D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

A Proposal for a Division of Labour in Grassroots Animal Advocacy.

Vegan education does it all – and all at the one time. For our fellow animals to ever be liberated, we need a cultural revolution. I believe the pioneers of the vegan social movement understood that. For example, Donald Watson said as early as 1947 that, if we can spread vegan values, the greatest peaceful revolution ever will be the result. Writing in The Vegan in 1952, Vera Stanley Alder wrote, “Men cannot make peace with each other so long as they are making war on the other kingdoms of nature. Let us cease our warfare against the soil, against the trees, against the animals!” Leslie Cross said that the aim is not to make relations between humanity and the other animals more tolerable but to completely abolish exploitative relations which, he argued, amount to ‘master and slave’ arrangements. Furthermore, the famed animal rights philosopher, Tom Regan, when talking about the moral status quo, listed “the sheer power of custom, including popular culture – the media, the songs that are sung [and] the art of the times” among the powerful institutions supporting orthodox norms and values.

This is an invitation to vegan activists to get a divorce from mainstream animal advocacy! This is also merely a suggestion – I do not pretend to have the power to tell other vegans what to do – nor do I have that right. However, I do not believe that all advocacy is equal; I don’t think that all advocacy is equally worthwhile and effective - and therefore to be encouraged.

I see vegans identify one or two serious issues within veganism. The main complaint I hear the most is that, of all the people who self-identify as vegan, only a small fraction of them take part in advocacy or activism [1]. The second issue seems to be that, of all the people who do take part in advocacy and activism, only a percentage engage in what I’m going to call ‘vegan outreach’ or ‘vegan education.’ By vegan outreach or vegan education, I mean things like The Earthlings Experience, We the Free and, in Ireland, what The Vegan Information Project get up to, Go Vegan World, and the street outreach of Sentient Rights Ireland.

These are grassroots initiatives that concentrate exclusively on one thing: the promotion of vegan philosophy. They do not engage in single-issues and do not separate out different types of animal use, such as ‘factory farming’ or caged confinement systems. They are consistently abolitionist in their approaches.

A DIVISION OF LABOUR.

As many readers of this article will know, my long-time colleague and vegan for 53 years, Ronnie Lee, advocates for the creation of vegan education everywhere and all the time. I share that aspiration. Therefore, on the assumption that only vegans will - or even can - engage in vegan education, it hinders the progress of the movement if most vegans do not do it.

There are a number of social psychological reasons why vegans don’t do consistent vegan education, and some will do it every now and then, integrating it into their other campaign activities, while not wanting to make it their campaigning focus. Some don’t want to do it at all it seems.

In order to increase the amount of vegan education going on – and therefore getting closer to everywhere and all the time – I try to encourage those who will do vegan education to do it all the time - and have veganism as their sole messaging. Personally, I believe this to be a beautiful solution because I’ve always seen vegan education as achieving the aims of multiple single-issue pressure campaigns all at once. Vegans do not go to animal circuses, or tracks where our fellow animals are forced to race, or go to zoos. They oppose vivisection and hunting as well as every form of the ‘farming’ of our fellow animals.

We need a cultural revolution – and this requires more advocates willing to dedicate themselves fully to vegan education.

[1]. ‘Only a small percentage of them take part in advocacy or activism.’ I do see this as a slightly problematic phrase for, if we assume that there are very few totally silent vegans, then the majority may be regarded as activists and advocates to some degree. For example, they may answer questions about vegan philosophy from workmates or family members, and wear vegan-promoting badges, or perhaps display Go Vegan World stickers in the windows of their vehicles. Some may share social media posts, and may quietly engage in solo door dropping of leaflets or place vegan literature on noticeboards and insert it into library books. I do believe, however, that it is unlikely that many of the question answerers will engage in the other things mentioned here.