(Yes I just created the word, but binary deserves a goddamn adjective.)
I'm at the Animal Rights 2010 Conference which is mad orgasmic but also challenging blur of all the best animal rights activists ever. I'm surrounded by activist 'celebrities' who really inspire me, so many who just really know what they're talking about. This includes
- Dennis Kucinich (vegan presidential candidate)
- Peter Young (ex-prisoner for freeing mink)
- Gene Baur (founder of Farm Sanctuary)
- Erica Meier (executive director of Compassion over Killing)
- Nathan Runkle (exec. director of Mercy for Animals)
- David Benzaquen (staff and previous fellow intern at Farm Sanctuary)
- Matt Rice (previous fellow at Farm Sanctuary and currently Campaigns Director at MFA) George Eisman (vegan nutritionist)
- Josh Hooten (founder of Herbivore)
- Will Potter (author of GreenIsTheNewRed.com)
- Jon Camp (founder of Vegan Outreach)
- the entire staff of COK, naturally, and all the random people I've bumped into.
Back to the title of this post:
I can not get over how goddamn divided the animal rights movement can be. I know, i know, this is old news, but seriously, there normally aren't that many of us all in a room so we don't have to address these problems.
What is the problem, you may ask? Well, here I go:
Like all other social movements, the animal rights movement is full of individuals who believe in different tactics to achieve their own defined goal of success for animals. This generally falls into two camps:
- Animal Welfarists
- Abolitionists
Welfarists are stereotypically the puppy-lover activists who only argue for bigger cages for slaughter animals (though many of these activists are often vegan, too.) Abolitionists do not believe in any kind of legislation that engages with, and thereby legitimizes the meat, dairy, and egg industries and only advocate for pro-veg*n education or in extreme cases, animal liberation. This has become a seriously contentious topic, because abolitionists believe that welfarists are actually hindering their own abolitionist efforts -- They argue that if legislation is passed that bans cages for layer hens, more people will feel better about buying eggs, and will actually increase their purchases of eggs--Welfarists often believe that abolitionists come on too strongly -- the most radical of abolitionists refusing to talk about anything but animal cruelty as a reason to go vegan -- which turns people off to veg*nism in the first place.
These two poles have been created, and I scratch my head. This is supposed to be one of the more radical conferences, and these people make me want to eschew away from the identity of a radical-progressive! The politics of animal rights is a continuum and organizations and people can occupy multiple points on that line when they have multiple campaigns. Must I always bring up the word spectrum? It is not an either-or question, nor should we all agree. The palpable tension and hostility between these two main camps is really frustrating, but I guess inevitable.
Gah. If anyone has ideas or suggestions as to how to navigate the strange political waters of social movements, don't hesitate to throw stuff out there. I'm all ears. I'm really passionate, but it's difficult to deal with sometimes. (It also makes me feel very wary about analyzing the role of gender in the animal rights movement for my thesis, because that will only serve to divide the movement.)
The "revolution versus reform" conundrum has plagued progressive social movements for a long time. In the Vassar context, alone, I know that in late 2008 Royce Drake suggested merging all progressive student activist orgs on campus so as to establish a united front, translating into one big left-activist group which the Vassar Student Association will (hopefully, perhaps) take seriously and thus give more money. Mikey Velarde was critical of such a move, feeling that it was at best reformist.
ReplyDeleteTo take the longer and wider view, the "revolution vs. reform" debate has long been a major one on the left. In terms of the left politics that I'm mostly (relatively, remotely speaking) familiar with, the socialist milieu, there has been plenty of criticisms of political parties like the European social-democratic parties as being fundamentally reformist. These criticisms are all the more relevant now, given that it's more or less common knowledge for the people who write for and edit journals like Monthly Review ( http://www.monthlyreview.org/ ) or Against the Current ( http://www.solidarity-us.org/atc ) or International Socialist Review ( http://www.isreview.org/ ) that nominally left political parties remain beholden to "free market" economics and that, in light of the current global financial crisis, Keynesian policy is hardly a solution (or even if it is, it is at best a reformist one).
I remember Tom Facchine and Reed Dunlea having an email discussion over this too. But I don't have the emails anymore...
I might write about the issue as well on my blog too (I have a new entry that I still have to write).