AR2008 Recap
Submitted by An Animal-Friendly Life
I was very busy this past weekend at the Animal Rights 2008 National Conference. However, I don’t feel that my time was spent just being busy for the sake of “busyness.” For the most part, it seemed like a productive use of my time. I could probably spend hours attempting to gather together my thoughts on everything that I experienced, heard, learned, did, and didn’t do. Since I don’t have that kind of time, I will just write what comes to the top of mind in one sitting.
No conference is perfect–I could probably spend hours on this subject, too–but, while I would prefer that the AR conferences were more focused on the core issues of animal rights, particularly AR education, instead of welfare advocacy (aren’t there plenty of conferences already that focus on reforming animal husbandry?), there’s something energizing about being among so many different people gathered together to discuss various aspects of animal advocacy, and I did have a number of constructive conversations in that vein with various attendees over the course of the long weekend.
Compared to previous years, I detected a general shift from the escalated welfarism vs. abolitionism debate to a sort of fatigue on the subject. A lot of people I spoke to did seem interested in gaining a better understanding of what abolitionism is about (there are some real misconceptions). One person in particular seemed really eager to learn more about abolitionism, dialoguing with me on and off throughout the weekend. He plans to read up on Francione now.
A lot of other conversations on the subject transpired one-on-one and in social settings after conference events had ended for day, which gave me more of an opportunity to advocate the abolitionist viewpoint. I saw a lot of nodding heads and, at one point, someone came up to tell me they had heard good things about what I was saying at the conference. It’s hard to quantify the impact, but based on my intuitions about receptivity versus resistance and conflict, things seemed to go rather well, encouraging me to keep coming back to promote rights-based vegan advocacy.
Within my speaking roles, I didn’t really have quite as much of an opportunity to make an extensive or complete case for abolitionism, but the theory served as a compass to guide my work every step of the way, whether introducing the Boston Vegan Association (which I founded and run) as an abolitionist vegan advocacy group at the Newcomer Orientation and Running a Local Group panel (allowing me to elaborate a little on what that means), discussing how my abolitionism stems from the principle-centered leadership approach I follow and advocated during my talk on the Developing Leadership Skills panel, and discussing on the Perceptions of Animals panel how language can be used to help people see other animals as ends in themselves rather than perpetuating their status as a means to our ends.
The What Rights? Which Animals? rap session I facilitated came out pretty quickly toward abolitionist rights-based advocacy once the basis for rights was identified, necessarily including all sentient animals. This gave the group time to discuss the problem of the property status of animals and the need for vegan education (though the turnout was a bit lighter than I would have hoped for, given the widespread lack of education regarding animal rights theory).
Despite my penchant for talking, I also did a fair amount of listening, which led to some learning. One key reminder this weekend was that many people in animal advocacy strongly promote one view over another as the most effective in large part because of their own initiation into animal advocacy (a pamphlet at a concert leads one to do leafletting, an experience with a marine mammal leads another to focus on marine animal protection, etc.). There’s a passion for that which made such a major impact in their lives, along with a certain presumption that what worked for them is what will work best for others, which is telling. Of course, this isn’t true for everyone (including myself), but it seems fairly common, and is useful when determining whether or not it is worth it to try and convince someone to consider a other approaches, because those advocates tend to be pretty entrenched in their own idea of what is best. To that end, the conference largely serves as an opportunity for advocates of various sorts to recruit newcomers to their own mission (and for authors to promote and sell books).
Talking to people whose focus was different than mine also reminded me how helpful it can be to have people driven to work on other issues that are complementary to rights advocacy and vegan education, such as exposing government repression of activists and providing access to plant-based foods for economically disadvantaged communities. As long as they don’t work against abolition, it seems that they could help advance it by easing other key obstacles.
On a related note, some long-time conference participants with anti-racism experience were kind enough to take some time to answer questions I had. Veganism is a rather white movement, and I was recently reminded how far I have to go to better understand how my lifelong privilege as a heterosexual white male in a system fraught with institutionalized racism affects those around me, much less my ability to work with people of color as allies in vegan advocacy and other social justice issues.
I think more white vegan advocates need to deeply explore this issue (the conference itself needs to do some work to better facilitate this) and work together to promote anti-racism in our movement so that we can be more effective in eliminating oppression of all beings. Our exploitive system is itself a major part of the reason other animals are oppressed, not just their status as property (which comes from a sense of human entitlement that connects rather obviously to white privilege once you start becoming aware of it).
Thanks to pattrice, lauren, and other conference participants for the advice you gave me and for pointing me in the right direction. As I steep myself further in this subject (thanks to Breeze for the reading list!), I may write about it here at AAFL.
Finally, I also did some promoting at the conference, raising awareness of AAFL, The Boston Vegan Association, soliciting funding for I’m Vegan, and distributing a couple hundred or so copies of The Abolitionist Approach pamphlet. It was good to reach people that might not otherwise have heard of these projects.
In sum, though I don’t exactly endorse the conference, I am glad I went. I learned a lot, got to know some really good people, deepened some friendships, had plenty of fun, and I feel like I contributed something valuable. I intend to go again next year so that I may continue to advocate for positive vegan advocacy based in the abolitionist approach to animal rights.
Thank you to the conference organizers for involving me.
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