Warning: this article contains images, video and descriptions of animal cruelty which may be distressing for some readers

Animal advocates are calling for results from an investigation into a NSW meat processor, after the facility was reported to the Department of Agriculture in May this year.

The footage supplied to the Department was allegedly captured during a covert investigation conducted by Farm Transparency Project at Cowra Meat Processors. They say that the footage shows evidence of animal cruelty and was obtained through trespassing at the facility and the installation of hidden, pinhole cameras.

In their report to the Department, Farm Transparency Project link to a number of compilations of footage which they claim “are intended only to highlight the urgency of this complaint and the nature of breaches uncovered” but “do not constitute the entirety of this complaint.”

They raise a number of instances in the footage which, they say, are in breach of state and federal animal welfare laws. This includes footage which appears to show pigs drowning in vats of scalding water and sheep and goats having their throats cut while still conscious.

Prominent animal rights advocate and CEO of Animal Liberation, Lynda Stoner believes that the lack of action by the department is not good enough.

“Three months have passed since authorities were alerted to the hellish conditions at Cowra, three months since they have been in possession of video evidence and still there has been no official response. Why? Their job is to ensure the protection of animals yet they are silent which will only make our voices louder.”

Stoner’s view is echoed by Emma Hurst a member of the NSW legislative council representing the Animal Justice Party who thinks that the investigation is taking “far too long.”

She intends to raise the lack of findings with the Minister for Agriculture at an upcoming Budget Estimates hearing in September.

A NSW Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development spokesperson said that responding to further questions regarding the footage would “not be appropriate.” They confirmed that the investigation into the meat processor remains ongoing.

At the time of publishing, Cowra Meat Processors had not responded to questions put to them by email.

The footage is currently published on the Farm Transparency Project website, an online repository of images and videos which Farm Transparency Project say have been captured from animal farms and abattoirs across the world.

Communicators who seek to capture both animal and climate justice face an ongoing challenge. How do we represent non human animals as individuals with value, rather than just an element of a poorly defined ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ or as nothing more than victims of destructive industries? While many of us who are part of the anti-speciesist and animal rights communities have become used to watching our words and finding alternatives to oppressive language, the question of how to refer to animals in the context of the climate crisis is discussed to a much lesser extent.

We often talk about the communication challenges that groups attempting to reconfigure the status quo face. In the case of the animal justice movement, we’re attempting something massive in shifting the common sense in society so that animals are seen as morally equal to humans or, at the very least, worthy of far more care, consideration and rights than they are currently granted. Often this looks like finding new ways of countering the heavily entrenched dominant narrative of human supremacy and exceptionalism as well as in creating stories that connect to people and allow them to expand their circle of compassion to include species other than humans.

Another challenge, which I feel is far less talked about, is one which is distinctly relevant to communicators in the climate justice space. While the environmental impact of killing animals for food and clothing is becoming more normalised in conversations about the climate crisis, we still see animals framed, not as individuals but rather as either a ‘problem’ and contributor to the climate crisis (in the case of farmed animals) or as passive victims (in the case of wild animals). For farmed animals, the industry which exploits them is often placed alongside the fossil fuel industry to demonstrate the comparable level of environmental damage. While this may be effective in bringing the necessity of a transition for our food system into the climate conversation, a question I feel we often fail to ask is how comparisons such as this may be working to further imbed the idea of animals as commodities who exist only for human gain.

While the challenges relating to pushing back against dominant, entrenched and unjust narratives are the cards we are dealt as communicators challenging dominant narratives, answering this second question about how we can better represent animals in climate justice communications can help us build an improved framework for true animal and climate justice which avoids encouraging and affirming narratives which normalise the oppression and inferiority of all non-human life.

This resource will explore how the language we use and the stories we tell can counteract dominant narratives and develop new stories centred in justice, respect and freedom for all life. It will touch on the dominant frames and metaphors that compete with our messaging, the stories and language that reinforces these frames and ways we can use words, stories and metaphors to plant new ideas and enforce different values.

A note on terminology. Throughout this resource I will frequently refer to narratives, stories, frames and messaging. Unless otherwise stated I am using the following meanings:

• Narrative — an understood truth e.g. good will triumph over evil. You can have dominant (status quo) narratives, emerging (niche) narratives and oppositional (contested) narratives
• Story — a set of causal relationships with a beginning, middle and end.
• Frame — the specific words used to communicate an idea and their associations.
• Messaging — written and verbal communications used to convey ideas, stories, frames and narratives (e.g. copy, slogans)

What We’re Up Against

The below table lays out some of the dominant frames and stories that underpin how the majority of people relate to animals in society. I have aimed to capture frames and stories common to the climate and environmental movement and therefore may have chosen not to cover some of the entrenched stories around animals commonly told in society which are not typical of this context.

Plus Others!

Language use that imbeds these frames

How we might be reinforcing and activating these frames through the language that we use in environmental communications.

How do we beat it?

Language use that re-individualises Animals and potential counter-frames

Conclusion

The movement for climate justice is one which is intrinsically linked to the struggle for animal justice. The stories that we tell play an important role in creating an alternative vision of the world we want to create and in radically reimagining how we as humans could relate to other species. As communicators working on social change, our role is to transform complex ideas into common sense. In the climate and environmental movement we have seen the status quo shift rapidly in a very short amount of time, with once radical ideas, such as that of a climate emergency, now accepted as normal. The opportunity to transform public discourse is immense!

As anti-speciesists, we must challenge ourselves to critically examine how we are representing animals in our communications and how we can work to uproot entrenched narratives of exploitation and oppression, while also creating powerful and compelling messaging for climate action. These struggles are linked. Justice and liberation for animals will be impossible if we don’t fight to protect this planet. Finding a language of liberation is about far more than swapping out and substituting words, it’s about identifying and deconstructing the pillars that support current dominant narratives and creating irresistible alternatives which connect to people’s core values and present a powerful vision of a better world. I hope that this resource sparks some ideas for you and that it gives you some more tools to keep fighting.

Resources and Further Reading

Animals Erased — Arren Stibbe 2012: Animals Erased Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World by Arran Stibbe (z-lib.org).pdf

Tongue Tied — Hahn Nguyen 2019: Tongue-Tied: Breaking the Language Barrier to Animal Liberation: Amazon.co.uk

Abstract:

This article will apply the lens of cultural and creative industries to social movements, arguing that they are in fact the same kind of system, governed by similar forces and requiring a similar approach to achieve desired outcomes. Drawing from both social movement theory, cultural economics and cultural theory, this post will provide a new way of viewing social movement organising which puts creative thinking, dynamic organising and innovation at the centre and which forefronts the leadership and thinking of artists and creative workers.

Introduction:

In understanding social movements we often look to the past, developing blueprints and rules which attempt to explain why some social movements succeed in their aims and others fall flat. However, what these analyses often fail to take into account is the profound uncertainty of organising for social change and the reality that past success is a poor indicator of future resonance.¹ In order to understand social movements we should be learning from systems like them, ones which are defined by unpredictability of outcome, uncertainty of input as well as the potential for radical, transformational cultural resonance.

The cultural and creative industries have long been studied as a countercultural industry that challenges traditional notions of how to plan strategy. In 2000, Richard E. Caves outlined the principles of what had come to be known as the cultural and creative industries. Key among them was the principle of demand uncertainty. Even with boundless information on past success available to us, nobody knows what will be a hit until it is.² This principle defines an industry where a small number of hits are the product of an enormous number of unsuccessful attempts³ and, among other features, seeks to explain an industry which thrives on constant innovation, diverse skills and iterative testing and development. In this article I will present the case that the cultural and creative industries can provide us with a new lens to view social movement organising and they are in fact the same kind of system, governed by similar forces and requiring a similar approach to achieve desired outcomes.

Creative Collisions and Social Change

In early 2019 I found myself straddling two different worlds. I had just graduated from university where my theatre major had led me into the complex world of cultural and creative industries. Having not long finished a production internship at a major Australian theatre I had unexpectedly entered into the world of cultural economics and was cautiously and slightly reluctantly looking for work in this area. At the same time, my already strong engagement with anti-speciesism and animal rights had taken a turn towards the revolutionary as I shifted from designing workshops on animal rights 101 for teenagers to understanding the history and social sciences behind social movements and civil disobedience.

For a while, my belief in the need for radical social change for animals had been drawing me away from the career in theatre and performance I’d expected when I entered my degree. Which was why I was surprised when these two different worlds started to come together. As I learnt more about social movements and the cultural industries I found the lines between the two becoming blurred. I would find myself underlining a paragraph and excitedly writing ideas about mass mobilisation and movement building, only later realising that I had actually been reading a book about cultural economics. Likewise, I found myself reading books on social movement theory which could have doubled as detailed descriptions of the experience of producing and sharing a cultural good. All of a sudden my two different worlds weren’t looking so different anymore.

While I had always been a big believer in the power of the arts to create radical change in society and the important role they had to play in exposing injustice and visioning alternative systems, I hadn’t before considered whether the political, social and economic context of the cultural and creative industries might offer important insight into how we can push for radical progressive change in society. However, as I investigated the link further I came to strongly believe that, not only are the arts essential for social movements to achieve their aims, cultural industries and social movements are the same kind of system and share a number of key characteristics. Therefore, by exploring the cultural and creative industries and the forces that influence them, we can learn more about how to strategise and plan movements for social justice.

Social Movements and the Cultural Turn

To explain where I’m coming from, let’s first take a look at what a social movement is and how ideas about social movements have changed over time. Social movements can be defined as “informal networks, based on shared beliefs and solidarity, which mobilise about conflictual issues, through the frequent use of various forms of protest.”⁴ Social movements aren’t inherently positive or progressive although the term is most often applied to movements concerned with social justice. The study of social movements stretches back to the 18th century where a campaign started by MP and journalist John Wilkes calling for equal civil liberties for all Englishmen is widely considered to be the first social movement.⁵ In the beginning, those studying social movements believed that they arose out of so-called ‘structural strain,’ meaning that if enough people experienced the same set of grievances, a social movement was likely to form.⁶ This was based in the belief that social movements arose out of emotion and non-rational behaviour and was a form of collective behaviour. However, this failed to take into account a number of factors including the fact that in the vast majority of cases, social movements didn’t form, even when large numbers of people were in conditions of suffering.⁷

In the 1970s and 80s, this view gave way to schools of thought that focused on both rational action and structural opportunity. Thinkers during this time were influenced by the civil rights and anti-war movements and reflected that social movements seemed to form in the places which had the ability to mobilise the right resources including time, money and people.⁸ Additionally, it was believed that social movements required the correct political opportunity to be successful, meaning, essentially, that the time had to be right. While this built and developed on the thinking of previous decades, it wasn’t adequate to explain the sudden surge of social movements in the 1990s and early 2000s. These movements included the Serbian Otpor movement (1998–2000) and the Arab Spring (early 2010s), which formed and organised in ways which made apparent the critical role of culture and framing and signalled a cultural turn in social movement theory.⁹

These movements spawned a school of thought known as new social movement theory which saw social movements as cultural processes which formed around a successful ‘injustice frame.’¹⁰ It began to be understood that, in order for a social movement to be successful, ideas must have “cultural resonance”¹¹ and that the movements were able to mobilise people who a) perceived a degree of urgency, b) perceived that there was a good chance of success and c) could see the first steps.¹² Additionally, and crucially for me, in a departure from previous ways of thinking about movements which tried to predict and map when they would occur, new social movement theory accepted that we cannot predict the occurrence of a social movement or its outcome. So, if we don’t know what is going to spark a social movement or if it’s going to win, how do we plan and strategise? Well, luckily for us, there happens to be another segment of society which exists in a constant state of uncertainty. Yup, you guessed it: the cultural and creative industries.

The Cultural and Creative Industries

So if social movements are cultural enterprises let’s learn a little bit about what we know about how the cultural industries work. But first off, it’s worth defining what I mean when I talk about cultural and creative industries. Coined by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, the term cultural industries was originally used as a criticism of what they saw as a move towards commercialisation and homogenisation of art and culture.¹³ Since then the definition has evolved, along the way picking up creativity to eventually recognise the cultural and creative industries as

“Those sectors of organised activity that have as their main objective the production or reproduction, the promotion, distribution or commercialization of goods, services and activities of content derived from cultural, artistic or heritage origins.”¹⁴

Crucially for us, these industries have been explained and understood by applying a set of rules the most well known of which were theorised by Richard E. Caves in 2000. While I would love to go into all of these rules in detail, for the sake of brevity, I will stick to exploring the three which I think have the most relevance and implication for social movements.

1. The Nobody Knows Principle. In the cultural industries, it’s impossible to know if something is going to be successful until it’s out in the public sphere, at which point most of the costs of production (money, time, capacity) have already been sunk. You can know that your audience likes action movies and know that the last action movie made was incredibly successful, yet you cannot know if the action movie you’re making will be successful until it’s finished and you see how people react to it. Similarly, social movements show us that we can never really predict when a moment of mass mobilisation and energy for change will arise, even if we study all the times it’s happened before and recreate the same conditions. Sure, doing these things help, however it’s impossible to accurately predict what will spark a social movement and what will go unnoticed. Like with culture, after the fact there will be many who think they can explain exactly why that enterprise struck fire while others fell flat; however hindsight isn’t all too helpful when we’re trying to change the future.
2. The ‘Art for Art’s Sake’ principle. In short, creative workers care about what they are producing — they would likely be doing what they were doing anyway, regardless of if they get paid for it. For instance, a visual artist will make art out of a sense of “inner necessity,”¹⁵ even if they are unable to make a living from it. Similarly, social movement participants take part and even become deeply involved in organising because of a sense of what is right and of what they must do, even though involvement often comes at a personal, social and financial cost. While this is what gives both the creative industries and social movements their power and diversity, it can also mean that limited resources are invested in strategising about what people actually want and need, meaning that, in both cases, there is the risk of insularity.
3. The Motley Crew principle refers to how cultural and creative projects require diversely skilled inputs where each skilled input “must perform at or above some level of proficiency and conformance for a viable product to result.”¹⁶ This means that in order for a project to be successful it needs a group of highly skilled people to work together until an outcome is achieved, with team cooperation a requirement of achieving an outcome. Once again this is also a feature of social movements where a variety of different skills are necessary for successful realisation of a goal such as building a movement organisation, planning a mass protest or developing a campaign. What really draws the cultural and creative industries and social movements together here is the necessity of collaboration across skills within a shared timeline, a feature which leads to challenges such as coordinating teams of people with conflicting schedules and finding people with the right skills who are willing to commit to the project until completion.

What Does This Mean for Movements?

I’ve made the case that the cultural and creative industries and social movements share a number of features which make them a similar kind of social force. Specifically, I believe that these features shape the effect and the impact of both forces on society. The question at this point might however be, so what? Why does it matter if cultural products and social movements share characteristics and why, as social movement organisers, should we care? I’ll finish this post by sharing my top three strategic implications for social movements which should compel those concerned with social change to understand and engage with the cultural and creative industries.

One — We can’t plan this out.

In the last few years literature around social change has boomed with books offering blueprints, golden rules and formulas for how transformational change can be achieved.¹⁷ While I myself have benefited from these resources and I believe that they have an important role to play in inspiring and informing movement leaders and participants, I believe the idea of being able to plan a movement from start to finish is misguided and doomed to failure. This is supported by research looking into the formation of social movements over time, referenced in this article, and from reading the accounts of social movement leaders today. Instead, movements are constantly growing and evolving and require innovation, resilience and persistence to try a million things that fail before hitting on the one thing that sparks a moment of mass mobilisation and potential for change. Just like in the cultural and creative industries where, to paraphrase creative industries expert Nicholas Garnham, a huge number of unsuccessful attempts are needed to strike upon a tiny number of hits,¹⁸ social movements are defined by their successes, while what didn’t work is often forgotten or brushed over. We can learn from how cultural industries workshop ideas, creating spaces for creative thinking and building in testing into their production design. We can also learn from how creative workers maintain focus and dedication even in the face of rejection and uncertainty of outcome. Which brings me onto my next point which is that,

Two — We need artistic leadership in social movements!

I am not alone in valuing the contribution of creative people to social movements. Artists are often praised and celebrated for how they bring movements to life through striking visuals, music and performance. However, what I am proposing goes beyond incorporating art into action design and the image of a movement. I believe that artists and creative workers should be sought out for movement leadership and that creative thinking and experience should be valued as high, if not higher, than analytical thinking. My reasoning is this: If we are to accept that social movements are in fact the same kind of system as cultural and creative production and, if we are to accept that the category of social occurence that they both occupy is distinct to other industries and forces, then it makes sense to seek out those with experience working in the cultural and creative industries as movement leaders. These people will understand what it’s like to work in unstable and rapidly evolving environments and will likely have built up resilience and skills to manage uncertainty. Cultural and creative workers are often familiar with the need to work with a variety of people to achieve a shared outcome and understand collaboration and commitment. Additionally, the crossover between creatives and social movement participants as a segment in society is undoubtable. Like activists, artists frequently play a role of challenging the status quo, resisting dominant discourse and living outside mainstream economic systems of society. In fact a description of artists by Pierre-Michel Menger could equally apply to those involved in social movements:

“Artists as an occupational group are on average younger than the general workforce, are better educated, tend to be more concentrated in a few metropolitan areas, show higher rates of self-employment, higher rates of unemployment and of several forms of constrained underemployment (nonvoluntary part-time work, intermittent work, fewer hours of work), and are more often multiple job holders”¹⁹

By engaging artists and empowering them as movement leaders we can increase our strategic capacity and potential for innovation, as well as bring our social movements to life.

Three — We need to change the story so we need to understand how stories are told.

One important role social movements play is shifting the dominant discourse in society.²⁰ In order to do this we need a vision of what an alternative world can look like, one that is irresistible enough for people to take action to achieve it. Art and culture provide us with a powerful tool to develop this vision, as we have seen them do in many other movements. From the radical hope expressed through gospel music during the civil rights movement to Banksy paintings on Israeli walls in occupied Palestine, art allows a glimpse of another future and gives people the energy and passion to fight for it.

By understanding the cultural and creative industries and by embedding the role of artistic and creative leaders into our movements, we can find new ways to evolve, adapt and prevail, like the arts have in the face of changing technology and social conditions. In this article I’ve put forward the idea that, rather than just being a nice addition to movements, artists and cultural and creative workers are invaluable assets to movement spaces. I’ve also stated that all those working to build social change would benefit from gaining an understanding of the cultural and creative industries as they can offer us invaluable insight into how social movements form and achieve their goals. Building a movement for justice of any kind cannot be achieved through following a formula. It’s a creative process which needs innovation, dedication, perseverance, creativity and a good deal of luck. By learning about other forces in society that operate in a similar arena of uncertainty, we can improve our ability to plan strategy and develop approaches to actions and campaigns that have the most chance of striking fire and opening a window to shift the conversation and lead to social transformation. Our movements are creative endeavours and through them we can build an irresistible future.

End Notes

¹Bate, Robert and Bevan 2004, 10
²Caves 2000, 2
³Garnham 2005, 15–29

⁴ Della Porta & Diani 1999, 16
⁵ Rudbeck 2012, 581–601
⁶ Crossley 2002
⁷ Gurney and Tierney 1982, 33–47.
⁸ McCarthy and Zald 1977, Oberschall 1973 and Tilly 1978
⁹ Westd 2004, 265–276
¹⁰ Ryan and Gamson 2006
¹¹ Bate, Robert and Bevan 2004, 16
¹² Bate, Robert and Bevan 2004, 36

¹³ Horkheimer and Adorno 1982
¹⁴ UNESCO 2022
¹⁵ Caves 2000, 4
¹⁶ Caves 2000, 5
¹⁷ Popovic 2015, Engler and Engler 2016, Hallam 2016
¹⁸ Garnham 2005, 15–29.
¹⁹ Menger 1999, 545
²⁰ Benford and Snow 2000, 611–639

References

Bate P, Robert G, Bevan H, 2004. Towards a million change agents: a review of the social movements literature: implications for large scale change in the NHS. NHS Modernisation

Benford, R. D., & Snow, D. A. 2000. Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 611–639. http://www.jstor.org/stable/223459

Caves, R. 2000. Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass)

Davies, J. C. 1962. Toward a theory of revolution. American Sociological Review, 27, 5–19

Della Porta D and Diani M. 1999. Social movements: an introduction. Oxford; Blackwell

Engler M, Engler P. 2016. This is an uprising : how nonviolent revolt is shaping the twenty-first century. Nation Books New York

Europa Regina. 2022. UNESCO. [online] Available at: <https://europaregina.eu/organizations/igos/united-nations/unesco/#:~:text=UNESCO%20defines%20cultural%20and%20creative,or%20heritage%2Drelated%20nature.%E2%80%9D> [Accessed 3 June 2022].

Garnham, N. 2005. From cultural to creative industries: An analysis of the implications of the ‘creative industries’ approach to arts and media policy making in the United Kingdom. International Journal of Cultural Policy, vol.11, no.1, pp.15–29.

Gurney, J. N., & Tierney, K. J. 1982. Relative deprivation and social movements: A critical look at twenty years of theory and research. Sociological Quarterly, 23, 33–47.

Gurr, T. R. 1970. Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hallam R. 2016. How To Win! Successful Procedures and Mechanisms for Radical Campaign Groups. Web. Accessed 9/06/22. https://radicalthinktank.wordpress.com/2015/12/08/how-to-win-successful-procedures-and-mechanisms-for-radical-campaign-groups/

Horkheimer, M & Adorno T. W. 1982. Dialectic of enlightenment. New York: Continuum.

McCarthy, J. D., & Zald, M. N. 1977. Resource mobilization and social movements: A partial theory. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 1212–1241

Menger, PM. 1999. Artistic Labour Markets and Careers. Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 25, pp 541–74.

Oberschall, A. 1973. Social conflict and social movements. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall

Popovic, Srdja. 2015. Blueprint for revolution : how to use rice pudding, Lego men, and other nonviolent techniques to galvanize communities, overthrow dictators, or simply change the world. Miller, Matthew I., 1979- (First ed.). New York. ISBN 9780812995305. OCLC 878500820.

Rudbeck, J. 2012. Popular sovereignty and the historical origin of the social movement. Theory and Society, 41(6), 581–601. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23363422

Ryan, Charlotte, and William A. Gamson. 2006. The Art of Reframing Political Debates. Contexts 5, no. 1, 13–18. https://doi.org/10.1525/ctx.2006.5.1.13.

Tilly, C. 1978. From mobilization to revolution. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Westd, David. 2004. New Social Movements. Handbook of Political Theory: 265–276. doi:10.4135/9781848608139.n20. ISBN 9780761967880

This time last week I was sitting in bed on my second full day in London, looking on in horror as story after story detailed the devastation of the country I had just left. Australia was on fire, Melbourne had become a city choked in smoke and everywhere the camera turned it was capturing scenes of destruction, death and despair. I felt… heartbroken, but also strangely detached as I prepared for my first day at Animal Rebellion, the organisation which I’d made the radical, around-the-world move to volunteer full-time for. I remember thinking; ‘in a few years, this kind of thing probably won’t shock us anymore,’ a thought that terrified me to my very core.

The reality is, what’s happening in Australia as I write this really is just the beginning. The science (of which I am no expert) tells us in no uncertain terms that the advent of extreme weather events will increase drastically over the next 10–20 years, with extended fire seasons, drought, flooding and other devastating natural occurrences becoming the norm rather than the exception. On Friday, I attended my first rally in my new role at Animal Rebellion, delivering a speech in front of Australia House demanding that the government take action and make radical change, fast. I believe in the words that I spoke; but I believe in something else even more.

While in the system that we live in, our government has extraordinary power, there is one group that has even more. Us. We number in the billions and this is our home. If we include all the Animals who are constantly resisting against the tyranny of the few humans who choose to ravage this earth we are trillions strong. We can make a change, we can create new systems that can use the skills of diverse communities to weather the storms that are coming our way but, I’m afraid to say, we can’t do that from our comfortable couches in front of the TV.

It’s inevitable. The world is going to change. Fast. It’s probably going to get a lot worse. All of the things that seem so important now like earning money for our retirement, saving for a house or climbing the corporate ladder will probably not matter so much when fires begin to rampage through our cities or rivers break their banks, flooding ports and harbours. But there are some things that will always matter. Connection, family, love and laughter are what we have that we will never lose. But we have to fight to make sure there’s a world left to enjoy these in.

I’m fully aware that everyone’s circumstances are different and that not everyone has the privilege to drop everything to be a full time animal and climate ally like I’ve been lucky enough to manage to do at this stage. What I’m saying is not that we must deprive ourselves and live purely in a state of constant grief and despair, indulging in nothing that brings us joy because it’s not helping end this catastrophe. What I am saying though is that we are heading towards a radical change in the world that we live in and we need to start preparing now. Now is the time to break down systems of oppression in our communities so, when crisis hits, our most marginalised don’t suffer. Now is the time to quit the job you hate and find the thing that you love which brings joy to yourself and your community and now is the time to build loving, interspecies communities in which people will have each others backs during the trials ahead.

As I said in my speech, this may be the start of the apocalypse but it is also the start of the resistance. We have the tools to survive this. We have the tools to build a new world and we have the tools to bring vulnerable communities, including Animals, along with us.

But we need to start laying the foundations. Yesterday.

Thank you and I hope you keep reading!
Harley

At the beginning of this month, I had the privilege of speaking at the Liberated Futures conference held in Melbourne. Organised by the Institute for Critical Animal Studies Oceania (ICAS) and Collectively Free — Kulin Nations, the conference brought together academics, allies and advocates to share thoughts, ideas and visions of a liberated future for Animals and animals.* I was lucky enough to speak on both of the two days, facilitating a panel on the Saturday which focused on how Animal justice allies can build coalitions with other movements and presenting a one hour workshop on the Sunday. While the panel pulled together wonderfully knowledgeable and talented people and it was an absolute privilege to be able to be a part of it, this post will focus on the workshop I facilitated which shares a title with this article. If you are interested in checking out the panel, you can find it here.

For my workshop on Sunday, I presented on the topic of trauma and how we can accept our own and others trauma and allow for healing and growth while living in an inherently painful reality. Below you can find the first section of my talk where I lay out the journey I have been on to understand my own trauma and how this led me to present on this topic in this way. After the video I will explain a bit about what happened next and attempt to capture some of the magic that seemed to develop in that room during our one hour together.

The 3 Cs

As I mentioned in my introduction, this presentation was very much an experiment and I was unsure how it would be received. What if people don’t want to play music or make art? I wondered anxiously. What if people just sit in the seating bank and talk? What if I’m asking too much and it’s a horrible experience for people who feel they have to perform? On and on I fretted, a stream of anxiety which left me thoroughly unprepared for what actually happened.

As soon as I set up the four zones, people began to move, separating almost equally between the locations. In fact, apart from the sleep zone which was occupied by only 1–3 people, each zone ended up being almost crowded as people eagerly took up the opportunity to talk, laugh, create and sing. Soon after I finished speaking, the air was filled with the sound of singing and guitar, the gentle hum of art materials scratching on paper and murmured conversation and the laughter and raw vulnerability of the sharing group. As the session went on, my heart became lighter as I recognised in the people around me the same desire to rediscover their whole selves and the same struggle to do so in a world which expects you to never fully be complete. Every day we are asked to sacrifice parts of ourselves in order to be more productive, more compassionate, more responsible or more adult. During this session I saw people embrace the opportunity to halt the constant struggle to be more or better, instead accepting themselves and each other as they were. With this acceptance and readiness for imperfection, we managed to create in our short time together an overwhelming energy of vulnerability, community and love.

As the session culminated in an unexpected whole group singalong, it struck me how rare these opportunities to just exist are and yet how right they feel when they happen. In embracing the 3 Cs of Community, Connection and Creativity, we’re not developing a new skill or trying out a new hobby, we are re-finding qualities and desires that exist in all of us and creating time and space to allow them to be heard.

What ways do you practice the 3 Cs in your life? Have you participated in something similar? Please join the conversation in the comments below.

If anyone is interested in running a similar session or in having one facilitated for your organisation, group or self please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

*If you want to understand the difference between Animal and animal, check out my previous blog post Justice for Who? — Finding a Language of Liberation (Part 1).

Thank you and I hope you keep reading!
Harley

Language is a marvellous, and marvellously complex, creation. It shapes the world we live in, constructing opinion and perspective, revealing and erasing and framing our past and present. While a picture may speak a thousand words, words are still the default when it comes to describing what we see and communicating what we know. Although it is often cited that only 7% of communication is verbal, the reality is a lot more complex, with language undoubtedly shaping the way we understand and interact with the world around us. If you need proof, think about the last great speech or performance you heard. Sure, the speakers demeanour, body language, tone and action undoubtedly played a large part in making it great but what do you remember about it? Do you remember the gesture she made at 3 minutes in or do you remember that key quote repeated as a motif throughout? Do you remember the exact mise-en-scene of a shot in your favourite movie or do you remember the lines spoken by the actors? Language is powerful and it has staying power meaning that the words we use to characterise or describe something can come to define what we are talking about. For this reason, paying attention to what we say is critical, particularly in today’s digital age where more and more information is consumed online and often in text form.

Language fascinates me and for the past few years I have been on a quest to attempt to develop a language of liberation. What I mean by this is that I regularly scour my vocabulary, teasing apart the words and phrases that I use in order to reveal the hidden oppressive structures buried at their hearts and then reforming them into non-oppressive, liberated prose. It’s an ongoing, imperfect work in progress which I expect to be working on my whole life but each new discovery helps me deconstruct the ways in which my brain has been shaped by oppressive structures and carve out new pathways which challenge our current society. In this series I plan to share some of the changes that I have made to my language and the linguistic choices that I have made in the hopes that others will find it helpful in their own journey towards building a liberated language and a liberated world.

This week I will be tackling the amorphous term animal, detailing the evolution my language has gone through whilst attempting to discover a word that aptly refers to animals oppressed by humans.

A is for Animal

For a long time I have been part of the, often circuitous discussion about what is the right way to refer to animals who are not of the species homo-sapien. Like many animal justice advocates, I quickly rejected the term animal because, as is often stated, humans are animals too, so to refer to non-human animals as animals but not include humans in this category is to deny humans their animality and, therefore, to buy into the same kind of human exceptionalism that leads to speciesism in the first place. With this baseline understanding I entered into the murky realm of ‘other animals’ and ‘non-human animals’ a dual usage that has defined the way I speak about animals exploited by humans for the past two years. Lately though I started to challenge this use of language leading me to ultimately decide to retire both from my vocabulary. In the case of ‘other animals’ this was primarily a simple matter of clarity. While its common use within animal justice circles almost assures understanding when it is spoken, outside of these circles it quickly becomes confusing. Without any reference points, ‘other’ becomes meaningless, rendering the term ‘other animals’ entirely useless as it could refer to any animal at all depending on who is characterised by ‘other.’ After all, if we place chipmunks at the centre of our discussion, humans become other animals. As for ‘non-human animals,’ while technically accurate to refer to those animals discussed in animal justice spaces, this term is often justly criticised for its centring of humans and for its problematic way of characterising all other species by their relationship to homo sapien. In this way, ‘non-human animals’ falls into the same trap as the original term ‘animals,’ that we were trying to avoid, by reinforcing human exceptionalism and othering all other animals.

So what term should we use? For me, I have been guided by the works of writers such as Aph and Syl Ko and Sunaura Taylor who encourage a view of oppression that sees subjugation tied not to biological categories but to political ones. This view has been used to reframe whiteness as referring to a political status rather than a skin colour and has also been applied to the concept of ‘animal’ to explain how animalisation acts as a political tool used to justify the marginalisation of certain groups including farmed animals and some humans (e.g. people of colour and people with disabilities). For this reason, I have decided to return to using the word animal to describe animals oppressed by humans, but to differentiate this political definition of the word from the biological one through the addition of a capital A at the beginning. In conversation, this can be communicated by making a triangle shape with your thumbs and pointer fingers to indicate a capital A or by simply saying ‘capital A Animal’ if visual cues are unable to be used. My reasoning for this choice is to centre Animals as a politically categorised group who have been deemed marginal by the dominant group (white, cis, able-bodied, heterosexual humans). While other groups who are animalised may reject the use of the term Animal to describe them and this term should only be used to refer to animals of species other than human at this stage, by reframing Animal as a political category we can deconstruct the notion that speciesism is, at its heart based inherently on species. It is not the fact that a pig is a pig that makes a human kill them, it is the fact that humans have deemed pigs second-class citizens. By making this simple change to our language we can begin to move beyond biological categories, a process which can and will significantly shift the language and tone of liberation towards systemic not individual change. After all, biological prejudice is based in our brains but political prejudice is based in a system; and the system can change.

Thank you and I hope you keep reading!
Harley

Justice for Who? — Finding a Language of Liberation (Part 1) was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ever since I can remember, I have loved to read. As a child I used to escape into fantasy worlds, closing myself in my bedroom for hours on end as I lost myself in adventures, danger and magic. I hungered for possibility and connection and used books as a way to facilitate the desire I felt to escape my present and imagine a different future. As I’ve grown up, my love for books has stayed with me but, these days, I rarely use them as an escape. More often, books have become a way for me to ground myself in my present and rewire my brain to imagine a radical future. Through the words of activists, academics and ordinary people who happen to represent or champion a marginalised group, I have found my perspective of the world we live in continuously challenged, allowing me to grow and reform as a more aware, determined and sensitive person in this world. I still have a long way to go, and many more words to absorb but, at this stage of my life I wanted to share five of the books that have radically and irreversibly changed the way I think and approach activism and life.

This list is by no means comprehensive and there are many MANY more books and writers who have had a massive impact on the way I view the world and my place in it. However, these books form the cornerstones of my current worldview, having created new networks of thought which have sent my brain down brand new, paths or, succinctly clarified and articulated what I felt but was never able to put into words. It is my hope that by sharing these books with others their transformative power will continue to ripple through our movement, creating something that is rich with perspective, insight and growth. These books are listed in no particular order of importance as each of them has changed my thinking in such unique ways.

1. White Tears, Brown Scars — Ruby Hamad

The most recent book on this list, I read ‘White Tears, Brown Scars’ (WTBR) as part of a feminist book club that I am a part of. Written in September 2019 by Arab-Australian writer and journalist Ruby Hamad, WTBR explores the complex, often fraught relationship between white supremacy and feminism, detailing the ways in which white centric feminism contributes to the erasure and increased marginalisation of communities and, in particular, women of colour. As a white woman, WTBR shone a bright, glaring light on my own duplicity with oppressive systems, highlighting the way in which by belonging to the identity category ‘white woman’ my position in society was situated just below white men, a place that affords me and other white women far more privilege than we often like to admit, even in feminist spaces.

Since reading this book I have been struck anew with the critical obligation white people have to understand and deconstruct white supremacy in all it’s appearances and the importance for activists from all movements to take the time to educate themselves on their own privilege and sit back and listen to the voices of those experiencing marginalisation and oppression. WTBR taught me to listen, shelve the defensiveness and indignation that observations of complicity often bring and do the work it takes to break down oppressive power systems that exist in society, my community and my own brain.

2. Beasts of Burden — Sunaura Taylor

For a long time I have imagined myself as someone involved in the fight against oppression and exploitation. Injustice frightens and enrages me and I can’t imagine a life where I am not in some way challenging systems of oppression in my life and work. Despite this passion however, I was injuriously ignorant to the movement against ableism having not taken the time to educate myself on the fight for equal rights and consideration that people with disabilities, their carers and their families are constantly engaged in. Written by the wonderful artist and activist Sunaura Taylor, ‘Beasts of Burden,’ was therefore a humbling, enlightening and inspiring journey into rights based activism and what a liberated world might look like.

‘Beasts of Burden’ sets out to explore speciesism from a disability rights perspective, drawing connections between the ‘animalisation’ of humans who society deems worthless or ‘abnormal’ and that of Animals who humans choose to exploit for their gain. Through insightful analysis and refreshing honesty, Taylor provided one of the most nuanced and informative analyses of the complexity of system based oppression that I have ever read, expertly conveying how marginalisation of all individuals is built from the same toxic power structures of patriarchal, white supremacist, speciesist capitalism. Taylor is a master storyteller and this book not only provided me with a more solid understanding of its subject matter but taught me valuable lessons about interpreting and scrutinising my own life and the way I interact with, uphold and am both uplifted and subjugated by societal structures. I read this book a couple of years ago now but it remains the no. 1 book that I recommend to people who want to learn more about radical politics, speciesism or who are just looking for their next holiday read. What can I say, I’m probably not the best person to ask for recommendations if you just want to zone out with some chick lit. Although I am very prone to do that as well…

3. Oxen at the Intersection — pattrice jones

In September of 2018 I was spending two weeks as a live in volunteer at Big Sky Sanctuary. While my time was spent living with and learning from the human and Animal residents of the sanctuary, I also found myself with a lot of downtime, unconstrained as I was by the expectations that capitalism brings. On a particularly slow day I decided to raid the bookshelf in my room and discovered ‘Oxen at the Intersection.’ My interest piqued, I began to read and quickly became enthralled in the story of the oxen Bill and Lou and the human residents of Vine Sanctuary.

This book gripped me from the very first page, weaving a tale which was part memoir, part sociological inquiry, part mystery and entirely captivating. While I have read many books that attempt to capture and explain the complex interrelation of speciesism and other systemic oppression, Oxen stands apart as it was the first text that introduced me to the importance of understanding the narrative of oppression, not just the facts, feelings and systems that are at play. The way this book is written as well as the message imbedded within to never forget the actual victims of oppression when attempting to challenge a corrupt system, guided me down a path that has led me to develop a keen interest in story based strategy, a form of activism which embraces narrative as key to changing society. Oxen is a heartbreaking, enlightening and eerie story which simultaneously engages the heart and the brain. Reading this book surrounded, as I was at the time, by Animals who had freed themselves or been freed from situations of exploitation I began to understand my role as an ally to these freedom fighters, shaking loose the sense of ego and saviourism that so often accompanies an entry into activism.

4. Aphroism — Aph & Syl Ko

A couple of years ago I was a very new activist. Even more naive than I am today I was, nonetheless, thirsty for knowledge having only recently begun to understand the way in which systemic oppression operated. Those who knew me back then would probably remember my endless, stream of consciousness babble-fests where I detailed the realisations that I had come to about how ALL INEQUALITY IS LINKED and how CAPITALISM IS EVIL!!! I can’t help but smile when I think about the dual horror and excitement that I felt during this time as I discovered more and more connections. I felt like an archaeologist uncovering an ancient ruin, excavating the roots of a society piece by piece and marvelling at its horrifying, twisted glory. It was during this time that I was introduced to the works of sisters Aph and Syl Ko and my thinking changed forever.

Up until this point I had understood racism in quite vague and sketchy terms. Back then I would have been heard saying that the ‘vegan movement’ (as I was prone to calling it) was too white however if questioned why that was an issue I would likely have said something about diversity and inclusivity and then changed the subject to the latest vegan products at the supermarket. What can I say, I was young. ‘Aphroism’ was therefore an undoubtedly seminal text for me as it introduced me to the concept of Black Veganism and, crucially, to the idea of whiteness being a political rather than biological category. While this is undoubtedly obvious to most people reading this, at the time this concept was life altering for me, reshaping how I saw the world and how I understood my place in it. Through its exploration of the entanglement of race and species I also started to recognise Animal as being a political category, not based in species but based on who the dominant group decides is worthy of oppression.

‘Aphroism’ began a journey that has led me to continue to work to deconstruct white supremacy in my mind, leading me to build on my knowledge through the works of Ruby Hamad (listed above) and, recently, Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin who edited the book ‘How we Fight White Supremacy.’ Aphroism marked a beginning for me and, without it, I doubt I would have ever moved beyond a view of the world based in biological rather than political categories.

5. Blueprint for Revolution — Srdja Popovic

This brings me to the final book of the five, ‘Blueprint for Revolution.’ Written by Serbian activist and organiser Srdja Popovic, Blueprint details the successful techniques used by the Serbian resistance movement Otpor which successfully overthrew a dictator in 2000. In Blueprint, Popovic describes the way in which Otpor formed and how the curated lessons from past social movements to create a new model of organising which has come to be known as Momentum Driven Organising. Using examples from all over the world Popovic details how to utilise momentum to overthrow oppressive regimes and the unstoppable power that people can have when they learn how to play the system off against itself and understand what keeps it standing and where its weaknesses lie.

While I had already learnt some of the principles of this style of organising from the text ‘Rules for Revolutionaries’ by Becky Bond and Zack Exley and shortly after read Mark and Paul Engler’s highly detailed analysis and guide to momentum organising in ‘This is an Uprising,’ the reason that ‘Blueprint for Revolution’ makes this list and those other ones do not has everything to do with the energy, urgency and belief in change that soaks every line. Popovic was one of the key founders of Otpor and he achieved what every social movement organiser dreams of having been part of a successful upheaval of the status quo that united the people behind a common goal. Additionally, Popovic has also gone on to work with uprisings and resistance movements all over the world, playing a critical role in many attempts to overthrow oppressive regimes including the well known colour revolutions. This book is not a dry, academic exploration of an organising method, it is alive with the spirit of revolution and it struck the match that lit the fire for change that now burns within me. This book has been so influential on me that Otpor (which means resistance) has shot to number one on my furbaby name list. So the next person I adopt better resign themselves to being named after a Serbian resistance movement. There are worse fates.

Collectively, these books as well as many others have formed the foundations for the way I think today. I’m grateful for all the people who recommended them and listened to me gush about their influence on me, without that I very much doubt that I would have anywhere near as strong a foundation to grow my thinking from.

Do you have a book that changed the way you think? Feel free to share in the comments section below!

5 Books That Changed the Way I Think was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, I had one of those strange experiences of confluence which, when they occur, are almost enough to make me believe that the universe is trying to tell me something. In this case, a series of related events have sparked new realisations about the way I live, thrive and survive and how our society has the potential to both enable and hinder our individual wellbeing.

The first of these experiences occurred at last month’s Animal Activists Forum where I happened to find myself attending a session on burnout presented by Ashlee Louise. Funnily enough, I had not originally intended to attend that session as I felt that my knowledge of burnout was fairly comprehensive, having attended activist focused workshops on the topic in the past as well as having organised sessions on burnout and self-care for activist youth through Young Voices for Animals. So it was with some reticence that I decided to go along, reasoning that it was a topic worth showing support for, even if I myself wasn’t particularly interested. Typically, the very session that I was sure I wouldn’t learn anything new from ended up being the most informative session I went to across the whole conference and the one that remains in my thoughts weeks down the track. While the whole presentation was presented with such incredible insight and vulnerability, what particularly resonated with me was a single statement which could have easily have been lost amidst the flow of information.

The comment came when Ashlee was discussing the difference between stress and burnout, stating that it lies in the way that stress is feeling too much pressure while burnout presents as the opposite, often manifesting as a feeling of emptiness, ineffectiveness or constant need to seek out more and more work. In that way, burnout is a self-perpetuating cycle as the deeper you get into it, the more burnt out you become as the conditions that caused the burnout in the first place replicate and escalate. Hearing this I was hit by what felt almost like a physical blow as thousands of thoughts, feelings and behaviours reordered themselves in my mind, and a sense of clarity arose out of the chaos my emotions had been for so long. For the first time, my constant anxiety over having free time, my inability to find peace when I was doing tasks I deemed non-productive and the stress and pressure I felt to excel made sense. I realised something that probably should have been obvious to me but that I had missed for a long time, misdirected as I was by my already existing mental health complications. I was burnt out. Badly. But, I also realised that I was already starting to figure out how to heal.

This second realisation also came from the same strange confluence; in this case the book I happened to be reading at the time off the conference, plucked off the shelf of my library at random a week earlier because I recognised the author. The book was Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak and it detailed the lives of five brothers, their parents and those that they loved and lost. As the name suggests, a recurring theme throughout the novel was that of bridges, with the act of building a physical bridge working as a metaphor for healing and reconnecting after trauma. Again, I was initially sceptical of this novel but decided to stick with it and, slowly, as I progressed through the sprawling, multi-generational diegesis I became overwhelmed with the book’s themes and characters in a way that tore at my heart. Having recognised my own burnout and struggling to come to terms with grief, loss and trauma I saw myself in the beautifully written characters and begun to learn from their, often tortured, path towards peace. The metaphor of a bridge spoke to me, particularly, drawing out observations and thoughts that I had already begun to have about community and connection and how social isolation can be both a cause and symptom of burnout and trauma.

On the flipside, I began understanding how social connectedness and community building can not only work to generate healing in people but can also be a side-effect of healing, as depression, burnout and other trauma related responses so often lead to social isolation and the disintegration of meaningful relationships. Partly because of this novels influence I gained the courage to begin reaching out to friends again and to take the first steps to heal relationships that I had singed while emotionally unstable, by lashing out or becoming emotionally distant or unavailable. Through doing this I quickly began to realise how crucial the right community is for healing and growth and how, if I focused on developing and maintaining relationships with people I felt good around then each person added to my life, fitting together like a jigsaw piece until the picture of who I was became clearer, positioned as it was as part of a community, not as a solitary piece of the puzzle. We are so often taught that strength comes from being alone but what I’ve learnt recently is that strength flows through many different channels and it is by embracing a diversity of experiences and connections that we can find our strongest self.

This brings me to my final experience, happening once again within weeks of the other two. Earlier this month I attended the Black Palestinian Solidarity Conference a collaboration between Indigenous Australian and Palestinian academic and activists which sought to explore the similarities between the two resistant movements and how each can support the other in their journey towards liberation. This conference was undeniably exceptional and I came away from the three days bursting with new knowledge and, above all, an even greater respect and admiration for the incredible people who are fighting for liberation on their own land. Significantly there was, yet again, a now familiar common theme that was impossible to ignore. Community.

Speaker after speaker talked of the connection they felt to their land and their people and how creating space for community was key not only to resistance but to hope. Hearing of the intergenerational, ongoing trauma that these people confronted on an everyday basis, hope seemed something that couldn’t possibly be common and yet time and time again the same message was repeated. Liberation is possible. We will win. The future will be better. Hearing these incredible, brave people speak of hope and possibility was the last piece of the puzzle for me and I suddenly felt all of these individual situations click together. Burnout, trauma, pain. They are all symptoms of a broken society. A society that puts greed above love, productivity above healing and ambition above justice. A society that forces us to be alone knowing that when we are connected we are strong and when we are strong we resist misery. A society that sees friendships as a distraction from work, that views family as a burden and love as a status symbol. A society that divorces us from our emotions and enforces false desires that reinforce its own spiral of destruction.

We live in a world that is broken but we have at our fingertips the tools to fix it. Connection, compassion, justice. They are things almost all of us value and yet we distance ourselves from them in order to fit into a system that was never meant to accommodate living, breathing, thinking animals. Our system is built on the hope that we would all lose our emotions and become machines. It arose out of the industrial revolution where efficiency became key and automation the answer to the question we never should have asked. All around me I see people who have so much to give beyond their productivity and I see these people struggling to breath in a world that was not meant to be sustainable. Butn I have hope that this system will not last forever. We have the power to change it and change it we will. One bridge at a time.

Burning Out Bridges — My journey towards healing and re-connection was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Tomorrow, thousands of TVs will echo with the sounds of pounding hooves. Tomorrow, the gleaming coats of thoroughbreds will glisten in high definition as humans hungrily watch their heaving sides, urging them to greater efforts. Tomorrow whips will fall on tender flesh and blood will run from nostrils as hearts, bred too big, burst with effort. Tomorrow, someone will win and tomorrow, almost certainly, someone will die.

When I was a kid I used to love watching the Melbourne cup. With the day off school we used to spend it with friends or family, watching the race on TV and drawing names and numbers out of a hat for a friendly bet on the big race. I remember laughing over the horses funny race names, commenting on the jockeys bright coloured silks and picking our favourite horses as they were paraded around before the race began. Afterwards, my Mum and I began a tradition where we took our own horses for a ride around town to celebrate and show them our appreciation. I saw it as a day for horse lovers. A day to celebrate and appreciate what beautiful animals horses were and their incredible talents. Now, it makes me sick.

Like most animal activists, I see the Melbourne Cup as one of the most publicly acceptable and blatant examples of human’s exploitation of other animals. Even putting the massive death toll to one side, forcing horses to run at speeds that far exceed anything they would reach naturally unless their lives were in danger is undeniably wrong on so many levels. But the horrors of the racing industry don’t just stop on the track. Taking a peek behind the scenes, the bloody industry becomes even more horrific as the true reality of what goes into breeding and training race horses becomes apparent. The blatant commodification of horses is rampant in the industry, with hundreds of thousands of healthy horses being murdered every year simply because they’re not fast enough.

One of these horses is known by the name Patrick and he is cared for by my mother. Patrick was deemed unsuitable for racing and so he was sent to the knackery. He was five years old when he was sentenced to death. Horses can live up to 30 years of age. I’ve known Patrick for nearly 7 years and I can not even begin to describe the numerous physical and psychological issues he has had to deal with. Almost all of them can be directly linked back to his time spent racing and the training he was forced through as a young horse.

However, this is not just another article explaining why the Melbourne Cup, and horse racing in general is cruel, outdated and should be banned. While I agree with these points, this is a topic that goes far deeper than that. It goes right to the heart of how most humans see horses in general and, by extension, the nature of speciesism itself. Growing up around horses and exploiting them myself for most of my life, the way humans use and conceptualise horses is a topic that is close to my heart. In this post I hope to lay out some of the thoughts and realisations I have had as I’ve confronted the realities of my own internalised speciesism and that of those around me.

I want to begin by going back to the day when I first realised the extent of my complicity in the species based exploitation of horses. It was late 2016 and I would have been vegan for around 6 months. Although I had readily embraced a belief in the systemic exploitation of other species by humans and the morally unjustifiable nature of the use of animals for human gain, I still struggled to apply this to my relationship with horses. I had been riding since I was three years old and I counted horses I had spent time with as amongst my closest friends. I saw my relationships with them as mutually beneficial, trusting and loving and I fought many internal battles with myself imagining giving up riding.

On this particular day, my Mum and I had gone up to the paddock where our two horse friends Bud and Patrick live to take them out to eat grass, as they had eaten most of the grass in their paddock. I put a halter and lead on Bud, the horse I had been riding for 8 years, and took him outside where the grass was longer and greener. I stood with him for a while before remarking to my Mum how strange it was that he wasn’t eating any of the grass. Mum looked over and remarked nonchalantly that it was probably because I was there. “You trained him well,” she said before returning her attention to Patrick who was happily munching away.

Those words hit me like a physical blow, driving home the fact that I had been avoiding for many months. Despite my love for the horses I had ridden and cared for, despite my insistence that I respected them and despite the ‘bond’ I shared with them, my past was characterised not by a string of mutually beneficial and loving relationships with horses but a trail of broken hearts.

You may be wondering, why a horse not eating in my presence caused such a massive shift in my thinking? Well, the answer goes right to the centre of what is involved in the domestication of horses and what it takes to make them rideable. Horses are highly intelligent and incredibly sensitive animals whose relationships with humans stretches back centuries. Being swift, smart, strong and having a comfortable back, it is not surprising that humans looked at horses and saw an opportunity to exploit them. We are, after all, humans. But, while other domesticated animals such as dogs and cats, have largely had their desired characteristics bred into them through generations of selective breeding, a horses capacity to be ridden has never, and likely will never, come naturally. While many dogs are naturally friendly and loyal and require minimum training to learn how to interact with humans in the way they want them to, I am yet to meet a horse who will allow themselves to be ridden without an intensive training process, often referred to as ‘breaking in.’ I’m not saying that domesticated dogs and cats do not face oppression under humans but what I am saying is that, although horses are often placed in the same privileged domain as these animals, their exploitation is almost always far more intense and impactful than what happens to other animals treated as ‘pets.’

So, what does it take to break in a horse? While there are many different methods and techniques, the heart of it is the same as most other training of animals; to make the abnormal normal and to rewire an individual’s brain to respond unnaturally to environmental stimuli. In the case of most horses, this involves training them out of the instinct to respond with fear and aggression at the sensation of another animal sitting on their back, and conditioning them to respond not to their own brains or instincts but to signals communicated to them by a humans hands and legs. Essentially, it would be similar to conditioning a human to respond to someone pointing a gun to their head by walking forward and embracing the person holding the gun as, under natural conditions, an animal on their back would almost always indicate a threat. It may sound relatively harmless, after all, once the conditioned response has been changed horses aren’t being hurt by being ridden right? However, this line of thinking denies the intense psychological trauma associated with distorting such deeply seated responses. Even more so, the associated effect of decimating a horses autonomy and sense of self is undeniable and its extent impossible to fully comprehend. Although I have never ridden an unbroken horse, in my 15 years of riding I never once rode a horse that did not resist my commands or my presence on their back at at least one point. Often it would happen repeatedly until that horse resigned themselves to the reality that I could control them by causing them discomfort or sometimes even pain or by denying them the opportunity to act autonomously. This might involve refusing to let them eat when I want them to do something, deliberately separating them from their companions to make them more obedient or physically exhausting them if they are ‘playing up’ by forcing them to trot in circles or keep up a fast pace for a long distance.

Writing this I feel sick thinking of the resistance that every horse I have known has shown to being used by humans and the way ‘horse people’ are taught to ignore this. If you’re reading this in shock at my cruelty, I will shock you more by saying that, despite doing all the things I listed above to horses and more — including using crops, restrictive bridles, forcing horses into situations that terrified them, galloping down steep hills on unstable terrain and heavily kicking horses or pulling at their mouth when they wouldn’t do what I wanted — I was often criticised by teachers at Pony Club for being too soft and too kind to the horses I rode. The expectation in horse circles is complete domination and a horse is considered satisfactory only if their rider manages to completely control them and suppress their natural responses to unnatural situations such as show jumping or dressage. A horse who displays natural responses to being dominated e.g. rearing, bucking, biting, kicking or resisting is considered to be ‘playing up’ and the rider is often criticised for not being strict enough. If a horse continues to resist they are often sold or, in many cases, killed if they are declared unrideable and, therefore, worthless. While racing is horrible, the exploitation of horses is deeper and more insidious than many people realise and the true reality of many horses experiences is often rarely spoken of.

Despite how it may seem, this post is not an attack against horse-riders. In fact, many people I’ve met who ride horses are the very same people who provide love, homes and better lives to horses rescued from the racing industries or from other abusive situations. The people I met while riding horses were often the kindest, most compassionate and most genuine people I have ever met and I truly believe that I have witnessed authentic, loving relationships between horses and humans. While I doubt how authentic relationships built on such an unequal power dynamic can be, I have seen time and time again the enormous capacity horses have to forgive and trust, so I do believe that relationships of care and trust can exist between humans and horses, despite the fact that one party is experiencing systemic and individual oppression at the hands of the other. What this post does intend to do is challenge the idea that industries lie at the core of speciesism.

While the racing industry contributes to the exploitation of horses, it is not responsible for itself. Or, to put it more clearly, the racing industry doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it exists because of a story. Industries don’t cause speciesism, speciesism is a dominant narrative which has established the conditions for industries built on the assumption of human superiority. So, tomorrow while the nation stops for a race where the stakes for some are literally life or death, I hope that some people stop and think about the stories that they live their life by. Do they truly reflect your values?

Stories From the Saddle — Reflections on Racing, Riding and Living with Horses was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recently, I’ve observed a couple of situations arising in the animal rights movement which have caused me to contemplate the idea of compromise. The question of whether to compromise on our ethics is something that naturally arises frequently for many activists and we’re often forced to consider it in our daily lives. For animal activists that could look as simple as choosing whether to accept speciesist behaviour by sitting at the same table as someone consuming animal products or reject it and risk social isolation. For me, I often contemplate the idea of compromise while I’m spending time in the country with my parents. Being in a rural, farming community, I’m frequently confronted with blatant examples of animal exploitation such as walking past paddocks of cows who I know will be dead within weeks. By not acting I am undoubtedly compromising on my morals however, I often don’t have another choice.

While this kind of moral compromise happens regularly on a personal level for most people who concern themselves with the struggles of oppressed individuals, it also happens on a movement level, and this is where things begin to get more complicated. Recently, we’ve seen two prominent examples of movement compromise which have caused conversation and, occasionally, accusation to flow freely within the animal rights movement. The first example I speak of occurred earlier this month when the animal agriculture focused branch of Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion announced that they would no longer be blockading Smithfield Meat Market during the October Rebellion. Instead, they declared that they had decided to negotiate with the market to create a plant-based ‘market of the future’ which popped up inside the existing market without shutting it down. While some applauded the group’s decision to negotiate with the market, the move generated enormous backlash, with many criticising Animal Rebellion’s choice to compromise on their original plan and not shut down a site that contributed to, as well as symbolised, the exploitation of animals.

The second example happened just last week when a number of prominent animal rights groups in melbourne chose to withdraw their support from Blockade IMARC, an action to blockade the 2019 International Mining and Resources Conference. In a statement, Animal Activists Australia (AAA) stated that they were “regretfully withdrawing their involvement” with the Blockade due to the decision of some organisers to serve animals as ‘food’ during the event. This, in addition to poor communication and organising, caused AAA to make the decision to no longer actively participate in the Blockade, although they did not discourage individual activists to attend and updated their statement later to commend the Blockade Alliance for their decision to serve vegan lunches.

Both of these examples received negative and positive responses and it is not my intention to weigh in on whether either Animal Rebellion or AAA made the ‘right’ decision in these instances. To highly oversimplify things, these examples show one case of an animal rights group choosing to compromise their morals in order to achieve a strategic win, and another remaining steadfast to their ethics, even if it meant losing an opportunity to “stand in solidarity with human rights and environmental activists” (AAA 2019). Regardless of the outcomes, looking at these cases and the responses to them, a number of questions are raised about our movement and what decisions we might need to make moving forward. While I don’t consider myself an expert on this topic, in this post I wanted to explore the idea of compromise, examining whether it is necessary for our movement in the position that we’re currently in or whether it might serve to dilute our message and prevent us from achieving strategic objectives which actually make a difference for animals exploited by humans. Unfortunately, this post will undoubtedly ask more questions than it answers. However, I hope that it might serve as a starting point for future conversations around this important topic.

It has been frequently observed that, while alliances between human rights groups fighting for different issues are common and the environmental movement is often made up of activists from all different movements, the animal rights movement often sits alone. Alliances between animal rights and other movements are still rare and, in my experience, the frequency of animal activists who do not identify as activists for other causes is a lot higher than in other movements. The reasons for this are many and nuanced and unfortunately I don’t have the time to get into them here. But, what this shows us is that anti-speciesism as a concept is currently not being represented in other activist spaces, to the extent that other forms of oppression are. Why is that? Well, to put it bluntly, one of the reasons this is the case is that animal activists have been historically shit at standing in solidarity with other oppressed groups.

Too many campaigns and activists have used the bodies or suffering of other oppressed groups, such as women or people of colour, in order to advance their own cause and animal activists have frequently undermined the work of vegans of colour, women and queer vegans by only celebrating the achievement of cis-white men and refusing to accept criticisms when they are called out for racist, sexist, transphobic etc. comments or behaviours. Essentially, as melbourne based activist Betty Melon spoke about brilliantly at this year’s Animal Activists Forum (watch her talk here), animal rights activists do not have a good reputation in other movements and, if we want to build alliances, we need to stop supporting bigotry in our movement.

But what does this mean for compromise? Well, if our goal is to build a strong united ‘movement of movements’ where activists from all different movements unite against systemic oppression and exploitation of all kinds, then forming alliances is essential. But, if our reputation is so damaged within other movements because of our past choices, it may be the reality that we will have to put ourselves in positions where we are compromising on our morals in order to ensure anti-speciesist perspectives are being represented. Movements such as Extinction Rebellion and the many different activist causes represented under their banner demonstrate that this movement of movements might be already happening. If we don’t jump on board, we risk animals losing their voice amidst the crowd. As I spoke about in my earlier article, ‘Whose Environment Are We Fighting For? If animal rights activists boycott or withdraw from these spaces, we risk witnessing a future where humans are safer but animals face even more danger than they already do.

Additionally, while it is common to hear animal rights activists to compare speciesism to other forms of systemic oppression such as racism and sexism, when we look at our movement realistically, it becomes obvious that we are in a vastly different position to these other social movements. Although people of colour and women still face systemic oppression and their struggles against this continues every day, the fact that the animal rights movement is yet to secure basic rights for animals exploited by humans or shifted public consciousness to the degree that using animals is seen as undeniably wrong, shows that the movement against speciesism is far behind movements against racism and sexism. These days, while these movements should by no means be considered ‘completed’ they are fighting against something that is generally considered bad by society, whereas the animal rights movement fights against what is still the dominant narrative.

In fact, it would probably be more accurate to compare the animal rights movement to movements against ableism and cis-sexism, two areas which society are lagging behind on, despite the work of many incredible activists. If we are to make this comparison, we can see that activists with disabilities and/or neurodiversity and trans, non-binary and gender queer activists often have to compromise their own moral standards or prefigurative politics in order to be represented in spaces which do not accommodate them. For example, an activist who uses a wheelchair might believe that all buildings should be accessible for all bodies, regardless of ability, however they may compromise this moral standard in order to speak on ableism at an event that is not wheelchair accessible (animal rights and disability rights activist Sunara Taylor speaks of this very situation in her novel Beasts of Burden). Similarly, a trans activist may make an ethical compromise when deciding to attend a protest run by a group whose members have previously been observed making transphobic comments. If we are to examine these movements as a possible mirror for our own, it seems that compromise may in fact be inevitable if we are to ensure anti-speciesism is represented in spaces which currently don’t consider it an issue worthy of discussion. In this case, the actual message does not need to be compromised but ethical compromises may need to be made to ensure it will be heard. But what if animal rights isn’t even on the same level as these movements?

If we take a really long, hard, critical look at the movement against speciesism it might be optimistic to say that we’ve even made it to the point where compromise may be necessary to co-exist with other movements. It may be that we’re so far behind that we may have to compromise on a larger, strategy level scale before our asks are palatable enough for anyone, even progressives. Given the lack of rights given to animals, their continued property status, the normalisation and naturalisation of their exploitation and the frequent denials of their sentience, it may be most accurate to compare the animal rights movement to the movements against racism and sexism; only a couple of hundred years ago. This comparison is drawn brilliantly by Kelly Witwicki from Sentience Institute who, in her report Social Movement Lessons From the British Antislavery Movement: Focused on Applications to the Movement Against Animal Farming, details the many similarities between the British movement for the abolition of slavery (which led the British government to abolish the transatlantic Slave trade in 1807 and human chattel slavery in 1833) and the modern movement against animal farming. If we were to accept that our movement does in fact have more in common with the slavery abolition movement than any modern social justice movement, we might have to face some hard truths about what kind of compromises are ahead of us. The reality is, to get to the point that they have, almost all social movements have made compromises along the way and, while we may exist in the modern age, the comparatively archaic way animals are viewed by society may necessitate ethical compromises on a large scale in order to reach strategic milestones.

However it is worth considering whether the very act of compromise has in fact held past social movements back. Despite making momentous and significant progress, the social movements we hold up today as successes have rarely ever really ‘won.’ While the suffragettes achieved the right for women to vote, women are still oppressed by an intensely patriarchal society and gender based violence has reached such shocking levels in Australia that it’s no longer a surprise to hear about another woman being murdered by a man. Similarly, while the Civil Rights movement successfully led to the end of segregation laws in America, black people still face heavy discrimination with issues such as policy brutality, sexual assault, imprisonment and many more disproportionately affecting these communities. The fact is, while it’s great to look to past social movements for guidance, there is no guidebook on how to bring about systemic change and even movements who have achieved this on some level still struggle to break the systems of oppression.

Additionally, while our movement may lack maturity and progress, it also exists in a vastly different time to other movements for radical social change. Thanks to the work of activists before us, social justice and social progress is more normal and activism, at least in many countries, is often accepted to a certain degree. While this may make it harder to make an impact, it also means that radical messages aren’t as shocking as they would have been 200 years ago and holding strong opinions not as strange. There is the risk that if we compromise now it could lead to more compromise later down the line as our message becomes more diluted. This carries real danger as, being an ally movement, those we are fighting for are unable to weigh in on when we’ve gone too far.

As promised, this post does not seek to offer answers, merely more questions to contribute to this discussion. While it can be uncomfortable to discuss compromising on our morals, especially when we’re speaking on behalf of others, I believe that if these conversations don’t happen within our movement we’ll begin to crack and break from the inside. We’re all doing what we think is best to advance this movement and create a world free from species based oppression but we’re never going to win through deconstructionist thinking and tearing each other down. By thinking critically and constructively we can engage in valuable dialogue about questions that affect this movement, those who it fights for and the world as a whole.