Vegan Bootcamp: 101 days of Animal Rights Activism

This post is the first in a series that will cover Animal Rights Activism from as many angles as possible. Tactics, techniques, methods, historical figures, current controversies, inspirational essays-quotes-graphics, campaigns, movements – from education, agitation, resistance to revolution.

People don’t care if you’re upset. They care when you organize. - Al Sharpton

It was Gandhi who said “if you do nothing, there will be no result“, so, the time for talking is over.

Now is the time to act. It’s time to get organised.
First, you have to make the decision that you want it… no, it’s more than that, you NEED it, you NEED to be an Active participant in the struggle for Animal Rights.

For many ARA’s (Animal Rights Activists) that I have met, they can’t live any other way. They simply cannot live a life without putting the fight for animal rights front and centre of almost everything they do.

Today, is about making that decision. You know you want to, have to be an Activist. You can no longer sit by and do nothing while animals are suffering. You have reached a point in your life where you must do something.

If you hear about some unspeakable horrendous act of cruelty against an animal, or you hear about the billions upon billions of animal killed for food each year, or any other act of abuse and you find yourself saying “Somebody must do something… and I think that somey will be me.” then it’s time to learn, act, think, agitate and bring about changes in the world.

And if you already are an AR Activist, then you will know that you have made the right decision.
For Animal Rights Activists, there are two questions:

–1–

What do we want?

–2–How will we get it?

This can be summed up simply as “Objectives” and “Tactics“.
1. Objectives (the ENDS)
What those Objectives / Goals are may vary between individuals; long term education or short term direct action*, local or global, educate one person or agitate for a change in legislation.

2. Tactics (the MEANS)
Tactics, strategy, methods, plans, to-do-list, techniques – using the most appropriate method for your personal circumstance and objectives. This will vary depending on the desired outcome.
Although, I will cover these in more depth in a follow up piece soon, ‘Planning a Campaign’, a few quick words about Objectives and Tactics.

Getting 5000 names on a petition isn’t an objective, a petition is a tactic to achieve the specific goal. If spending time, money and energy on doing something doesn’t get you close to your goal, then why are you doing it?

Raising awareness is not an objective – you raise awareness, and then what? – you raise awareness so that people will change their behaviour, raising awareness is a tactic.

Networking, socialising, hanging out on social networks are not objectives, that are part of a tactic. Ah, you say, but I like hanging out with my friends. Ok, we all need down-time, some hours to switch off and recharge the brain, let go of the negative tension.

Knowledge without action is useless; action without knowledge is dangerous. – D. L. Chu

What’s Next?

Once you have your Objectives and planned your Tactics, then comes another crucial part of all . . . ACTION.

Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military and political leader said: “A Revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.” (or as I say: A revolution is a theory with an army.)

Or to paraphrase a leading animal welfare advocate “The philosophers can debate the revolution, but the Bandits must carry it out”.

This is not a suggestion that violence is necessary for a Vegan Revolution** – instead, after all the theorising about Animal Rights, the thinking, planning, debating, in the end, the work still needs to be done.

The military call this “boots on the ground” – those people will to carry out the plans, physically do the work – and often times in AR Activism, the person deciding the plan of action is the same person who is carrying it out.

Activism doesn’t require a lot of people, just dedicated people doing what needs to be done.

As Margaret Mead said: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Do it, and don’t be distracted by people who would tear you down. The haters for some reason are unable to act on their own, and so seek to destroy those who are.

Lead, follow, or get out of the way. — Thomas Paine

Time to stop Feeding the Trolls.

I think most of us have met an ARA at some point, who you just know doesn’t do anything practical, they are “Facebook Crusaders”, you know, the kind of person who says to you:
‘See here, in this 1984 essay you wrote, you said “factory farm”, but all farms involve cruelty… what are you some kind of enabler or something, you are as Evil as a viviesector’.

The Anti-Activists attack you, and other ARAs all of the time, they follow you from blog to blog, from forum to social network, always reminding you of the time you said “factory farm” not “farm”.

They never work on a campaign of their own. You start to think – is this All that you do? have all the animal exploiters suddenly disappeared, and left you with so much free time that you can launch character assassinations on people who are actually doing something for the animals!

And then finally when you tell them you are not wasting any more of your time debating them, you are walking away – they declare they have “won”.

Facebook is not the battle, Facebook is a tool. If these TROLLS think they have “won” something by harassing animal rights activists, then they are not in it for the Animals.

And, what do you “WIN” by continuing to engage with them – nothing much.

If the Anti-Activists are distracting you, they are stealing your time and energy that you could use saving animals. See the trolls for what they are – COLLABORATORS.

You can accomplish a lot of good in the world if you don’t care who gets the credit for it. – Myles Horton

Next post in this series: Rules For Radicals
The phrase “Vegan Bootcamp” comes from the book, ‘Vegan Bootcamp: Guide to Animal Rights Activism’, it inspired me to do a series of posts on AR activism.

*Direct Action
Although some people think direct action means ‘violence’, that is not necessarily so:
Lee Hall “Veganism is direct action“.
**Revolutions can be peaceful.
There are some who hear the word “revolution” and think Molotov’s and Kalashnikov’s, balaclavas and bombs, however, Revolutions can be peaceful, they are simple a change. It could be a change in government, it could be a change in thought process.

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Post 2011 ‘Vegan Animal Liberation Alliance’. Copying and distribution of this entire article, text and / or graphic, is permitted in any medium, but please include the credit:
Written by RedGlitter of VALA http://redglitterx.wordpress.com/
or at least a link to this page, that would be nice

Tweeting As Direct Action

I hate that Biteback say “News from the frontlines”, as if those not involved in DA are not on the “frontlines”. We are. We promote veganism

This is given to me by someone who saw this in their time line. All I can say is… hahahaha!!

Is this person seriously comparing what they do

This is from the Biteback website, for the beginning of September only

September 8, 2010 – Sweden – RED PAINT DUMPED ON FUR STORE
September 7, 2010 – Germany – MINK FREED FROM CAGES
September 7, 2010 – Italy – ELF TARGET REAL ESTATE OFFICES IN SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS
September 6, 2010 – Northern Ireland - BUTCHER SHOPS, BETTING SHOPS SABOTAGED
September 5, 2010 – Ireland – CIRCUS POSTERS DESTROYED
September 4, 2010 – Italy – THOUSANDS OF QUAIL LIBERATED
September 3, 2010 – Sweden – BUSY IN ÖREBRO!
September 2, 2010 – Switzerland – CRUEL FESTIVAL TARGETED
September 1, 2010 – Mexico – THREE DAYS OF ACTIONS IN SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS

Um, yep, I can see how you can think tweeting is exactly just like the same as being “on the frontlines” too.

I did some research (looked up WIKI) for the meaning of “front line” and this is what it said:

Frontline… is a term used by most armed force services worldwide. It is a battlespace control measure that designates the forward-most friendly and hostile forces that are presently on the battlefield during an armed conflict or war; whether it be regular infantry or reconnaissance. It can also identify the forward location of covering and screening forces
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_line

While I don’t doubt that tweeters are involved in “direct action”, I don’t see what “hostile forces” or “armed conflict” or “war” they are encountering.

And, to be fair, to this person whose name I blacked out, I am not really attacking them, their comment just made me laugh. How do you compare a group like Biteback, to someone who “promotes veganism”? Although, they probably do more than just tweet and retweet. And, promoting veganism, is a good thing, I’m not knocking their efforts, just their comparison to Biteback. And, if someone did the same to me, they could probably find things that can be taken out of context and pick it apart…. oh wait, they have….

H$U$ (Human Society of United States) recently had a petition against “cruel factory farms“, when I replied to their tweet, “how about: ending all factory farms?”. To say that there are cruel factory farms, implies that there are factory farms that are not. All factory farms are cruel, all farms are cruel, any use of animals for any reason is exploitation and cruelty.

The comments didn’t stop for days, accusing me of being a ‘welfarist’, ‘supporting animal abuse’, being an ‘abuse enabler’, ‘supporting farming’… wow, people, back off. Attacking other vegans, and with such vitriol and viciousness, and then claim to be about peace is just bizarre and does not do anything to promote the vegan message.

When using social network sites, particularly Twitter, be careful what you say, someone is always reading, and usually not the people you expect.

Or maybe Vegans need to just stop attacking each other.

Feedback welcome.

Steal This Book! (hippy civil disobedience)

Abbie Hoffman: What we needed was a revolution!

You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. Abbie Hoffman, Tikkun Magazine (July-August 1989)

Written by Abbie Hoffman in 1970, “Steal This Book!” written in the spirit of overthrowing the system or at least the apathy, has chapters on how to get by with little money, making weapons of self defence, how to get a free buffalo, underground media, guerrilla broadcasting, demonstrations, first aid for street fighters and establlishing an underground identity.

Steal This Book is, in a way, a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika. It preaches jailbreak. It shows you where exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls. The first section-SURVIVE!-lays out a potential action program for our new Nation. The chapter headings spell out the demands for a free society. A community where the technology produces goods and services for whoever needs them, come who may. It calls on the Robin Hoods of Santa Barbara Forest to steal from the robber barons who own the castles of capitalism. It implies that the reader already is “ideologically set,” in that he understands corporate feudalism as the only robbery worthy of being called “crime,” for it is committed against the people as a whole. Whether the ways it describes to rip-off shit are legal or illegal is irrelevant. The dictionary of law is written by the bosses of order. Our moral dictionary says no heisting from each other. To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
ABBIE HOFFMAN – Steal This Book

For more, the entire book can be found here – http://tenant.net/Community/steal/steal.html – read, learn, improvise, being inspired to over throw the complacency and apathy in Western Society.

Feedback welcome.

Tyranny or Revolution… Choose

Tyranny or Revolution. One of two simple choices. Continue to live a dictatorship or stand up and say No.

Those are the options – either unquestioningly obey unjust laws or stand up against them. By fighting unjust laws you are standing up for justice, freedom, free-thinking, you are standing up for what you believe in, more importantly – what is right.

If you obey unjust laws, that you know are unjust, you are losing your freedom, independence of thought, and you are sitting back doing nothing, from a position of safety while others are subjected to unjust laws that selectively punish and discriminate.

“It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.” H L Mencken

As we can see from many civil rights movements, from the abolition of the slave trade, sufferage for women, ending apartheid in South Africa, African Independence Movement and gay rights, the fight is for rights is not about a group asking or begging for their rights but about people taking the power that is already theirs and asserting their rights.

The fight for rights against those who hold power is an expression of power. People acknowledging there is injustice and standing up and fighting is an expression of strength, which challenges the common held notions of power relationships. Foucault (1990) said, it is in principle impossible to oppose power, because it is only with power that power can be opposed.

However, the fight for animal rights is an except to all civil rights and social justice movements, in that those who are victims and suffer at the hands of those with power, are never going to be in a position to assert their rights to life. What happens then?

Civil disobedience becomes duty.

“As long as the world shall last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled, those wrongs would last forever.” Clarence Darrow

If we don’t speak out when we see injustice we are silently and passively saying we agree. Our silence empowers those who wield the whips and chains of enslavement. And right now in the Animal Rights Movement there is a creeping silence settling on organisations and activists who seem to have forgotten how to fight.

The animals continue to be treated as mere commodities and activists are waiting… for, well, something.

This silence is what is happening in the animal rights movement. There is a growing popularity in Animal Rights Activism (ARA) of complacency. Led by a theoretical “activist” Gary Francione, they have taken over as the public voice of activism. They have elected themselves the moral guardians of veganism. They speak the loudest. Meanwhile the Real ARAs are out in the streets actually fighting for what they believe in and fighting against injustice and tyranny, against the suffering and cruelty forced upon animals in the name of economics and “choice” (consumer choice, the animal doesn’t get a choice).

“We know through painful experiences that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed“. Martin Luther King

The Francione-Lee Hall-inspired “pacifist dietary vegans” often appear to be confused about what ARA is. It is not (only) making vegan cupcakes and eating vegan marshmallows. While following a particular diet can be considered political action, it is not direct action. Friends of Animals contend that “veganism is direct action” without actually explaining what Direct Action is or how Veganism is Direct Action, apart from such suggestions as eat at a vegan restaurant, buy a vegan cookbook, join Friends Of Animals (which they claim is inexpensive). Direct Action Veganism seems to be related to how much money you spend, turning veganism into a consumerist action.

While it can be seen that choices at the supermarket are political – from the brands you support or boycott, the country of origin, the distance food is transported, its environmental impact in production, or the welfare of the ingredients in the case of animal products. The companies you support economically or economically sabotage shape the world, every consumers choice at the cash register has an impact on the world. From child slavery for chocolate or palm oil in your cakes to supporting brands that also own cigarette companies or avoiding animal products – these all have political consequences.

Although following a vegan diet might be regarded as passivism (passive + activism). And unless someone follows up advocating a vegan diet with actual actions you are a not an activist vegan, but a dietary vegan. The clue is in the word ACTIVism, it suggests some kind of ACTivity, ACTion, it involves acting one way or another, being an active agent in opposing the suffering and cruelty in the world. Part of the definition of vegan is someone who “promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment” (Watson and Shrigley). It is not telling other vegans how superior you are, that yours is the one true way, and the path to animal rights is found Only by blindly following Francione and Hall.

Words without action are meaningless.
The world will not, as Gary Francione and his followers say, be vegan if you want it. It will be vegan when people act on it. Get out and do something about it. Wishful thinking rarely achieves anything. It will take hard work, it will take risk, it will involve taking a stand FOR something, not just endlessly shouting down any Real ARAs who don’t blindly obey Francione.

What the world needs is a revolution, not another movement. The insistence of Francione and Hall followers of calling themselves “Abolitionist Vegan” divides Animal Rights. It artificially separates vegans, splintering what should be a united movement into Us v Them.

“We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Why We Can’t Wait, 1963

So while Francione and Hall are sitting around telling people to Buy vegan cook books, Buy memberships of their organisations, Buy meals at restaurants, Buy text books they write, Buy, Buy, Buy, and tell people this is “direct action”, there are real Direct Action Activists are refusing to accept the status quo of a society that puts a higher price on the death of an animal that they do on the value of that animals life.

This is not civil war between those that oppose all form of MDA – militant direct action and those who don’t condemn it. Because the dietary vegans who talk about peace being the only way, they are nothing but a distraction. Their beliefs don’t seem to be based on Animal Liberation but following gurus and their opinions, they will left on the side of the road long after Real ARAs are reaching milestones in the path to true animal liberation.

These milestones will be reached by people standing up against the tyranny of a society.

“What have you done for animals lately?”

This is not a criticism of meat eaters, this is not a criticism of vegetarians, nor is this a criticism on people who live a vegan lifestyle who don’t want to be ARA’s. This is pointing out the hypocrisy of people who call themselves “activists” and then do nothing but recruit for the members for the Abolitionism of Francione and Hall.

So get on the train or get off the tracks. Because when you target Animal Liberation for being not vegan enough, you are in the way, you are the hit squad for animal abusing industries.

“A revolution is coming – a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough – but a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character, we cannot alter its inevitability.” John F. Kennedy

Taking the world vegan will require a revolution, in the way of thinking of six billion people. This will be achieved when those who want to see real Animal Liberation rebel against the tyranny from the Animal Agriculture industry and other vegans who stymie activists who are making a difference. It will involved standing up for your principles instead of attacking those who do. It means putting your life and freedom on the line, and if you’re not prepared to stand up for what you believe in, then just what will you do to save the life of an animal.

Eating vegan marshmallows does very little for preventing the suffering and death of an animal. And calling yourself an “animal rights activist” when all you do is shut down anyone who believes in a different form of activism achieves nothing – or rather it achieves nothing for the animals. It achieves a lot in slowing down Real ARAs, it sides with the abusers and enables them to continue inflicting their cruelty.

If you are fighting for animal rights and liberation, I will fight with you. If you are vegan, I admire you. If you reject the animal death industries, I respect you.

So… will we have Vegan Revolution or Tyranny?

A vegan revolution is inevitable, so what are we waiting for? Why not now?

Let’s start the Revolution today.

Feedback welcome.