implicated in any problems we face, rather than the solution to them -- should make us reevaluate any argument for welfarism of the form: "It is the best we can do at the moment/is the best option, given the options available."

panthera · by **panthera** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 8:33 am

James wrote:
panthera wrote:Honestly, when I read (even now) Bruce's essay, I'm so strongly swayed! Yes, yes it's an outrage for all those chickens...and how effective it really can be to appeal to the "animal lovers" in the audience.

Which parts of Friedrich's article were you swayed by? Quote the relevant sections and we can respond to them.

Thanks for offering to respond to what troubles me, specifically!

One of the things I really appreciate about you...

James wrote:(1) Not supporting welfare regulation would be speciesist only if we would be prepared to support the same type of regulation in the human context....Is anyone seriously suggesting that we would support regulation in the human context which intrinsically involved (because it necessarily fell short of basic human rights) murdering human beings?

(5)... Thus Friedrich's claim that we should support CAK because it is the best we can do for animals "at the moment" is redundant, for, with animal welfare, it is the best we are ever gonna get.

I'm not going into much detail right now as its 4:27 am, but the points above are especially helpful. When we speak of improving conditions for human political prisoners, we're not accepting that they are to be killed. And that "with animal welfare, it is the best we are ever gonna get."

more later!

James · by **James** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 2:29 pm

People also say that it's okay to offer "humane" animal products to people if they are completely unresponsive to veganism. A major problem with this argument is this: Considered on an individual basis it may superfically seem like a good idea to offer "humane" animal products and welfarism to people who are completely unresponsive to veganism, but considered in their generality these responses (to animal exploitation) condition unresponsiveness to abolition. The general fact that advocates are prepared to offer "humane" animal products and welfarism to people accounts for the very unresponsiveness (to abolition) they in turn claim justifies their promoting these products and welfarism.

The same circularity infects Friedrich's claim that we should support welfare regulation because it's the best we can do at the moment. The important question is why are people unresponsive to anything more progress? Well, because welfarism is the dominant paradigm in the animal movemet. As I said above, unresponsiveness to abolition occurs in the context of welfarism's being the dominant paradigm. But what is Friedrich's solution to unresponsiveness to abolition? Answer: welfarism. It is vicious cycle that can only be broken by nonparticipation in animal exploitation (i.e. the rejection of "humane" animal products) and the rejection of welfarism. The paradigm shift is to realize that what people took to be the solution to animal exploitation is actually part of the problem.

panthera · by **panthera** » Sun Oct 07, 2007 4:18 am

I believe (and have argued in other forums) that reforms are a key stepping stone toward liberation (by placing animals onto our moral agenda, by forcing meat-eaters to face the fact that they are eating individuals with interests, not “meat,” etc.)

They do put them on the moral agenda, but they promise to take them right back off!

OK, so here are my problem spots:

“If I were a calf in a crate or a hen being starved for two weeks or crammed into a battery cage, how would I want a human animal rights activist to behave?”
Asking this question leads me to believe that the 800,000 calves and 250 million hens who are crated for veal and caged for eggs each year deserve to have advocates demanding that they be released
..
We have to challenge ourselves to ask, “Considering that 10 billion chickens and hundreds of millions of hens will have their throats slit open while they are still conscious and will be crammed into tiny cages for their entire lives, and that these animals will not be released no matter what we do, how do we act on their behalf?”

I think this emotional appeal unhinges me. How can I not support every single attempt to help them? Anything, everything. By anybody & everybody. Even if they haven’t a clue about the fundamental wrongs in imprisoning and killing other sentient beings, for the time being they can help relieve some of the suffering.

I can agree intellectually that as theory and as strategy, we must advocate abolition. And then I come up against something like this and find myself on the floor in tears. I fear so badly that maybe it IS a betrayal to reject welfare reform categorically. Maybe they can at least open some cage doors; it won’t make the whole situation better, but it might afford a short period of relief.

When you’re suffering, a few seconds of relief is a lot.

While we go talk to the owners of the farm, can’t the welfarists open some of the cage & crate doors? If they’re not willing to do the real work, let’em relieve some suffering. Wait, they’re actually the ones trying to talk to the farm owners, while we’re not even bothering with them, are we? We’re talking to the consumers!

AW breaks down when you consider how ineffective & inefficient it has proven to be. But when I see the “horrific suffering” card being played, I panic.

Similarly, I have never heard anyone suggest that Amnesty International—by fighting for better conditions for political prisoners while fighting for their freedom— is somehow compromising its larger goal of freeing all political prisoners.

Do they? I haven’t heard of this.

death penalty opponents simultaneously advocate for the abolition of the death penalty while also working to ban the most torturous forms of execution (e.g., hanging and electrocution). Most readers are probably opposed to the death penalty, and yet we recognize that at the very least, we should support efforts to eliminate especially horrible forms of killing prisoners, as well as for basic human rights for the prisoners while they are alive.

Is this actually true, do those who oppose the death penalty also campaign against particular forms of execution?

They argue that using controlled atmosphere killing (CAK) to kill chickens is inconsequential and that discussing the means of killing is immoral, even though right now, nearly 10 billion birds have their throats slit open while they are still conscious and CAK would cause their deaths to be virtually painless.
No animal in a crate or cage, chicken in a slaughterhouse, or hen starved for two weeks would agree that group housing, painless deaths, and an end to starving animals are “illusory short-term” gains for animals.

I keep thinking, if I could give a calf a choice – wouldn’t he prefer the less awful version of a terrible life? Sure. So is it simply that it’s much too small a gain for an animal rights supporter to be asking for? CAK, for instance, might be instituted a lot faster if AW weren’t championing it, I think.

panthera · by **panthera** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:36 am

I wanted to continue this conversation, so I've copied some posts here

Re: The Singer/Francione Thread...

Post Posted Wed Nov 07, 2007 7:40 pm by sheepdog
Your enthusiasm is infectious.

ben1971 wrote:I agree that all these methods are used by welfarists to prompte welfarism, but I'm not sure I could dismiss them as tools to promote abolition. Surely there is a Need to campaign, to educate, to take legal actions etc.?

With respect I suggest to you that is welfarism talking. Why do you have this feeling that these things are necessary? Is it because you cannot imagine what to do without them, perhaps because you, like the rest of us, have been so well conditioned to welfarism that it is not possible to imagine life without welfarism? That is exactly why these tools support welfarism: because the act of using them maintains the welfarist state of mind, no matter if they are intended to promote Abolition. Abolition is not what we eat and wear. Abolition is a state of mind that is not the state of mind that is welfarism. One cannot hold both within one's head at once. They are mutually exclusive. To free oneself from welfarism all of welfarism must be denied. Is it so much to ask that you give up campaigning, education and legal actions? How important were these to you anyway, compared to fully realizing Abolition?

The unexpanded answer would be to not assert ourselves upon the natural world.

This is, I guess, what you're saying about the non-use of land, roads, airplanes and pets and I agree with you. Would you take it to the point where (I've only heard this expressed by Joan Dunayer but it may have been mentioned elsewhere) non-human animals own not just some of the fruits of their labour (eggs, honey, milk etc.) but All the fruits of their labour (dams, hives etc)?

I'm not familiar with Dunayer, but to put it in these terms I would say that a Being owns, in this sense, everything which she requires to Be, as the Being she is. That would include the land she lives on, the air she breathes, water to drink, etc. Her ownership of these things has been granted her by the authority of Nature. This is even more ownership than All the fruits of her labors.

If we truly believe in not asserting ourselves then one conclusion we must come to is that we must stop expanding. Society would still be loaded in the favour of human animals if we were to keep our boundries where they are but at the very least we must take no more. So yeah, no new roads, airports or buildings and a static population...or do we need to decide to start giving back what we've taken?

Consider your choice of wording, "giving back", as if to say that we would be loosing something. This is further echoes of welfarism. Our enslavement of the animals enslaves ourselves. When we free them we free ourselves. We have more to gain than they by returning their lands to them. That is an opportunity we should be eager to embrace.

I always found veganism to be so interesting, in that one is never finished asking questions of it and seeing how far it can be pushed...it seems abolition can take us in totally new directions but it's frustrating when action is so difficult. Talking about veganism with most of the people I know is hard. As you said, every stream in every direction is based on animal abuse. Trying to convey an abolitionist message is even further removed from most people's reality and it makes me wonder how we are going to go about changing the paradigm when people won't even turn their tele off standby!

This is the trouble with "veganism". We have created a word that has the effect of obscuring our meaning. In fact, it's the same with "welfarism" and "abolition", and I'm herewith going to stop using those terms. Welfarism is essentially a state of limited Compassion. Abolition is the shift to universal, unlimited Compassion.

Now acting with unlimited Compassion doesn't seem so difficult, does it? See how much easier it is when the words have a natural sense? And it's easier to talk to people about universal Compassion, than about Abolition versus welfarism, isn't it? So do that. Go to the heart of the matter and incorporate ideas of universal Compassion in your conversation and actions. Fortunately, people are naturally inclined to Compassion, so the threads are there. All we have to do is pick them up.
Post details | Select:
Re: The Singer/Francione Thread...

Post Posted Thu Nov 08, 2007 3:12 am by ben1971

sheepdog wrote:Your enthusiasm is infectious.

ben1971 wrote:I agree that all these methods are used by welfarists to prompte welfarism, but I'm not sure I could dismiss them as tools to promote abolition. Surely there is a Need to campaign, to educate, to take legal actions etc.?

With respect I suggest to you that is welfarism talking. Why do you have this feeling that these things are necessary? Is it because you cannot imagine what to do without them, perhaps because you, like the rest of us, have been so well conditioned to welfarism that it is not possible to imagine life without welfarism? That is exactly why these tools support welfarism: because the act of using them maintains the welfarist state of mind, no matter if they are intended to promote Abolition. Abolition is not what we eat and wear. Abolition is a state of mind that is not the state of mind that is welfarism. One cannot hold both within one's head at once. They are mutually exclusive. To free oneself from welfarism all of welfarism must be denied. Is it so much to ask that you give up campaigning, education and legal actions? How important were these to you anyway, compared to fully realizing Abolition?

I would certainly admit that I have been well conditioned in welfarism, but if we don't campaign and educate then how will abolition ever get bigger than each individual, other than through chance encounters with people who may decide to follow our example? So yes, I guess I do see these things as necessary (but yeah, I would also admit that I cannot imagine what to do without them).

Isn't there a difference between welfarism, and the tools that are used to promote it?

If we truly believe in not asserting ourselves then one conclusion we must come to is that we must stop expanding. Society would still be loaded in the favour of human animals if we were to keep our boundries where they are but at the very least we must take no more. So yeah, no new roads, airports or buildings and a static population...or do we need to decide to start giving back what we've taken?

Consider your choice of wording, "giving back", as if to say that we would be loosing something. This is further echoes of welfarism. Our enslavement of the animals enslaves ourselves. When we free them we free ourselves. We have more to gain than they by returning their lands to them. That is an opportunity we should be eager to embrace.

Perhaps my choice of words was not great...I didn't mean it to sound like we should be sad to 'lose something', indeed, I agree that it should be seen as an opportunity. In this context, would promoting veganism without promoting primitivism seem like promoting anti fur without mentioning leather?

I always found veganism to be so interesting, in that one is never finished asking questions of it and seeing how far it can be pushed...it seems abolition can take us in totally new directions but it's frustrating when action is so difficult. Talking about veganism with most of the people I know is hard. As you said, every stream in every direction is based on animal abuse. Trying to convey an abolitionist message is even further removed from most people's reality and it makes me wonder how we are going to go about changing the paradigm when people won't even turn their tele off standby!

This is the trouble with "veganism". We have created a word that has the effect of obscuring our meaning. In fact, it's the same with "welfarism" and "abolition", and I'm herewith going to stop using those terms. Welfarism is essentially a state of limited Compassion. Abolition is the shift to universal, unlimited Compassion.

Now acting with unlimited Compassion doesn't seem so difficult, does it? See how much easier it is when the words have a natural sense? And it's easier to talk to people about universal Compassion, than about Abolition versus welfarism, isn't it? So do that. Go to the heart of the matter and incorporate ideas of universal Compassion in your conversation and actions. Fortunately, people are naturally inclined to Compassion, so the threads are there. All we have to do is pick them up.

Good point - language is very important and yes, I agree that people would be more receptive to compassion than abolition...but that brings me back to a point made above, that surely talking with people about compassion/abolition/welfarism is All education, or campaigning...those are just the tools aren't they?

panthera · by **panthera** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 7:37 am

Here's something I wrote out for the other ARCO, so I'll just repeat it here:

From reading and rereading the text of laws such as the Animal Welfare Act and the Humane Slaughter Act, and reading some of the proposals out there, and reviewing how much discussion and maneuvering every piece of legislation/regulation takes, I'm convinced it's a royal waste of time. You have to work tirelessly to rally enough attention to noticed, then you have to wrangle with everyone about each term in the bill/policy and just when you think you've talked to each person involved several times over, someone else pipes up with "hey what about this??" The text then sits on people's desks out of disinterest AND malice, which in the case of legislation is deadly. If you lobby hard enough to get enough support, then someone sticks on some irrelevant or offensive rider, and schedules a vote while everyone is visiting their families.

Once you have the legislation/regulation, you need to enforce it. That means making up whole presentations to teach the industries exactly what this new regulation entails, and how to train each worker on all the details. If you happen get some executive or manager who is supportive of it, they'll probably leave next year and you'll have to flatter and persuade and poke at someone new, who might be completely deaf to your concerns. If they are in total noncompliance, you will have to check all the statutes to see what avenues are open for you to take. Then approach the appropriate agencies, go back home with the paperwork they give you, call them up to have them explain what in gods name they mean, hand it in, wait for a month, check back, be told to do it again because it was lost.

When you find a sympathetic soul, they're completely overworked and understaffed and cannot help you. The press is not interested, the industry has way more money and clout than you. And at the end of the day, even that sympathetic soul is not vegan!!

ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

Vegans exploring the abolitionist approach to Animal Rights

The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich

taken from Singer/Francione thread

Re: The new American Carnivore & Bruce Friedrich