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When a rooster shouts, “Hawk!” all the other birds run for cover. Many repeat the alarm cry to make sure that everybody knows. The resulting cacophony makes it clear to anybody with ears to hear: “This is an emergency!”

If only people were as smart! Every day seems to bring more news that climate change is an escalating emergency. “Hawk!” shout the scientists, “Hawk! Hawk! Hawk!”

And we do — what? Maybe make some minor changes in our lifestyles? This is an emergency! Why don’t we act accordingly?

What does global warming to do with animals? Everything! As the climate changes, habitats become less inhabitable and animals die. Meanwhile, the methane released into the atmosphere by the millions of cows and other animals crowded into feedlots and factory farms is one of the chief causes of global warming.

Climate change is the number one challenge facing all animals today. Normally, we at the Eastern Shore Sanctuary don’t believe in ranking problems. The exploitation of hens in egg factories is neither more nor less important than the exploitation of ducks in foie gras factories. The enslavement of girl children in brothels is neither more nor less of an emergency than the impressment of boy children as expendable soldiers.

But the fact remains that none of our work to liberate animals or achieve social justice will make much of a difference if climate change makes the world uninhabitable for those we are hoping to help. Many who survive also will suffer. As we saw with hurricane Katrina, the most powerless people and animals are hurt the worst when weather emergencies alter ecosystems.

Whatever else you are doing or not doing, you can’t afford to ignore this. Polar bears are drowning because ice floes are gone and many other animals are at risk because of the destruction or distortion of their habitats. Islands are disappearing in the Pacific. Half of all species of plants and animals are likely to become extinct unless the course of climate change is arrested within the next 10 years.

What can you do? First, learn about the causes and effects of climate change. Then, share what you know with everybody in your life. Change your own behavior and encourage everyone you know to do the same. Finally, include work on climate change in your activism for the animals or find an extra hour or two each week to devote to just that.

Global warming is caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide (also called CO2) and methane in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide comes from power plants, cars and trucks, airplanes, and deforestation. Methane comes from the flatulence of millions of beef cattle and dairy cows as well as from the manure lagoons used by hog installations and other factory farms.

Whatever else you do, do these three things:

1. Reduce your own CO2 and methane emissions. To reduce your CO2 emissions: Turn down the heat and turn off the lights; drive and fly less; walk, bike, or take public transportation more; buy fewer items that have been trucked or flown from far away; and buy, borrow, or dumpster-dive used goods instead of new items made at energy-guzzling manufacturing plants. If you can afford to do it, buy a hybrid vehicle or install wind or solar energy in your home. To reduce the amount of methane that ends up in the atmosphere thanks to you: Go vegan!

2. Talk to everybody you know. Start by saying, “I’m really worried about global warming. What about you?” Then, listen and respond with empathy. (Don’t skip this step!) After that, you can share your own feelings and tell what you have done and are going to do.

3. Devote a set amount of time each month to working for local, national, or international policies and practices that will do something to mitigate climate change. If you can, go further and donate funds to organizations working for such policies or practices.

For links to relevant readings, along with information about Eastern Shore Sanctuary activities concerning climate change, visit our “Turn Down the Heat!” project page.

Although as large as adult chickens of other breeds, Violet and Chickweed were still peeping like little chicks when they arrived. They were extremely devoted to one another and took turns protecting one another from perceived dangers. We will never forget the spring that they spent with us. Watching them grow among the wildflowers and weeds, we came to truly appreciate the horror of the poultry industry, which deprives young birds of everything natural and then kills them before they even reach maturity.

As they grew, Violet and Chickweed’s individual personalities began to emerge. Chickweed was a sunny and outgoing young bird, while Violet was more quiet and shy. They remained close as they grew, rarely straying more than a few feet from one another.

Then they reached the bird equivalent of puberty. Chickweed started trying to crow, his little voice cracking and changing pitch until he got it right. Stomping around on his suddenly very large feet, Chickweed started paying a lot of attention to the other hens who had come to live at the sanctuary. For her part, Violet also sought a wider social circle, spending more and more time socializing with other hens her age. But, Violet and Chickweed checked in with one another frequently in the course of each day and always slept cuddled up together at night.

Then, tragedy struck. Violet got a cut that, because of its location, we didn’t see until it became infected. We washed and treated the wound and brought her inside. The next morning, she was dead. Because this was summer and heat-related heart attacks are common among these birds, we don’t know for sure whether complications from the the injury or a heart attack killed her.

Chickweed was devastated. He watched us bury Violet and, for the next several weeks, would return to stand silently at the place from which he had last seen her. Like many people do when they are mourning, he became very angry and would rage around the yard every day. At night, he would stand in the coop alone, drooping with sadness.

Chickweed never recovered his sunny personality. While he became less angry over time, he was never the same as he had been before Violet died. That is not to say that he didn’t have happy times. He became close to several roosters slightly younger than himself and also remained close to the sanctuary coordinator, with whom he spent time almost every day.

Chickweed lived with us for just over a year. Over the winter, he developed a respiratory infection that eventually stopped responding to treatment. Sanctuary co-founder pattrice jones spent a lot of time with him towards the end, and he seemed to take comfort from that. He would lean against her, just resting, after she gave him medicine or fed him a special treat.

When she buried Chickweed, pattrice felt compelled to include a few special objects in his grave and went running around looking for appropriate symbols. (She settled on a fossil and a Sacagawea dollar.) She imagined future archaeologists digging up our property. She wanted them to know: This chicken wasn’t anybody’s dinner. This chicken was somebody’s brother; this chicken was somebody’s friend.

Chickweed was never the same after Violet died. Having loved and lost them both, we were then the ones who would never be the same.

We say “him” now, but we initially believed Viktor to be female and called him “Mosselle.” One day, Mosselle made a loud croaking noise and we ran around looking to see if “she” had laid an egg. Another day, we heard a strange gargling sound inside the coop one morning and worried that she was choking. Luckily, somebody with some sense came along and said, “that bird’s a rooster.” It was hard not to think of him differently, even though he was the same bird. That’s the incident that first got us thinking about the ways that people map their ideas about sex and gender onto animals. (Read pattrice jones’ account of that thought process, and what happened next, here.)

Viktor adapted very well to his new surroundings but was obviously lonely. He would run out to greet us whenever we stepped into the yard and would sometimes clamber up onto the back steps just to wait for us. Only later, when other chickens were living with him, was he fully able to live a normal chicken life.

When we brought home Violet and Chickweed from the local humane society, Viktor was overwhelmed. Having lived his first two months in a shed with 20,000 other birds of the same sex and age and the next two months alone with us, he had not been socialized as he would have been with his mother and a normal flock. Now an adult, he wasn’t sure what to do with these youngsters. Should he an elder or a peer to the young rooster? Should he court or parent the young hen? For a couple of days, he tried to do everything at once before settling in as their surrogate single parent. He became intensely devoted to them very quickly and defended them whenever he felt they were threatened. When they had to come inside for a few days due to illness, he stopped eating and spent all his time hanging around where he had last seen them.

As the sanctuary grew, so did Viktor. He took his responsibilities as oldest rooster very seriously, constantly bustling around the yard and the coop making sure that everyone was okay. One day, when a couple of younger birds failed to take cover from a couple of hawks, Viktor stood in front of them rather than take cover himself, daring the predators to come down and fight him.

Viktor had a rich emotional life. He fell in love with a raggedy hen called Rosa and mourned when she died. For a long time after that, he showed no romantic or sexual interest in any hen. But, when Ellie Mae moved in many months later, he began courting again, spending all his extra time near her.

Viktor died of a sudden heart attack on a spring day when the temperature soared and he became overheated. He was only about a year and a half old. Such heart attacks are common among birds like Viktor, because their muscles are too heavy for their internal organs. We will always miss Viktor and consider the sanctuary to be his legacy. We still feel his spirit hovering over the foraging yards, making sure that everyone is okay.

Why are you moving?

By making this move, we will be able to sustainably expand our operations while still staying true to our original purpose.

Running the sanctuary solo, which she has done since 2007, proved unsustainable for co-founder pattrice jones. We looked for, but were unable to find, a couple to take over the day-to-day management of the sanctuary. Just as our best prospect for that fell through, our well failed, reminding us of the many shortfalls of this property. While we were able to install a fix for the well, declining water tables in the region ensure that another such crisis is around the corner. In addition, the property is small — it was not bought with a sanctuary in mind — limiting the number and kind of animals we are able to shelter and making it very difficult to keep the foraging yards refreshed.

Co-founder Miriam Jones, who had lived on the sanctuary from 2000 through 2006 and has continued to volunteer several days each month, was willing to take over the sanctuary but unwilling to stay in a community where she has faced bias crime and discrimination as a non-Christian and person of Arab descent. When we realized that (a) we have been rescuing fewer and fewer local birds due to the poultry industry’s changes in its transport procedures, and (b) we would be able to partner with another sanctuary to ensure that local birds will continue to find sanctuary, we decided that we could make a move without going back on our promise to offer sanctuary to any local “broiler” chicken who finds his or her way to freedom.

Why Vermont?

There are no farmed animal sanctuaries in Vermont. Vermont is adjacent to Maine, home of the infamous DeCoster egg facilities. Furthermore, Vermont is dairy country, with 33 factory farms crowded into a small state. In recent years, we have come to see dairy — like eggs — as a feminist issue that might be productively approached from the perspective of the intersection of oppressions. This new location will allow us to, over time, expand our focus to include dairy-related activism and perhaps even the rescue of a small number of cows.

What’s better about the new property?

Like the old property, the use of the new property will be donated, relieving the sanctuary of the obligation of rent or mortgage payments. The new property is larger and will thus allow us to offer sanctuary to more birds. Like all sanctuaries that rescue chickens, we are aware of the glaring need for room for roosters. Over the years, we have been more willing than any other sanctuary to take in multiple roosters, but we had reached our limit. This new property will allow us to take in more roosters almost immediately and, over time, will allow us to expand the number of former fighting roosters we are able to rescue and rehabilitate. This new property is adjacent to an even larger property that, in future, we will be able to purchase in order to allow the rescue of more and/or larger animals.

Who will care for the animals at the new place?

The new sanctuary site will be staffed by Miriam Jones and Aram Polster, with help from local volunteers. Miriam Jones is a co-founder of Eastern Shore Sanctuary. She lived on the main site of the sanctuary from 2000 through 2006; since then, she and Aram have run a small over-flow sanctuary on nearby Smith Island while Miriam has returned to the main site to volunteer for several days each month. Miriam thus has many years of experience caring for domestic fowl and managing a sanctuary. Aram is an experienced veterinary technician with many years of experience providing health care to birds and other animals; Aram has also volunteered at several farmed animal sanctuaries, including the Eastern Shore Sanctuary.

Together, Miriam and Aram as a team will be able to provide superlative care for the animals while managing all of the day-to-day operations of the sanctuary. Sanctuary co-founder pattrice jones will continue to participate from off-site, shifting her focus to the “education center” side of our operations. In order to ensure that her work remains grounded in the real lives and concerns of the birds, she will visit frequently and also volunteer with Chicken Run Rescue in her new home of Minneapolis.

What about the local birds?

The Eastern Shore Sanctuary began when we rescued a local “broiler” chicken from the roadside. At the time, it was not uncommon for birds who had jumped or fallen from transport trucks to be found on the roadside. We would typically find (or take in from a local citizen who had found) at least one bird every week. Over the years, that number has declined due to new crates and procedures used by the local poultry industry. We have not ourselves found a roadside bird for many years, and typically take in a local bird only once every several months. The majority of the calls we receive, like the majority of the birds at the sanctuary, are now from elsewhere.

Nonetheless, we remain committed to making sure that every local roadside bird finds sanctuary. We will be partnering with Sanctuary House to ensure that happens. Sanctuary House is run by Sister Mary Winifred of the Ascension Hermitage and Sanctuary. We have known Sister Mary for five years, and find her to be a person of unquestionable compassion and intergrity. Ascension Hermitage and Sanctuary is a nearby 501(c)3 non-profit organization that has offered sanctuary to many local animals, including ducks and chickens, for many years. Sister Mary Winifred is a certified wildlife rehabilitator as well as the author of a book about the cats of Sanctuary House.

Calls from local citizens who have rescued local birds from the roadside will now go to Sanctuary House. Callers will be told of nearby sanctuaries such as United Poultry Concerns (on the Eastern Shore of Virginia) and Poplar Spring (near the upper Shore, across the bay in Maryland). Callers who do not wish to make the drive to those places will be able to bring birds to Sanctuary House, which is setting aside a barn for that purpose, where they will stay until we arrange volunteer transport to permanent sanctuary with us or another farmed animal sanctuary.

What about the Delmarva poultry industry?

We remain committed to working for local agriculture reform on the Delmarva and other regions dominated by industrial animal agriculture. Having operated for nine years in a rural region ruled by the poultry industry and now moving into another region in which local livelihoods are linked to factory farming, we are more aware than most that the liberation of animals will require close attention to the mechanics of local agriculture reform.

As outsiders on the Delmarva, the founders of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary were not able to effectively enact the community organizing side of that project; such work must be done by insiders in these insular rural regions. Rather than trying to do work for which our identities make us inherently unsuited, we can be more effective by attending to state and national policy and by sparking and supporting local activism on the Delmarva and elsewhere through a variety of research, education, and advocacy projects. Freed from the demands of day-to-day sanctuary work, co-founder pattrice jones will be better able to implement such efforts.

Do you need help with the move?

Yes! We will need help both before and after the move. Of course, moving is costly, so donations will be especially appreciated at this time of transition. After the move, we still will be in a rural agricultural region and thus still will rely on donations from afar. As we always have been, we will be far from a big city and thus unable to stage fancy fund-raising events and will thus hope for our supporters who live in more densely populated regions to do things like hold fund-raising pot-luck dinners for the birds.

We also need volunteers before and after the move. We will be relying on volunteer drivers to help us transport the birds and the sanctuary equipment to the new location. After, we will need volunteer drivers to help both with ensuring that Delmarva birds find sanctuary and to ferry roosters from all over to us.

To donate via PayPal, click the link below. To offer to volunteer, write to sanctuary (at) bravebirds.org.

This interview, published in the Sunday “Political Economy” section of the largest English-language newspaper in Pakistan, was prefaced by a biographical synopsis that identified Eastern Shore Sanctuary cofounder pattrice jones as an activist who has been active in the “feminist, peace, anti-racist, anti-poverty, gay liberation, and animal liberation moements” and described the sanctuary as a “haven” for “animals who have escaped from or been abandoned by the poultry industry.”

Tell us something about the Global Hunger Alliance.

Global Hunger Alliance is an international network of non-governmental organizations with more than a hundred partners from all over the world. Global Hunger Alliance opposes industrial animal agriculture and supports effective, equitable, ethical, and environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and malnutrition.

We are united in our understanding that hunger is a political problem. Hunger is not the inevitable result of worldwide food shortages. Quite the contrary! We have more than enough food to feed everyone well into the future. Only inefficient usage and unequitable distribution of world food resources keep people hungry in the midst of plenty. These inefficiencies and inequalities are rooted in the choices made by corporations and governments.

How successful, do you think, was the UN World Food Summit (Five Years Later) held in Rome this year?

Like most of these big international meetings of governments, the official summit was a joke but the parallel meeting of NGOs was useful. WFS:fyl was called by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations because the governments of the world are not on target to meet the modest aim of the World Food Summit of 1996, which was to halve world hunger by 2015. WFS:fyl was originally scheduled for November of 2001 but delayed to allow the US to begin its war on Afghanistan, showing that the political aims of the United States are considered more important than the needs of 840 million people who live with hunger and malnutrition.

When WFS:fyl was eventually convened in June of 2002, USA and other wealthy nations sent low-level delegations to interact with the heads of state of low-income nations. Besides being insulting, this ensured that the event would not result in significant progress, since the real decision makers from the most wealthy and powerful countries were not present. One incident stays in my mind as a symbol of the lack of seriousness with which the event was approached by wealthy nations. The President of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, served as the chairman of the event. On the final day, Berlusconi closed the event two hours early in order to watch Italy play in the World Cup. To Berlusconi, the outcome of a football match was more important than finding real solutions to hunger and malnutrition.

Will the agreements made at WFS:fyl make a real difference in the struggle against hunger and malnutrition? I doubt it. But, we must remember that, if they had truly wanted to do so, the governments of the world could have used the summit to not only halve but actually end hunger and malnutrition. Their failure to take any real action shows us that we cannot rely on the governments to solve the problem. Only the people, working together across boundaries of geography and identity, can bring about real change.

Despite criticism against it, governments across the world are adopting corporate farming to manage their agriculture sectors. What, do you think, could this practice lead to in the long run?

Corporate farming is a misguided policy that can only lead to more hunger, more rural poverty, and more pollution and depletion of natural resources. Corporate farming produces cash crops for export rather than food for local and regional consumption. Corporate farming is a for-profit enterprise that enriches the owners at the expense of the local farmers and workers. Corporate farming cares only for short-term profits and does not hesitate to deplete and pollute scarce natural resources.

The long term solution to hunger and malnutrition is local production of a diverse array of sustainable and culturally appropriate crops for local and regional consumption. That can and should be augmented by production of suitable high-value crops for national or international trade but should never be replaced by mass production of cheap crops for export.

I am particularly worried by Pakistan’s recent embrace of the corporate agriculture model. The implementation of CAF in Pakistan will have the opposite effect, worsening the position of the rural poor and further degrading valuable natural resources. The inevitable consolidation of farms will displace small farmers and favor unsustainable production of cash crops for export over sustainable production of healthy food for the people of Pakistan. Pakistan and its people will become even more vulnerable to changes in international markets and therefore less able to maintain true independence. Instead of embracing CAF Pakistan could embrace the traditional skill, wisdom, and energy of its farmers and workers.

Could you tell us something about the many problems currently being faced by the farming community in the US?

The USA is a case in point of corporate agriculture taken to its logical conclusion. Even before the United States was formally founded, colonial agriculture was based on a cash crop model. Not surprisingly, given that beginning, agriculture within the USA today is dominated by a handful of powerful corporations. Each year, there are fewer and fewer farms because more and more land is owned by corporate agribusiness. Often, the small farms that do exist are still integrated in some way into the supply chain of a major corporation and are therefore beholden to that corporation.

The region where I live provides a good example of how corporate agriculture can destroy communities. This region is dominated by the poultry industry and is actually the area where so-called ‘factory farming’ of animals was first invented. Most of the farmers either ‘grow chickens’ for a corporation like Tyson or Perdue or grow corn and soya to be sold to those corporations as feed for the chickens. Thus, the economic fortunes of the community rise and fall with the fortunes of the corporation. Because the economy is not diversified, the whole community must fear the day when a trade embargo or disease outbreak leads to the decline of the industry. Moreover, even when times are good for the corporations, times are bad for the local farmers and workers. The farmers who ‘grow chickens’ have no control over the process and make far less than the legal minimum wage for the work that they do. Most are in a form of debt servitude to one of the corporations, having borrowed the money to install the expensive equipment needed for industrial animal agriculture. The local citizens who are not farmers end up as workers for the industry. They make very little money for dirty, degrading, and dangerous work. Both farmers and workers are often demoralized by the cruelty towards animals that the corporations mandate. Local citizens who are not affiliated with the industry suffer too. The water has been severely polluted by pesticides, fertilizers, animal waste, and meat processing effluents. Because the local economy is so depressed, due to the low wages paid by the industry and the lack of economic diversification, all of the problems associated with rural poverty are also present.

American intellectual Gore Vidal has often referred to Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh, as a product of America‚s politically disenchanted and aggrieved farming community. How much of political dissent have America‚s farmers shown in recent years?

Timothy McVeigh is a good example of the perverse misdirection of legitimate rural anger in America. American farming communities know something is wrong. They can see the evidence all around them. But, they are often very confused about the cause of their troubles. All too often, they blame the United Nations or foreigners or Jews for problems that have been caused by the agribusiness corporations and their friends in government. Conservative rural folk often fervently support the politicians who are hurting them the most because they have confused the interests of corporate agribusiness with their own best interests.

Some farmers are not deceived and do correctly perceive the sources of their troubles. But, too often, these farmers feel impotent rage in the face of what seem like forces beyond their control. Because the days of progressive activism by American farmers are long past, it’s not easy for farmers who want to oppose corporate agribusiness to organize themselves in order to undertake effective collective action. Like many dissidents within the USA, dissatisfied farmers are often estranged from one another and from political organizations that might be useful to them.

Despite all of these difficulties, there are farmers who have managed to express their dissent in the most effective way possible — by beginning to build an alternative agriculture system. The organic farming movement grows stronger every year and can be expected to grow stronger still as more and more consumers adopt more healthy plant-based diets. Urban community gardens and rural community-supported agriculture systems are increasingly common.

Despite the criticism against President George Bush‚s foreign, trade and environmental policies, he continues to follow them unhindered. How do dissenters in the US perceive his actions?

Some dissenters within the USA see George W. Bush as a puppet of the powerful corporations. Remembering that his father once ran the CIA and that members of the Bush family have held either the presidency or the vice presidency for fourteen years and counting, some people see GWB as a man who is himself very powerful. Both perceptions may be true. Either way, it is very clear that GWB will stop at nothing to increase his own personal power. GWB now claims the right to declare any American — potentially including his political opponents — an “enemy combatant” and to jail that person secretly and indefinitely without the possibility of judicial review. The new “Homeland Security Act” gives the president broad new powers to suspend or ignore civil liberties. Most Americans are not aware that their rights were sharply curtailed by the Patriot Act of 2001. Even fewer understand that GWB might actually want perpetual warfare, since that would mean big profits for his friends in the oil and defense industries.

Dissenters understand very well what George W. Bush is trying to do. Unfortunately, dissenters within the USA do not have any idea how to counteract him and the powerful forces that support him. There are two problems: (1) dissenters are not effectively reaching the masses; and (2) even if they did reach the masses, there is no guarantee that GWB would heed the will of the people. In other words, dissenters are acting as if the USA were a democracy in which ideas are fairly debated and the rulers abide by public opinion. But, in fact, the corporate media does not allow the views of dissenters to reach the masses. A massive peace march in Washington will merit only a very brief article in national newspapers and may not be covered at all in local newspapers or news programs.

Dissenters make very clever arguments in leftist newspapers and magazines, but these are not read by the masses. By concentrating their energies on marches and leftist magazines, dissenters are essentially ignoring the people, who must be reached by other means.

This is why I am always saying that we need outside help if we are to end American aggression against other countries and restore democracy to the United States. It seems to me that GWB speaks only one language: the lexicon of dollars and cents. Only if his corporate sponsors become disenchanted will he change his course.

I wish that the EU and other important trading partners would act to reign in George W. Bush but it seems that the nations of the world are following a policy of appeasement in relation to this aspiring dictator. So, it’s up to the people of the world to vote with their wallets and stop supporting the companies that support Bush. When the big American fast food, tobacco, oil, and chemical companies begin to feel the pinch, then we will see some changes.

And how do the dissenters perceive their own socio-political role in the future?

I think that many dissenters in the USA are consciously or unconsciously feeling a kind of helplessness. Many are struggling with depression, finding it hard to do anything at all. Others seem to be living in a state of denial, just going on with the same old activist tactics, heedless of the fact that these tactics failed to prevent this state of affairs and are not likely to change it. But, I am happy to say that a small and growing number of dissidents are regrouping, rethinking, and trying to come up with creative ways out of the terrible situation we are in.

On the one hand, individuals and organizations are making more and more alliances across geographic and cultural boundaries, helping to build the emerging movement for a better world. On the other hand, individuals and organizations are remembering that local actions are also needed in order to turn the dreams of a better world into a reality. Both very local and expansively global actions are needed. A growing number of dissidents are seeing and acting on that insight. In short, American dissidents are struggling with despair but determined to have hope.

This speech was delivered at the “Paths to Animal Liberation” plenary session
at the national AR2006 conference in Arlington, Virginia on Friday, 11 August 2006

(download formatted pdf of this page here)

This photograph was taken in 1971 in Baltimore City. The turtle was called Timothy. The little girl was called Patti-Lee. She grew up to be me.

One summer day not unlike today, little Patti-Lee was standing in front of that rowhouse with one foot on the sidewalk and one foot on the postage-stamp sized front yard, shifting from leg to leg and saying “our property, not our property, our property, not our property, our property, not our property.”

She was troubled. She was trying to figure it out. But no matter how hard she thought, she couldn’t make it come out fair.

She knew that her grandparents had bought the house from somebody who had bought the house from somebody who had bought the house from somebody going back to when it was built. But how did that little bit of land come to belong to one person rather than another in the first place?

She thought back to what she learned in school about the Pilgrims and the Indians. She imagined a Pilgrim with his musket building a fence and threatening to shoot anybody who trespassed onto what had become his “property.”

It didn’t seem right that the trees and the squirrels who used to belong to themselves belonged to him just because he had a gun. And if that wasn’t right, she wondered, how could it be right for the people who bought the land from the people who bought the land from the people who brought the land from him to say “that’s my property?”

And so it came to be that, in those childish musings, little Patti-Lee happened upon a truth that many adults never get around to figuring out: Property is violence.

So it’s apt that this grown up girl is here to convince you that breaking locks, tearing down cages, disabling bulldozers, and other ways of interfering with property are anti-violent activities. i also aim to convince you that demonstrating on public sidewalks is always okay, no matter what the defenders of the sanctity of the private property bounded by those sidewalks might say.

The division of the world into countries with borders policed by armies has been and continues to be a violent process that hurts both human and non-human animals.

The subdivision of the natural world into disconnected bits of private property hurts animals too. Fences interrupt ecosystems, breaking up homes and families while blocking off resources like watering holes. Fences enclose animals, making them into slaves and ultimately into bits and pieces of property to be bought and sold.

It’s time to tear down the fences, freeing the animals and restoring their habitats to them.

Of course, violence is never okay since that is the root of all of our problems.

Violence is unjustified or excessive injurious use of force. Many uses of force are not violent. How can you tell the difference? It’s easy in context.

One day, Patti-Lee was standing at the top of a flight of stairs, facing an angry and out-of-control adult not unlike those we’ve seen in undercover videos from vivisection labs. All of a sudden, the screaming grownup gave her a short, sharp shove to the shoulders, sending her tumbling down the steps. That was violence.

But the exact same muscular action — a short, sharp shove to the shoulders — would have been justified and even heroic if she had been standing in the path of an onrushing truck.

I tell you these details from my life so you will know that i know what violence really is.

Take it from an animal who knows what it’s like to be hit and hurt and hope, hope, hope for somebody to come to the rescue: Breaking locks isn’t violence, tearing down cages isn’t violence, tossing a monkeywrench into the works of a machine that kills animals isn’t violence, carrying a hurt and terrified animal to safety isn’t violence, and — certainly — using public sidewalks to denounce abuses that occur behind closed doors is not violence.

Look at the picture.

What if that little girl was trapped inside that rowhouse and being burned by a fire? Wouldn’t you break down the door to help her escape?

What if she saw that turtle being tortured in her neighbor’s basement? Wouldn’t she climb in the window to help him escape? Wouldn’t she break that window if she had to? Wouldn’t she match her little muscles against those of the torturer if that’s what it took to make the violence stop?

What if the torture was happening in a vivisection lab?

What if that little girl learned that the homes of that turtle and his whole family were going to be bulldozed to make room for fancy houses for people who already have perfectly good places to live? If she could, wouldn’t she put a little sugar in the gas tank of that bulldozer or maybe take a monkeywrench to its engine? I think she would.

What if that little girl learned that her neighbor was torturing puppies at his job? Can’t you just see her marching up and down the sidewalk with a picket sign? Of course she’d be very careful not to do anything that might scare the dogs, cats, or children living in surrounding houses. But wouldn’t she want to tell the world: “This man hurts animals!” And wouldn’t that be her right?

I made 300 copies of a picture of myself to give out tonight not because I’m so egotistical but because I want you to have something to hang onto to help you remember what I said tonight.

I want you to remember that there’s a difference between force and violence and that the context often determines the difference.

I want you to remember that violence is never okay but force is sometimes necessary.

I want you to remember that property is violence and that we can — and must — interfere with that violence if we want a world in which little girls and turtles can be safe, happy, and free.

Not everybody has to do that work but we all have to be in solidarity with those who do.

So, if you ever find yourself getting ready to denounce or distance yourself from the brave and loving activists who risk their own freedom to free animals and protect their habitats, I want you to look at this picture and remember what I said tonight.

If you are one of those brave and loving activists, well, you know who you are and you know what you need to do. What i want you to know is that you’re not alone. Wherever you go to take truly nonviolent direct action for earth and animals, that little girl goes with you

And, when I stop talking and the people start clapping, the applause will be for you.

* * *
As cofounder of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary, pattrice jones devotes time and energy to the care and defense of previously-abused ducks and chickens. Her book, Aftershock, is a handbook for activists.

For a more detailed discussion of the idea that property is violence, see her article “Stomping with the Elephants: Feminist Principles for Feminist Solidarity” in Igniting a Revolution: Voices in Defense of the Earth edited by Steve Best and Tony Nocella (AK Press).

For a more detailed defense of nonviolent direct action in defense of animals, see her article “Mothers with Monkeywrenches: Feminist Imperatives and the Animal Liberation Front” in Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals edited by Steve Best and Tony Nocella (Lantern Books).

The ideas expressed in this speech and those chapters are those of pattrice jones and do not necessarily reflect those of the sanctuary or its supporters.

Please note that the text of the speech above was reconstructed from notes and the memory of the speaker and is not an exact transcript. Audio recordings of this and other speeches delivered at AR2006 are available via FARM.

Speech delivered by Eastern Shore Sanctuary cofounder pattrice jones
at the opening plenary session of the first Grassroots Animal Rights Conference
31 April 2005, New York City

I’ll start with a story:

It’s nighttime in Zululand and the men who have been working in the Thula Thula Exclusive Private Game Reserve are ready to retire, having captured and corralled several antelopes for a breeding program. The frantic antelopes mill about restlessly, not knowing what to do. Out of the twilight comes a herd of elephants. They encircle the enclosure, inspecting the situation. The people keep their distance, apprehensive of the elephants. The matriarch of the herd steps forward and uses her trunk to unlatch the bolts and open the gate. The antelopes escape into the enveloping darkness. The elephants disappear back into the night.

Witnesses use the word “rescue” to describe what they saw that night. Whatever their previous beliefs about animals, they could not help but recognize the deliberate and purposeful nature of the actions of the elephant called “Nana” by local conservationists. Trusting their own eyes, they learned something that most people — including most animal and environmental activists — fail to appreciate: People aren’t the only ones acting to undo the damage that people have done.

Putting ourselves in the place of the antelopes that night, we can learn something too: The situation is very scary but help is at hand.

I’m very honored to be speaking on the opening night of this historic conference. I’ve been asked to share my thoughts on the power of grassroots movements.

Sometimes, it pays to spend a few moments in quiet reflection before jumping into a potentially life-changing experience. So as we head into this busy weekend of activity, I’m going to share with you my reflections on three concepts: power, grassroots, movement.

Power

Power is the capacity to do things.

Power is neutral, like electricity.

Malcolm X thought that power deployed in service of freedom is naturally stronger than power deployed in the service of repression.

I agree. Power spent in the service of repression is like fossil fuel — unsustainable and destructive — while power spent in the service of liberation is like photosynthesis — renewable and creative.

Most movements focus on how to get and use power but our task is more nuanced because, while we have much less power than the institutions and cultural practices we oppose, we already have too much power over those for whom we purport to act.

Thus we must ask both how to get power and how to give it back. We also are obligated to think deeply about how best to deploy the power that we have and obtain.

People acting on their own behalf have the right to let foolishness or vanity or knee-jerk preferences for this or that tactic impede their own progress toward freedom but we have no such right in relation to the animals. We must constantly, rigorously, and unflinchingly seek the truth about the efficacy — or lack thereof — of our efforts so far. And we must have the courage and the capacity to make changes as needed.

We do have power already and as we work together we are sure to get more. That means that we are not meeting in a vacuum here. The decisions that we make about what to do for the animals will have real impact on the physical lives of actual animals.

We must never forget that. As we argue for this or that analysis or action, we must always be asking ourselves, “Is this really true? How do I know? What if I’m wrong?”

I’m reminded of the phrase “more power than we want,” which was phrased by men in the anti-rape movement. That phrase often comes into my head when I’m making decisions at the sanctuary. Sometimes, I have to make a decision that could have life-or-death consequences for a bird. That makes me feel uncomfortable — and it should.

You should feel uneasy too. Your decisions about targets and tactics must be just as carefully considered as my decisions about which medication to give a sick bird. In both cases, somebody other than the decision-maker will pay the price in the event of a poor choice.

Grassroots

Five years ago, only a few weeks after accidentally landing in an epicenter of poultry production, my partner and I found chicken in a ditch. Now, five years later, 200 or so birds call our place home.

Every morning at sunrise one or both of us is outside, opening the coops and doing the morning chores. Every evening at sunset one or both of us is outside, doing the evening chores and making sure the ducks and chickens are closed up safely for the night. Every day at midday — whether it’s raining or snowing, whether we’re slogging through the mud on a cold grey day or sweating and squinting in the hot summer sun — we’re out there checking on the chickens. Like so many others who run small sanctuaries, we draw no salary, live at edge of poverty, and often have to cover sanctuary costs out of our own pockets. When I get back home after this conference, I’ll actually be sowing grass seed in some of the foraging yards. So, you might think, “it doesn’t get any more grassroots than that!”

But you would be wrong. We are not the grassroots. You are not the grassroots.

The animals struggling for their own freedom — the free elephants trampling genetically modified crops in South Asia; the captive elephants who turn on their trainers; the monkeys in India who recently jeered US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so loudly that they interfered with his press conference; the free cats and dogs who establish colonies not unlike those of escaped slaves; the baboons who are biting back in South Africa; the sharks who bite back along the shores of the USA; all of the animals who, like Nana, use their brains and their brawn in the service of freedom — they are the grassroots animal liberation movement. We are just their allies.

And then there are the actual grass roots, the so-called weeds growing where they don’t belong, the plants who have evolved resistance to our most poisonous pesticides. They, rather than EarthFirst! or the Earth Liberation Front, are the grassroots environmental movement. We are just their allies.

We must take responsibility for ending human exploitation of the earth and other animals, just as men must actively support women in the struggle against sexism and white people must work hard to divest ourselves of the illegitimate power and privilege that come with being white. Of course, feminists would never tolerate men trying to run the movement against sexism. And, could you imagine what would have happened if, when I was doing anti-racist work, I had run around saying “I am the voice of the Black man”!?

There are no such natural checks on self-importance in the animal liberation movement. We have people running around claiming to be “the voice of the voiceless” as if animals don’t have voices of their own. That heroic attitude makes it easy to assume that you know what’s best for the animals without stopping to wonder what they might say if you asked them and were able to understand their answers.

That said, of course the organizations represented at this conference are grassroots organizations in structure, as distinguished from the big national groups. Grassroots groups have great potential, as evidenced by the success of various anti-colonial movements that actually succeeded in overthrowing illegitimate governments.

Grassroots groups may be less prone to the kinds of hierarchy and hubris that beset big organizations. But don’t think that grassroots equals good. The KKK is a grassroots group and right now, down South, there are truly grassroots campaigns to get evolution out of the science classroom. The power of popular opinion is formidable and, like any electrical current, can be used for good or ill

So, again, we end up having to think about what to do with power. And again we must remember that we are making decisions for beings who ought to be free to determine their own destinies. I suggest that, instead of considering ourselves “the voice of the voiceless,” we think harder about how to listen to the animals for whom we purport to speak.

That may require us to make some changes.

Movement

Which brings us to movements: A movement is a process, not a thing. In other words, movements are actions not objects.

That means that, if we want an effective movement, we all have to be willing to change.

We have to see our efforts as an ongoing experiment in effective activism. We have to use trial-and-error, understanding that we might be in error and being willing to change our ways if that proves to be true. We cannot let our egos or ideologies keep us from seeing what we need to see and doing what we need to do.

Finally, let me draw your attention to the fact that motion always requires emotion. That means that all of our rationality must flow from and feed into our empathy.

We must have empathy for animals and for ourselves, because we’re animals too. Our own animal selves have been squelched in the process of socialization into dominance over non-human animals. Part of the process of freeing the animals thus must be freeing ourselves to be just one animal among many. Because that’s what we are.

Our reward for doing that hard work will be an end to the estrangement from nature and other animals that leaves us all feeling so lonely.

Thanks for listening to me this evening. As you move through this exciting weekend, I hope you will think about power, grassroots, and movement. Most importantly, I hope you will always remember that we are not alone.

Talk given by pattrice jones
16 August 2003
United Poultry Concerns Forum on Promoting Veganism Effectively
Boulder, CO

(download formatted pdf here)

It seems to be my lot in life to always be telling people things they don’t want to hear. That is in fact my woeful task today. I am going to be talking about some things that will be pretty hard to hear, but I want to say in advance that, despite these things, I feel profoundly hopeful and I am going to do my best to give some practical tips for how we might get past the current woeful situation.

Let’s give another round of applause for [UPC President] Karen [Davis]. One thing I love about Karen is that sometimes she’ll forgo giving a formal speech and just tell you what she’s thinking about right now, which is great, because who doesn’t want to know what Karen Davis is thinking about right now? I’m going to take a page from her book today, and I’m not going to give a polished, inspirational speech, but instead I’m going to talk to you in a direct way about a few things I’ve been thinking about and that I think we all need to think about if we’re really serious about ending or even significantly decreasing meat consumption in the United States and around the world.

Facing Facts

Let’s look at per capita meat consumption in the United States. Looking at the numbers, you can see that meat consumption in the United States has risen steadily since the 1950s and is currently at an all-time high. And that’s per capita consumption, so it doesn’t mean that there’s more consumption because there’s more people, it means more meat consumption per person.

Let’s break this down a little bit before we talk about the overall increase and what that might mean for us. We see that beef consumption did decrease pretty sharply in the 1970s when the whole cholesterol/heart attack thing came up, but has started to rebound, and is still considerably higher than 1950s numbers. Pork consumption is only moderately up, it’s been pretty stable, really.

Now, here’s a pretty significant thing for us to pay attention to: veal and lamb. Look: This is the only category that has gone down, and gone down sharply. Now that’s us — that’s something to take credit for, and it’s also something we’re going to think about later, in terms of what that might mean in terms of the specific arguments we’ve used for veal, that apparently have been successful.

But we haven’t been successful overall. Look at chicken! Chicken consumption has more than tripled since 1950 and still is going up and showing no signs of doing anything other than that. Ditto turkey: tripled. Fish, also significantly up. Total overall meat consumption up 41 percent since the decade of the 1950s. While we’re being very real, let’s remember that our movement essentially started in the 1980s, and we see, as we look at the totals, we see a steady increase despite our efforts.

Now let’s look at world meat production in recent years. We’re going to look at specific trends that are going on right now. And the big trend that’s going on right now is that the location of meat production is shifting from the United States to developing countries. The other big story is, of course, that world meat production is continuing to increase.

Looking at total world meat production, we see that it’s up and has risen every year, and is up 6.5 percent just between 2000 and 2003. And again, I want to look at chicken. Poultry, which is the first line on the world chart, is up 10 percent just since the year 2000. That’s incredible. Think of how many billions of birds that means.

Now if we look a little lower, then we’ll see that meat production still is rising in the developed countries, especially in the United States and Europe — up overall 2.6 percent in the past years. But where the real increase is happening is in the developing countries at an overall increase of 9.7 percent, just since the year 2000 in terms of meat production in metric tons.

So these are the facts I’m talking about us having to face, like it or not, comfortable or not. So: First of all, we have to acknowledge that overall, we’ve failed to make a dent in meat consumption. Now, we might say, “it would be worse if we hadn’t done all the things that we’ve done,” and that might be true — but it might not be true. We don’t know; we don’t have that data. Because it may well be that every time we’ve had a success, the meat industry has upped what it’s done in a way that it wouldn’t have if we hadn’t had that success; so it may well be that consumption is exactly where it would have been if we hadn’t been doing all that we’ve been doing.

Second of all, we have to understand that we have a very real danger right here as we’re working on increasing veganism here in the United States, a very real danger that we won’t end animal exploitation, but that we’ll simply change its location. Because the meat industries have responded as we’ve been putting the squeeze on them, trying to reduce demand here in the United States and at the same time, squeezing them on the production end with environmental regulations and animal welfare regulations. We’ve been raising their costs and doing our best to decrease demand. But they’re not just going to let their profits be squeezed, they’re just going to go elsewhere — and they’ve already begun to do that, as we can see.

What’s going to happen then? Well, it may well be that the situation gets worse. Because many of these developing countries, they’re essentially under the control of the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, and they have to have policies consistent with what the World Bank wants or they won’t get the debt relief that they need. They won’t get the money they need to feed their people. And usually, what the World Bank wants them to do is not have environmental regulations that will make meat companies mad, not have labor regulations that will make meat processors mad, etc. So what we’re looking at here is not just a changing of location, but perhaps even a worsening of the animal exploitation, because the animals that are raised in those countries may have even fewer protections than the very minimal ones we’ve been able to institute here.

So this is really a very grim situation. But… Veal. We did something with veal. So, this tells us that we can do something. And I would say we can draw some more specific conclusions.

Interpreting the Data

So, here are just a few of my interpretations of this data: First of all, in the United States, we are clearly not reaching enough people. And I would argue that’s because we’re not reaching a diverse array of people. If you just look around this room, you’ll see that this room is in no way representative of the population of the United States in terms of race and I would guess in terms of class. So that’s one thing. Because if we only continue to make vegans out of a subset of a subset of the population, we’re never going to go past a certain plateau.

On the global level: Ditto.

Then, returning to veal, our one piece of good news, that tells us that at least in some circumstances, a relatively straight abolition message based on animal exploitation can work. Remember, the veal campaign has not been based on “let’s make conditions better for veal calves.” The veal campaign, for the vast majority of it, has not been a health thing, and it’s not been an environmental thing. It’s been, “look what these animals go through and this means you can’t eat them.” Period. And, at least with veal, that worked.

Of course, veal is something that’s relatively easy for people to give up, because they don’t eat a lot of it to begin with, and many people see it as a luxury item. But we can draw the conclusion that, at least in some circumstances, a straight animal message will work and has been demonstrated to work.

So, first, we need to reach more and specifically different populations within the United States. Second, I would argue that we also need to identify and form relationships with what I would call the best prospects for future vegans. Three, obviously, we need to go global, much more than we already have. And four, I would say, since these might be shocking figures for some people who’ve been going around saying we’ve been so successful, “we need to get real.” And that means constantly looking at the real numbers, the real figures, and assessing how we’re doing and making changes based on those assessments. They may not be changes, they may be additions to what we’re doing. And in fact, I think it’s additional actions that we need, rather than stopping any of the things we already are doing.

Now I’m going to talk about each of those things in turn: why, and most importantly how, we can (1) reach more and different populations, (2) identify and make relationships with best prospects, (3) go global, and (4) get real.

Reaching More and Different People

If you have a doubt that I am right — and by the way, this is why people like me are constantly saying our movement needs to diversify, not only because it’s the right thing ethically, but because it’s the pragmatic thing — and if you doubt that, just think of one group — Latinos — currently the largest so-called minority population in the United States and soon to be the majority of people in the United States. Yet how many of us other than Why Vegan have our materials routinely in Spanish? [Note: PETA also translates all its materials into Spanish.] And my organization is totally guilty. Me saying all these things I think we need to do doesn’t mean I’ve already done them. How many of us have our websites translated? How many of us have thought about the concerns of different Latino populations? How many of us know what the concerns of the Chicano community tend to be as opposed to Cuban refugees? How many of us even know the definition of the word Chicano? Things to think about.

And that’s just one group. We still have African Americans, Asians, Asian Americans, and Native Americans — and that’s just race. We haven’t even started talking about economic class. I’m mostly going to talk about race here, just because I don’t have a lot of time, but most of the things I’m going to say about race also go for class.

So we have to diversify. But, some might ask, why? Why can’t we stay just exactly as we are and just do different things to reach out — outreach — to the different groups? Three reasons: no moral authority; aren’t trusted; and don’t know. White people don’t have any moral authority in the eyes of people of color. Ditto for middle class people in relation to people living in poverty. If we’re going to be making ethical arguments… well, it’s pretty hard to effectively introduce an ethical argument if you are in a group that is not trusted to make ethical assessments. I hope that makes sense.

Also, we have a very specific problem. We all know there’s a problem for everybody, that they get defensive when you talk about human animals and non-human animals, because they’re like, “are you’re saying I’m an animal?” Well imagine that you’re a white person saying this to a group that white people have called animals and in fact have treated as chattel by calling them animals, and imagine how much more defensiveness you’re going to face, and how much easier it would be if someone within that group was making that argument rather than some white person making that argument. So that’s the no moral authority issue.

Not trusted. Jack [Norris of Vegan Outreach] was just talking about some of our arguments about environment and health not being trusted. Well, again, white folks tend not to be trusted by people of color. I’ll give you an excellent example from the AIDS epidemic. The AIDS activist movement sprang up very quickly, people started doing great work, and really very quickly changed behavior within the gay community, and particularly within the white gay community. And that was great. But the thing is, as that was happening, HIV infections skyrocketed among people of color. So the AIDS activists said, “we’ve got to go into those communities,” and they went into those communities, and they failed abysmally at first. And what the problem turned out to be was that they weren’t trusted.

And I’ll just give you one example that I personally, as an AIDS activist, encountered. It was a relatively common idea in low-income black neighborhoods that the push for the use of condoms to prevent HIV transmission was a secret genocidal plot to get black people not to reproduce anymore. Now that might sound ridiculous to you, but within that group, that’s not a ridiculous idea at all. If you think about the things that have been done to the African American community — including forced sterilization — that’s not a ridiculous idea at all. That’s why you need a diverse group, so you don’t face those kinds of communication barriers when you’re going into a community trying to do education.

Also, we just don’t know certain things. A predominantly white group probably just doesn’t know how to frame certain arguments in ways that certain other groups will be able to hear. A predominantly white group maybe doesn’t even know where to go to find receptive people, or how to get their ideas across when they get there. Again, returning to the AIDS issue, one thing that activists found out in southern black communities was that barbershops and beauty salons were places where people get their health education. So if you’re going into a small town and you’re doing AIDS education, you don’t go to the local health department and get them to give out your brochures. You go to the local barber, talk to him, get him to understand where you’re coming from and get him to give out your brochures — or better yet, make up his materials to give out to folks.

All right. So that’s why we must diversify. And I mean it. If you’re in a predominantly all-white group, that’s okay if you’re in a community that’s all white. But if you’re not in a community that’s all white, and you’re all white, then you’re doing something wrong. Or failing to do something right. And you can’t just let it stay the way it is. You must diversify.

There are two ways you can diversify. You can diversity internally, and you can diversify externally. What I mean by externally is increase the diversity of your coalitions with other organizations. The feminist anti-rape movement learned when it was trying to diversify that some women of color do want to integrate anti-rape organizations and make them strong, diverse anti-rape organizations. But a number of women of color said “no, we don’t want to do that. What we want is to start our own organizations to work within our own communities, and what we want you to do is share your resources with us so we can do that.” So you have to be willing to do that if that’s what folks want.

But what about internal diversity? There are a whole bunch of dos and don’ts, far too many for me to go into here. I’m going to be talking about specific things in the next section, so I’ll just give you an example of some of the dos and don’ts if you’re trying to increase your internal diversity. For example, do structure your organization so that people of color and people of other nondominant groups have both the opportunity and the resources to make up events and programs that speak to their community without having to get the permission of the dominant group. But don’t expect that people in those groups will have an interest in doing that, because they might not. Do defer to knowledge that other people have that you don’t have. But don’t see each person as the representative of their group, and turn to your one black member and say “hey, what does the black community think about this?” And you know, people do that in good faith. People do want to know, but people pretty much don’t like being put on the spot like that because nobody can speak for their entire community.

I don’t have time to go through the whole list of dos and don’ts, but any group can get in touch with me to talk about their own situation. When I worked at the Baker-Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education it actually used to be my job to help groups diversify. What we used to do was go into activist organizations, or academic institutions, or businesses, or whatever, and help them craft strategies to become more diverse. I’m happy to help any organization in our movement do that — of course, for free. So just contact me if you want some help or advice on that.

Best Prospects

We need to identify and build relationships with our best prospects. Why? Well, obviously, it’s best to maximize your use of resources. If we’re going to be expending resources on trying to convert folks to veganism, and we’ve already got such a small percentage right now, it seems like our first step should be converting the people who are going to be easiest to convert so we can begin to build up a critical mass. Right? Second of all, I’m about to tell you my picks for best prospects, and you’ll notice they’re not the dominant group. And I need to remind us all, because a big trend lately has been reaching the mainstream — mainstream this, mainstream that — is that the mainstream is not the majority. [Applause.]

I need to repeat that. The mainstream is not the majority. You add up the people who are not the mainstream: add up the people who have been hurt in some way by the dominant group — add up the people of color, add up the people who are living in poverty, add up disaffected youth, add up gay men and lesbians, add up survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault, etc., etc., etc. — and what you’re going to find is that you’ve got the majority.

You don’t have to appeal to this mythical conservative mainstream to win. And in fact, I would argue that if we do that, we won’t win. Because we’re not appealing to the majority.

Here are my picks for specific activist groups and subgroups that I think we can make external alliances with. By working together on shared issues, we’ll have a process of natural cross-fertilization of ideas occur, so that we have more vegans over time in those groups.

First: people in the so-called anti-globalization movement (which is really a pro-globalization movement, a globalization of sharing and love, but it’s called the anti-globalization movement because it’s a movement against trade globalization). Look: These young activists, these anti-globalization activists, these are folks who are already boycotting products for ethical reasons. These are people who have already made changes in their lives. They’re not buying products from this company because it uses sweatshops; they’re not buying products from that company because it exploits the environment. These are people who have shown that they are willing to change their purchasing and consumption habits in response to ethical arguments. Obviously, a perfect target for us.

Also there’s a perfect issue for us to work on with them, and that’s genetically modified organisms (GMOs). They’re already really big on fighting GMOs — mostly GM plants, but that’s mostly because they have no idea what the scientists are doing to GM animals secretly in the labs. We know that. People like Karen Davis have written really important works on that, and you can find some stuff on the UPC website on that, and on the Compassion in World Farming website. They’ve written a great report that you can download in pdf format called “The Gene and the Stable Door,” which pretty much summarizes the whole GM animals issue.

So we could work with the anti-globalization activists on the genetic engineering issue. We could make alliances with them on that particular topic, and in the process of doing that, spread our vegan message.

Next, feminists. You’ll see, you’ve got a handout about the links between speciesism and sexism [available online at http://www.bravebirds.org/speciesex.pdf]. I believe, very strongly, that speciesism and sexism are linked at the root, and that we cannot possibly end one if we don’t end the other. Period. I also think that feminists — who are already used to thinking about connections, specifically between race and sex — are ready to hear about the speciesism-sexism connection if we are ready to talk about it and ready to structure our organizations and our actions in a feminist way. Obviously, feminists aren’t going to want to work in male-dominated organizations, just to give one example, so there’s some things we’re going to have to do to get ready for that alliance, but it’s an important one.

Disability activists. That might surprise some people, but these are folks who are already protesting some of the same corporations we are. I’m talking about radical disability activists. I’m not talking about the March of Dimes people. I’m talking about Not Dead Yet. I’m talking about people who protest the March of Dimes. Heck, they’re already protesting the March of Dimes, and so are we! All right, let’s get together and let’s talk about veganism, because many people with disabilities already don’t trust the medical establishment so we can say, “yo, look at what they haven’t told you about meat, dairy, and eggs.”

Obviously, any folks who are working on sustainable development, agriculture reform, or water — because animal agriculture is the number one cause of water pollution in the world, and depletes more water than all other forms of human activity combined — are good prospects. All of these people we can work with, and I know that’s working more on the side of production than consumption, but it’s always good to interfere in the production of meat. In the course of working with them to interfere with production of meat, again, this cross-fertilization of ideas will occur and hopefully we can get the vegan message out.

Anti-colonialists in other countries, people who are interesting in working on anti-imperialism, are very open to the idea of talking about how diet change has shifted world health and disease and are very open to the idea of talking about the ideas of dietary racism and agricultural colonialism. And, absolutely, they are the people we’re going to need to reach if we’re going to go global. Because we can’t go global from here. What we’re going to have to do is form alliances with people who are there and are trusted by people there.

Finally, peace activists. Many of them can be reached with an anti-violence message. Actually, I wrote this past winter, on a whim, an essay called “Who Would Jesus Kill?” just because I was annoyed on Christmas day. It’s basically a peace essay that then talks about meat eating and factory farming as one of the causes of war. And to my great surprise, it’s been published all over the world. I keep finding places that have published it. I think in some ways that’s because elsewhere in the world they like people using the idea of Jesus against war, but they had to print the whole thing — including all that animal stuff at the end — if they wanted to have the fun of publishing this antiwar essay by an American. That gives you example of how there are ways that you can get our ideas into the peace movement discourse.

Go Global

I’ve already explained why we need to go global. It’s pretty much the same process we need to implement domestically, which is forming alliances with other organizations — either animal or vegetarian organizations in other countries, or organizations that are working on some of these other issues I just talked about, feminist organizations, anti-globalization organizations, agriculture reform organizations, you name it.

Why form alliances with other groups rather than going in on our own? That goes back to what I was talking about before, how white people in this country aren’t trusted by people of color in this country. Imagine how people from the United States are perceived by people in other countries, particularly people in the regions we’re in the process of bombing right now. They’re not going to listen to what some American organization has to say about why they should change their diet. They will listen — they will listen — to the hunger activists in their own town and they will listen to the folks who are distributing seeds in their own towns. We need to get to those people, build relationships with those people, be trusted by those people, share ideas — and I do mean share, back and forth — with those people, and then trust those people to go and do that work in their own communities. And be willing to share our resources with them so they can do it, and you’ll notice I’m harping on that point.

What to Do?

Now I’m going to talk about some how-tos. These how-tos can go for going global, they can go for building alliances here, and they can go for diversifying your own group. There are four categories: The first is PC equals Plain Courtesy. Two is that coalitions are good relationships. Three, Be Prepared like the Boy Scouts. Four, vegan means all animals. So, let’s talk about each of those.

PC Equals Plain Courtesy

I’m actually stealing a page from the book of Robin Morgan, former editor of “Ms. Magazine,” when I say that to me, PC equals “plain courtesy.” Because most of the things that get called PC, and most of the things we really need to do when we work with people who are different from us are just plain courtesy. Call people what they want to be called. Ask rather than making assumptions. Apologize if you inadvertently offend someone rather than defensively say, “well, I didn’t mean it, so I shouldn’t have to apologize.” Respect other people — and that means respect them as full people, meaning people who have concerns about ethics.

One of the most shocking assumptions that people make is that people of color don’t care about animals, or people living in poverty don’t care about animals. I know sometimes people are coming from a very well-meaning liberal place in that they’re saying “look, they’ve got so many troubles in their lives that they don’t have time to think about the animals.” But yo, you tell me why a person living in poverty wouldn’t be willing to base the decision between two equally priced shampoos on whether they were tested on animals or not. They are no more or less willing to make the decision on that basis than any other group of people.

People living in poverty, people struggling with horrible things, make ethical decisions every day. Everybody does that. Everybody tries to live as ethical a life as possible within the constraints that their lives offer to them. And we have to remember that, and we have to respect that when we’re working with people and not have these sort of misguided ideas that they’re not going to care about the animals so we can’t talk about the animals with them — all we can talk about is environment and health with them. Because it’s just not true. And it’s insulting. [Note: Recent research has shown African Americans in general and Latino women in particular to be concerned about animal welfare.]

Coalitions Are Just Good Relationships

So: Have respect and be courteous. Next: Coalitions equal good relationships. There’s not a thing that goes into building a good coalition that isn’t something that goes into building a good relationship. So let’s go through some of those things. First: Be honest. Be honest. And that means don’t hide that you’ve got another agenda. Of course you’ve got another agenda. Your coalition partners do too. The whole point of a coalition is people with different agendas working together on a shared concern.

Of course, if you’re going to work with your coalition partners on this one thing that you do agree on, and you’re different kinds of groups, well of course you’re going to hope that at some point you’re going to be able to talk to them about the animals. They’re probably going to hope that they can talk to you about something that you need to learn about, and undoubtedly there is something that you need to learn about. So don’t be all duplicitous, and act like “I only care about this thing that I think you’ll care about,” when in fact you care about all these other things. Be honest, while at the same time focusing on the things that you think will help to bring you together.

Going back to the bases of good relationships: Communicate. And that means two things: Talking and listening. Communicating in an effective way on the talking side means learning the language of the people you’re talking to. That means, when you’re planning to work with other activist groups or other communities, learning how they talk about certain issues. It may be a little weird for you to think about the idea of dietary racism, or to see the expansion of factory farming as agricultural colonialism, but believe me, those are phrases that certain groups will respond to. There are certain phrases that are used by activists working on a particular issue. For example, when talking to feminists, you can talk about “reproductive freedom” when you’re talking about cows and you’re talking about hens, because feminists are used to thinking about the concept of reproductive freedom. So you’ve got to learn the lingo and language of whoever you’re trying to talk to.

But it’s not just talking. Communication is also listening. And it’s not pretending to listen. It’s actually listening, and that does mean sometimes being willing to change your mind. After all, you’re hoping they’ll change their minds about some things. You need to be as open as you hope they’ll be. That brings up the next thing: Being undefensive. Which is good for relationships and also good for coalitions. Again, you’re hoping that they’re not going to be all defensive when you’re asking them to change something that’s as basic as their diet. So you need to not be defensive if they ask you to change something about your life, like where you buy your shoes or what kinds of jokes you make.

Here comes a big one. Brace yourselves. Share. Supposedly we all learn this in kindergarten, but all evidence that I’ve seen shows me that our movement knows nothing whatsoever about sharing. I do coordinate this Global Hunger Alliance, an international coalition of organizations. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put out a request of help with something, whether it’s a request for materials or for help implementing a project, only to have none of our US organizations respond at all, and have organizations in places like Bangladesh and Kenya write and say, “we can’t do very much but here’s what we can do.” Shocking.

Share. Figure out in advance what you can afford to share, and get ready to share it. Build sharing into your organization’s budget. [Applause.] Build sharing into your fund raising. Get ready to share. Because you just have to.

Be reliable. I think that’s obvious. Be reliable. And I want to say again, in case you missed it before, anyone who knows me knows I’ve failed on every one of these at some point or another in my life, so me standing up here saying “do this, don’t do that, do this, don’t do that,” is not me saying “oh, I’m so great, and I never failed to share myself,” because I have. I’m not going to tell you when but, believe you me, there are stories people could tell.

Finally, be real. The psychologist Carl Rogers, who is the founder of what’s called Humanist Psychology, talks about this concept of genuineness, which is basically being consistent with yourself. It’s really important. It’s important in every relationship, and it’s totally important when you’re trying to build relationships with people who are very different from yourself, either one-on-one or as an organization. And it also fits with my Get Real theme, did you notice that? Be real.

Be Prepared

All right. Like the Boy Scouts said, Be Prepared. That means, first of all, educate yourself. And you may be saying, “My heavens, I don’t have time to learn about anything new!” I know. But you know, there are ways to squeeze it in. Again, you know, we’re asking other people to educate themselves about the animals, to find times in their busy schedules. Often they’re activists working on really urgent problems like hunger or the water crisis, and we’d like them to learn about the animals. We’ve got to be willing to take time too.

One way to do it — and I know some people will be mad at me for saying this — but you know, we all tend to fall into this trap of constantly reading books by people who already agree with us, so that we can have the fun of nodding along. Stop it. At least half the time, when you have the urge to buy one of those books, or pick up yet another vegan cookbook — not that I don’t love the publishers of vegan cookbooks — but go ahead and pick up a book on race instead. Go ahead and pick up a book on poverty, or political theory, or something else that might help you with all of this instead. And again, you can take a page from the book of my pal Karen Davis. Check it out: Sometimes, randomly, just ask her “what are you reading right now, Karen?” It’s incredible. She’s always up on the animal stuff, but you never know what else she’s going to be reading. You should be that way too.

Think it through. Think through what you’re trying to do, and the problems you can anticipate coming up. And then write it out. This little handout I gave you about speciesism and sexism is a very rough first draft of my effort to do that about a particular intersection of issues. What I found at the Baker-Mandela center — when we were trying to make connections between things like race and class or disability and sexual orientation — is that it’s really useful to make yourself sit down and spell out the connections between the issues. Because when you write it out, you become more facile and articulate about the ideas and then you can just say them, say them, say them to people without have to stop and think every time.

Vegan Means All Animals

Finally: Go vegan. And by that I mean don’t participate in any animal exploitation. If you really believe that there’s not a moral distinction between humans and non-human animals, then that means you can’t participate in the exploitation of human animals any more than you can participate in the exploitation of non-human animals. This is pragmatic as well as ethical. It’s obviously the right thing to do, but it’s also pragmatic, because you know, you’re asking people to make changes in their lives around the animals, the least you can do is think about the changes you might need to make in your life around sexism or homophobia, disability, or whatever the case may be.

Get Real

And I’m out of time, so I’ll just say in terms of getting real: The grant agencies are right when they ask you “how are you going to assess this program?” Don’t just do it when the grant agencies ask you to do it. Do it when you’re planning what you’re going to do. Build assessment into your planning.

Oh, and by the way: Do plan. Do things like look at numbers and make up some kind of strategic plan for how you think the whole big picture can change and how what you’re doing fits into that. Do share that plan with other organizations and see if you can come up with a plan where you do one piece of it while they do another piece of it.

Don’t assume that people are like you and will be swayed by the things that you were swayed by, including how things taste, as Bruce [Friedrich of PETA] said. Don’t assume that what seems effective is effective. Don’t make big jumps on the basis of small anecdotal evidence like a focus group with only seven people in it. You should pay attention to those kinds of things, but be realistic in assessing the degree to which their findings can be generalized. And then finally, follow up. Follow up as much as you can whenever you do it. You know, if you talk to some group of people, go back six months later and find out — out of the ones who told you they were going to go vegan right after you talked to them — how many of them are still vegan. How many — out of the ones who seemed so defensive that they would never change — reconsidered the evidence once they felt less defensive and now agree with you?

That’s all I have to say, except I know that some of the things I’ve been saying have been hard to hear. I also know that I’ve just given this huge laundry list of things to do more or differently, and it might seem rather overwhelming. But I need you to know that I really believe we can do these things. We’re all people who have made really fundamental changes in our world views, and really fundamental changes to our behavior in response to new information and in response to ethical evaluations of that new information. I have no doubt whatsoever that we can do the same thing in relation to the other issues so that we can make these connections, so that we can diversify our movement, and so that we can do what we need to do to move us all towards what I would call total animal liberation. Thank you.

Thanks to United Poultry Concerns for inviting me to give this talk, to Annie and Neil Hornish for taping it, and to Miriam Jones for transcribing it.

pattrice jones

I operate a chicken sanctuary in the region of the United States where factory farming was invented. I also coordinate the Global Hunger Alliance, which is an international coalition of environmental, social justice, and animal liberation organizations united in opposition to factory farming and in support of effective, ethical, and environmentally sustainable solutions to hunger and malnutrition.

I mention these things because I want you to know that I am speaking as someone who works with injured animals every day and as someone who has had some success in forging effective coalitions. What I have to say may be hard to hear but is rooted in my heartfelt concern for all animals as well as my thoughtful analysis of the strategies needed to achieve total animal liberation.

In my view, what the animal liberation movement needs most urgently to do is to become more diverse in its internal constitution and in its coalitions with other movements. If we cannot do those things, then all of our debates about tactics and aims will be useless because we simply will not have enough people to implement those tactics and achieve those aims.

The truth of this can be seen simply by glancing around the room at the national conference and other major animal liberation events. We see mostly white people. But, people of color are the majority of the people in the world and rapidly becoming the majority here in the United States. People of color tend not to cede any sort of moral authority to white people and also tend, for historically justified reasons, to look with skepticism upon health information presented by white people. If we want the world to “go vegan” then we’re going to have to build a movement that looks more like the world.

As we strive to end the exploitation of animals on farms and elsewhere, we face extremely formidable opponents. The transnational corporations that profit from the exploitation of animals are wealthy, powerful, and absolutely amoral. Corporate agribusiness, for example, has ruthlessly gained control of the worldwide food supply with utter disregard for human and animal suffering. Farmers and activists who have challenged them in other countries have ended up dead. Nobody’s died here yet only because we’re not yet powerful enough to be a real threat. My point is that this is a struggle we cannot win without allies.

Even if we did manage to shut down factory farming in the USA, what would happen? I can tell you, because it has already begun to happen. Thanks to our good work, increasing environmental and animal welfare regulations along with decreasing domestic demand for some meat products has made it harder and less profitable to produce meat in the USA. Already, the major meat producers are developing new markets and relocating operations in low-income nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. If we’re not very careful, we will end up not ending animal exploitation but simply changing its location. We must make effective alliances with activists in low-income nations, and with the activists here who oppose trade globalization, and we must do it now.

All of this sounds pretty grim. The good news is that we already have the skills we need to increase both the internal diversity and the scope of the coalitions of the animal liberation movement. All we have to do is apply those skills in a new context. We’ve all been through the difficult process of challenging ourselves about our relations to non-human animals. What we need to do next is just an extension of that process.

The four things we need to do are: (1) challenge myths; (2) remember that people are animals; (3) make connections; and (4) translate insight into action. Let’s look at each of those in turn.

(1) Challenge Myths

We all accept that we were socialized to think of animals in a certain way. In becoming vegans and animal liberation activists, we had to challenge the things we thought we knew about animals and then change our behavior accordingly. So, it shouldn’t be too hard for us to accept that we have been socialized to think about race, sex, and class in certain ways and that we might have to challenge those myths too.

Let’s look first at two myths that have allowed the animal liberation movement to make excuses for its lack of internal diversity. The first is the myth that people of color don’t care about animals. This is an insidious and absolutely unfounded myth. Some animal activists look at Latino participation in cockfighting or African American participation in dog fighting and make broad generalizations about whole communities. But, we don’t look at white participation in rodeos and draw similar conclusions about white people as a group. Some animal activists look at the lack of diversity in their own groups and conclude that it is lack of interest among people of color, rather than their own structure or way of doing things, that is standing in the way. I’m here to tell you that there are people who care about and are trying to help the animals in every community. They may not call themselves animal liberationists and they certainly do not have access to the resources of the mainstream animal welfare and liberation movements, but they are there. We need to find those people, share resources with them, and invite them into the animal liberation movement on there own terms and as leaders.

Another insidious myth is the idea that people living in poverty don’t have time to care about the ethics of human-animal interactions. This myth arises out of an entirely well-meaning effort to understand the constraints faced by people living in poverty. But think about it: this myth essentially states that people living in poverty don’t care about right and wrong. That’s terribly insulting, not to mention untrue. Of course people living in poverty think about right or wrong. They go to church or not, depending on what they have concluded about the role of divinity in good and evil. They try to raise their children to live up to their individual and cultural moral standards. Like all of us, they try to do the right thing within the choices life offers them. And, of course, they debate with themselves and others in the course of making those choices.

People living in poverty are neither more nor less likely than anyone else to take the issue of animal testing into account when choosing between two equally-priced bottles of shampoo. But, they can’t take that issue into account if the activists fighting against animal testing have written them off as moral agents and failed to provide them with the information they would need to make that moral choice.

These are just two of the myths that might be hampering your organization’s efforts to become more diverse or enter into coalitions with a diverse array of other organizations. Luckily, as with myths about animals, once you get into the habit of challenging myths, you will start to catch yourself in the act of making unfounded assumptions or thinking in stereotypes. From there, it’s a short step to more accurate and useful perceptions.

(2) Remember That People Are Animals

One of the most basic tenets of the animal liberation movement is that the thick line between human and non-human animals is an artificial construct designed to facilitate and justify the exploitation of non-human animals. If we really believe that is true, then we need to work towards a more comprehensive definition of veganism. In both theory and practice, vegans ought to shun all participation in the exploitation of any animal, including human animals, and ought to strive for more equitable relations with all animals, including human animals. That means shunning the products of both sweatshops and factory farms. That means that, just as we care about the young hens who are imprisoned so that their reproductive organs can be exploited by the egg industry, we have to care about the young girls who are imprisoned so that their reproductive organs can be exploited by the sex tourism industry. Because that’s animal suffering too.

I know how hard it can be to care about people when you are confronting the reality of human abuses of non-human animals every day. I run a chicken sanctuary in the middle of Perdue country. Believe me, when those transport trucks rumble past my front door with thousands of six-week old birds looking out of the cages in terror, it can be hard to care about human-on-human violence. But then I come to my senses and remember how dangerous it is to start drawing lines, to say “these animals deserve my compassion but those do not.” Whether or not the battered woman is a vegan, she doesn’t deserve to be beaten by her husband. And maybe, just maybe, having an understanding of how one form of household violence (spousal abuse) relates to another form of household violence (meat eating) might lead us to be more effective in ending both of them.

(3) Make connections

Which leads to the next task: making connections. Every day, we ask people to connect the dots from the factory farm to the dinner plate. We also ask them to forge more genuine and equitable connections with non-human animals. What we need to do now is just more of the same. We need to connect the dots between the meat processing plant and the sweatshop, between the research lab and the for-profit health care system, between rape on the dairy farm and rape at the fraternity house, between the genetic manipulation of animals by scientists and the destruction of biodiversity by industry, between the traffic in animals and the traffic in women and children.

Perhaps the deepest and most enduring connection, which we must understand if we are ever to eradicate the roots of animal abuse, is the historic and ongoing intersection between the exploitation of women and the exploitation of animals. We’ll never know which came first; that’s lost in the sands of time. But, we do know that the enslavement of women and the enslavement of animals appear together in the historical record, have been and continue to be justified by the same ideologies, and together represent the pattern upon which all other forms of oppression of one group of humans by another have been modeled. The exploitation of women and the exploitation of animals justify and support one another; they are so closely intertwined that we cannot possibly hope to end one without ending the other. If we are serious about ending, rather than simply lessening, the exploitation of non-human animals, we must understand and act upon that connection.

We also need to forge more genuine and equitable connections among the people working on all of those related problems. No one can do everything, so we have to work in coordination with one another, understanding how the seemingly different problems we are working on are, in fact, just different facets of the same struggle for equitable relations and against violent exploitation.

The growing worldwide movement against trade globalization offers us the most opportunities for productive and mutually beneficial coalitions. The international trade agreements and institutions opposed by this movement are exactly the same agreements and institutions that already are helping corporations that exploit or abuse animals to evade the animal protection regulations that we work so hard to enact. Therefore, any aid that we can give to this movement will aid the animals. At the same time, the people in this movement are people who have already changed their own behaviors for ethical reasons. People who are already boycotting the products of sweatshops ought to be easy to persuade to also shun the products of factory farms.

(4) Translate insight into action

We know that it’s not enough to just care about non-human animals and we’ve all taken steps to change our own behavior in relation to non-human animals. We expect, indeed demand, others to do the same. We know that the process of change can be difficult but we expect other people to do it anyway. We have to hold ourselves to the same standard and be willing to change our own behavior both in response to what we learn through self-education and in response to direct challenges from other people. We have to embrace, in thought and deed, an encompassing vision of total animal liberation.

Some local organizations are already taking exciting steps in this direction. The folks at GSARA — the Gay/Straight Animal Rights Alliance — in Salt Lake City, Utah (of all places!) are doing great work making meaningful contact with gay youth in that city. In San Francisco, the Food and Social Justice Project is taking the bad news about factory farming to a variety of social justice movements, talking to each movement in the terms they are most likely to understand and embrace. Meanwhile, Boston Ecofeminist Action is bringing the animal liberation message into both the anti-globalization and feminist movements in that city.

At the international level, my own organization, the Global Hunger Alliance, is building a worldwide network of organizations united in shared opposition to factory farming and in shared support of plant-based solutions to hunger and malnutrition. Similar national networks have started to spring up, sparked by our partner organizations in different countries. In Italy, the new “Another Diet Is Possible” campaign, which includes both environmental and animal liberation organizations, is adding a new dimension to the “Another World Is Possible” theme embraced by the worldwide movement against trade globalization. In South Africa, the new Diversity Nature Animals Network is working hard to integrate the animal agenda into grassroots movements for biodiversity and sustainable development.

Thus, while the tasks before us are daunting, there is cause for hope. It’s not always easy to grow and change but we already have the skills we need and have already demonstrated our ability and willingness to change our minds and our behavior in response to new information. I have perfect faith that we can and we will do what we need to do to join forces with progressive environmental and social justice movements and to work together for peace and justice for all animals.

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(*) This is an expanded version of an address delivered on 01 July, 2002 at the AR2002 Plenary session on Engaging Other Communities. Audio and video tapes of this and other conference sessions are available via FARM.