Build Your Own Abolitionist Group

Your blog isn't my soapbox, I apologize. So I need to think about how to address what my concerns are in a respectful and restrained way on my own blog.

I have worked for a number of animal organizations and I've been involved in the founding of more than one. I've supported and volunteered for number of other organizations through the years. Some do more good than others. At some I saw things going on that I considered deeply unethical, others I was incredibly proud of the work they did. But there are many supporting reasons why I made the decision to never again work anywhere where my salary would come out of donations, and there are reasons why I decided to never work full time for another animal organization.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel. Despite my questions about some of Vegan Outreach's recent decisions, I still think Why Vegan is an incredible publication and I will continue to distribute it. But I also view my blog as a form of outreach–a place where I could write about and discuss some of the issues in veganism that I felt were being overlooked or distorted in some way. And yes, I talk about other issues and personal stuff on my blog too, but that's part of showing how it's possible to be vegan and deeply committed to animals but also still be a whole person and to be concerned about other issues as well.

I don't hate any groups for pursuing reduction of cruelty. That isn't my problem, but I am troubled by touting certain small concessions on the part of industry as "major victories." I am troubled by giving awards to people who kill animals for a living. I am troubled by wordings that imply it's ok to eat "cage free" eggs or "humane meat." The reason this bothers me is that I really feel it sends a mixed message to the general public and puts a seal of approval on "happy meat." When I first started realizing that groups that were previously vegan/abolitionist groups were doing these things I was alarmed. I asked for explanations and really got none and often things got pretty nasty, and it did nothing to restore my faith in such groups.

But it is about business model, make no mistake. If my company where I work my day-job decided to make a major change in direction, you'd better believe there would be books and books of market research, and there would be all kinds of test scenarios, and we'd put our internal experts in "black hat" roles to try to poke holes in the new strategy. But what I'm seeing from the AR movement is a major shift in focus and direction but when I ask what data backs that shift up I get shrugs or statements that it's too difficult and expensive to do research, or that the people in charge "trust their gut" and that research is essentially useless anyway. Um, expensive to do research? How expensive is it to pursue a fruitless path for a decade or more?

One of the major reasons I believe is behind this change (and this is something I have some experience with from working at non-profits) is that declaring victories brings in donations, and having definable short term goals brings in donations. So people like to have the feel-good award for the slaughterhouse, and people like to think that if we can just get this ordinance passed everything will change. This is especially true since the majority of those who donate to animal groups aren't vegan or even vegetarian themselves.

So in the short term this pays off financially. But if we're more serious about our goals we have to ask what our long-term strategy is, and we also have to ask which is more important bringing in money or changing people's hearts. And we should be doing the research and homework to determine what actually can get inside people's heads and make them look at animals in a new way.

I do see a lot of ego and hubris, and more might exist in groups that look like they play well with others than anyone on the outside would ever guess. One of the main way ego condemns us to expensive (in terms of money, time, labor, and alienating people) mistakes is that if a leader is so ego-involved they really cannot admit that there is any problem with any idea they come up with. So it prevents them from making a realistic assessment of success later. Especially if success is hard to define. Do we say that success is bringing in money, or is success making it into the newspapers, or is success inspiring young people to start their own vegan groups. But because of the ego involvement you'll sometimes see large groups pursue remarkably stupid courses of action because it would be ego death to the leader to ever look back and say "I think we got off track somehow, lets refocus."

Sigh. Sorry to go on and on. I really just need to blog some of this on my own blog.

Neva,

No way! You guys do de Bono's thinking hats? I love doing that. I was born with a black hat glued to my head, so I try very hard not to use it.

Your thoughts and experience are always welcome and valued.

I don't think I could ever work at a nonprofit again. I've tried it, ever so briefly several times, and found it far more dysfunctional than the for-profit world. Then again, I'm no good at real jobs anyway, so I'm a terrible judge of working environments.

I agree about touting incremental reforms as progress or leading to abolition. And "victories" to bring in donations. It was Prof. Francione who helped me see that. Only a year ago I was a "new welfarist" vegan. Maybe that's why I give them more slack than others. They really do think what they're doing is right. They're not trying to cause more suffering intentionally. But, as we know, they are increasing suffering.

Because abolitionists are the minority, big groups have no good business reason to do more than brush us off. Until we become a large, cohesive, wealthy force, we're not a threat to them. Maybe someday we will be.

I don't know much about Vegan Outreach. Do you get pressure or ridicule for using their literature? If so, how do you feel about that? How do you deal with it?

Exerpts from Gary Francione’s blog entry “SomeThoughts on National Organizations“

(…)If you consider that things are going in the right direction and that real progress is being made, then you should continue to support the national organizations.

If you think that it is appropriate for “animal executives” to receive high salaries, many in the six figures, then you should continue to support the national organizations.

If you believe that it is a good idea for animal organizations to be sitting on piles of money often amounting to many millions of dollars, then keep on supporting the wealthy animal charities. (…)

But if you think that things are going in a very wrong direction, and if you think that the many millions of dollars that are contributed to these groups are providing a return that is appallingly poor, then you should consider an alternative approach. You should reject the idea that activism means writing a check to a national organization to support regulatory/legislative campaigns that go nowhere.

I have long argued that we ought to devote the bulk of our resources toward vegan education and advocacy. We should be vegans and we should do everything we can to educate everyone we can about veganism. There will never be any significant progress toward the eradication of animal exploitation as long as we do not have a strong, grassroots abolitionist movement. And we cannot have an abolitionist movement without veganism as a clear and non-negotiable moral baseline. To the extent that there are national organizations at all, they should serve primarily as providers of training and literature to assist grassroots activists in conducting effective and creative vegan/abolitionist educational efforts. (…)

We have limited time and limited resources. It’s a zero-sum game. Every dollar that we donate and every second of time that we spend on regulatory/legislative campaigns is a dollar less and a second less that we devote to vegan/abolitionist education and hands-on work. (…)

We do not need large organizations whose employees get fat salaries and subsidized travel. Every one of us can be a “leader.” If we are to succeed, every one of us must be a leader, an important force for change. Every one of us has the ability to affect and influence the lives of others. This is hard work, to be sure. Many will not be interested; some will. But the few we do reach will reach others, who will reach others, and so on. And for every person who embraces veganism, the source of oppression—demand—is reduced. (…)

There are many, many things you can do to promote abolition that cost little or no money and that require only your decision to work to make a change. (…)

If you do have money that you can afford to donate, then sponsor a regular vegan food table at your local community center. Or help those who are doing hands-on work. There are so many more effective ways to use money than to contribute to the cash reserves of animal corporations or pay for the salaries or travel of animal executives. (…)

Sure, it’s easier to write a check but it’s not doing anything to help the animals. Sure, it’s easier to go along with what the big corporations want you to do rather than doing your own grassroots work and being assailed as “divisive” and as “disparaging” by the animal executives. But any social movement that rejects dissent and disagreement is not a social movement—it is a cult. And any social movement that maintains that activism is writing a check has disempowered itself and become nothing more than a business.

You—we—have the ability to change this. And we have the responsibility as well.
http://garyfrancione.blogspot.com/2007/02/some-thoughts-on-national-organizations.html

"I toss the cult comment back: if abolitionists don't allow dissent and debate, what are they if not a cult, as well?"

Of course we allow debate. But this doesn't imply that there shouldn't be presuppositions that are beyond consideration. For example, we think that veganism should be a baseline principle of any serious animal rights movement. It wouldn’t be a virtue of the animal rights movement to question this — rather it would merely show a radical lack of judgment.

Similarly with donating to welfare groups: since animal welfare is structurally defective and isn't causally related to abolition, and since, as long as animal welfare is the dominant paradigm in the animal movement, animal use will be unamenable to meaningful reform, the rejection of welfare (which includes the rejection of welfare groups) is a prerequisite of abolition. As such, it isn't "cultish" and "purist" to say that we shouldn't support (either financially or in any other way) welfare groups. On the contrary, I think it shows a radical misunderstanding of the abolitionist position to think that there isn't an inherent contradiction between professing to want abolition on the one hand while donating to groups that preclude abolition on the other.

If you think that it's okay to support welfare groups when there's fundamental incompatibility between welfare and abolition, then fine. But please don't represent our theoretical objections to supporting welfare groups as "cultish" and "purist."

Hmm, I don't know if it has anything to do with Bono, but a black hat is when the best and brightest pretend they're our opposition, our competition, or whatever. But the point is they try to find and point out the weaknesses in a plan with the hope that we can make the plan stronger. The idea is to come up with a realistic assessment of what the response will be.

I don't get ridiculed for using VO materials, but yeah, my husband and most of my friends don't like VO lately. It's tough because you kind of think that there are all these welfare groups out there so you'd think VO might just stick to, well Vegan Outreach. You know, rather than try to reproduce what about five other groups are doing.

It's a tough thing. I don't mean any of this as an insult to all you do. I think debates can get a little combative on the internet in ways that aren't meant personally but can be taken personally.

The reason why the “animal rights” movement hasn’t made any substantial progress is because it didn’t realize that there is a fundamental inconsistency between employing a non-rights framework to prosecute the animal rights cause. The abolitionist movement is partly based on the insight that welfare and rights are incompatible and irreconcilable, and that this entails that our activism must occur within a rights-framework. The claim that it’s okay to donate to welfare groups is thus simply a perpetuation of the (new welfarist) mistake that it is strategically efficacious to use a non-rights framework for our activism. We should be educating about the incompatibility between the two approaches, not assimilating them and recasting theoretical consistency in pejorative terms ("purism," etc), thereby perpetuating the mistakes of new welfarism.

Mary Martin writes: "Again, I've read Professor Francione's work. I read his blog. I have a little Professor Francione on my shoulder who tells me what the abolitionist stance is on all issues. But that doesn't mean I do everything that little voice tells me to. But that doesn't mean I do everything that little voice tells me to."

So you have "a little Professor Francione" on your shoulder, and HSUS in your head, right? Then it is clear to me that you don’t even hear "that little voice", let alone listen to it. Someone else claims to have Gary Francione in his heart, and PETA in his hands, another version of a hybrid state of mind called new welfarism.

A rhetorically well-known way of dealing with criticism that cannot be countered by argument is to identify a distinction between messenger and message. In a comment on Invisible Voices, you certify Gary Francione a "delivery disorder"; you think that "sometimes his delivery shuts the ears of his potential audience". http://invisiblevoices.wordpress.com/2007/06/06/the-danger-of-icons/#comments

Interesting point, Mrs. Loder; could you elaborate on that a little? For further discussion, however, there are other far more suited online places; I suggest the forums on http://veganfreak.net/

Best wishes to everyone,
Karin the purist

If people have ignored Gary Francione's theoretical work because of his alleged "delivery disorder," then they have committed an ad hominem fallacy. Logically, Gary's "delivery disorder" isn't a sound reason for disregarding his work; and morally, it amounts to gross irresponsibility to disregard what is the best strategy for ending the Eternal Treblinka because one personally finds Gary uncongenial. I find it astonishing that people would defend this logical fallaciousness and irresponsibility and instead shift the blame onto Gary's "delivery disorder."