I need your help:
My name is Sorin, and I am a co-founder of Vegan Option Canada (VOC). This message does not represent the official position of VOC but, rather, is a personal message from me.
We have an unprecedented chance to make a difference this year through the united efforts of animal rights and environmental organizations.
I humbly ask for your help in starting Animal Rebellion chapters in Canada. Animal Rebellion works in solidaridity with Extinction Rebellion (XR), but it is focused on ending animal agriculture and exploitation. You can join a working group, organize a march or other event on August 24, to mark World Day to End Speciesism, and organize an event on October 7, to coincide with the XR’s two-week Worldwide Rebellion.
Call on all to help organize the World Day for the End of Speciesism (WoDES):
The date is 24.08.2019
To grow in number and influence and, above all, to be more politically and socially united and concerted, increasing knowledge about speciesism is essential.
We want to co-organize the World Day for the End of Speciesism (WoDES). Collaborations are underway with the WoDES and Pour l’Égalité Animale (PEA) and one of its members, Yves Bonnardel.
We need you to help organize the WoDES.
- to spread the notion of speciesism at dynamic conferences
- as a way to be part of and mobilize Animal Rebellion Canada (described below) as a partner in the organization of WoDES.
Vegan Option Canada is anti-speciesist despite its human rights approach:
How did I come to this conclusion and call for help?
VOC is an anti-speciesist organization because, as David Olivier points out in the first edition of the Cahiers Antispécistes:
convincing the administration of a canteen to give the choice (the choice to humans - other animals are not given the choice!) to eat meat or not is also an action.
VOC is making political demands to increase the supply of vegan options across Canada. Its objective? To alleviate animal suffering, normalize veganism and make it a national issue in the media. Its method? A human rights approach accompanied by awareness that it is doing this for the animals, as expressed in this article by Barbara Bolton:
By focusing on our moral conviction, which gives rise to our rights, we can draw attention to the rights of other animals and create excellent advocacy opportunities, while also working to defend vegans from discrimination and harassment. Every discussion we have about the rights of vegans, whether with our government, hospitals, schools or universities will involve explaining that what is protected is our right to live according to our moral conviction that it is wrong to subjugate, exploit and kill non-human animals unnecessarily. That will often lead to a discussion about the subjugation, exploitation and killing of other animals, and about the fact that it is all unnecessary.
Therefore, VOC is in my opinion an anti-speciesist organization that takes a human rights-based approach to effectively leverage legislation for animal rights and institutional anti-speciesism.
Speciesism:
As Yves Bonnardel points out in this leaflet,
Our societies are based on animal exploitation. It forms a system, a social system, a political system. Just as patriarchy or slavery, for example, form elaborate social and political structures, animal exploitation implies an organized system of social appropriation of animals and their production. ... This ideology is what we call a speciesist ideology. The word "speciesism" is modelled on the words "racism" or "sexism," and refers to arbitrary, unfair discrimination based on an individual's species membership.
Speciesism is to the species what sexism is to sex and racism to race: the arbitrary moral disregard of the interests of non-human animals. In itself, speciesism is a system of institutionalized violence supported by moral, ideological, social, legal and economic constructs that frame all our beliefs and practices.
We must go further to fight speciesism:
How, in the face of a scourge, can moral agents be mobilized to find a cure? I see two possible methods: the demand for justice and the call to virtue. The demand for justice is fundamentally political in nature: it requires legislative, institutional or social changes. The call to virtue is apolitical: it asks people to act more virtuously, to change their individual behaviour. The demand for justice is exercised at the collective level. It is addressed to the citizens. The call to virtue is exercised at the individual level. It is addressed to private persons: consumers, donors, believers, disciples...
VOC has a mandate to fight speciesism. However, speciesism is so deeply rooted in our society that fighting it using legal means only, such as petitions and lobbying (which we are currently doing), is not enough.
Animal Rebellion’s mission is innovative, strong and unique.
For the first time, justice for animals (anti-speciesist and systemic approach) and justice for a healthy environment (including intergenerational equity) are coming together. It takes a global approach, links animal exploitation and environmental destruction and aims to unite activists of these two worlds.
Thus Animal Rebellion is the union of those fighting climate change and species extinction and those fighting for the recognition of animal interests (anti-speciesism). Animal Rebellion promotes peaceful actions of civil disobedience (direct action) and a regenerative and sociocratic culture of care among ourselves and with other organizations.
WoDES and Animal Rebellion both seek and demand to end to speciesism. In addition, Animal Rebellion has a very clear anti-speciesist culture, described as follows:
Because we were all born into a speciesist system not of our making, our demand and message is focused on changing the system. We don’t exist to ask individuals to go vegan, but to change the food system in its entirety. So while we welcome personal change, Animal Rebellion’s actions focus on system change and demands, which call on government to tell the truth, act now, and go beyond politics on the climate and ecological emergencies we face.
Please create your own WoDES event and during the event read the Animal Rebellion Declaration.
Why?
The problem!
You say you love your children above all else, and yet you steal their future before their eyes... Our civilization is being sacrificed so that a very small number of people can continue to earn a lot of money.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (the United Nations body responsible for assessing scientific data on climate change). Quotation from the last report:
“The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.
“Limiting warming to 1.5°C is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes,” said Jim Skea, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group III.”
Moreover, although the IPCC has done useful work, they have put forward conservative analysis and forecasts due to consensus of all scientists and the failure to consider hard to predict tipping points. The real risk is much worse, but I will not go into all the details here. If you are interested, you can read a controversial but powerful report here.
The Solution
Extinction Rebellion is an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to halt mass extinction and minimise the risk of social collapse.
In April, more than 1,000 people have been arrested at Extinction Rebellion climate protests in London, in one the biggest civil disobedience event in recent British history.
In my opinion, this is the only movement that has the chance to turn the situation around.
Animal Rebellion
Animal Rebellion Canada is a mass volunteer movement that uses methods of nonviolent civil disobedience to end the animal agriculture and fishing industries, halt mass extinction and minimize the risk of climate breakdown and social collapse.
In solidarity with Extinction Rebellion, Animal Rebellion will mobilise thousands of animal advocates for a two-week rebellion in Canada, beginning October 7th. Animal Rebellion Canada is part of the global Animal Rebellion movement.
Environmental groups have not always worked well with animal rights groups. Vegan groups have not always worked well together. How can we collaborate and cooperate when we cannot always agree?
1. Unless people start coming together we are all dead
2. This means agree to disagree on what we disagree on , and get on organising on what we agree on - ie mass participation civil disobedience
