ARCO's Abolitionists - A Vegan Forum

Am on the fence about single issue campaigns, but lean more to the side that they can be effective. Can we discuss this please?

I am involved in two single issue campaigns here in Switzerland. One is the abolition of the use of animals in circuses, and recently have been asked to help in an anti-fur campaign. The first campaign is most definitely abolitionist in its focus, but the person who asked me to help in the fur campaign is a new welfarist. So the first one (circus animals) I have thrown myself headfirst into, the second (fur) I have imposed conditions, which are that I create my own association which has only strict vegans who are allowed to assist in it, and that we do not have any information on our information stalls that is speciest in nature, or new welfarist. For instance, there is a petition going round in Switzerland against the production of cat fur (it has recently come to light that cats are being used in Switzerland for the production of fur). I have refused to have this petition on my stall. This has been accepted by the person who is starting up this campaign. On my information stalls I will also of course have information about veganism.

Why I like these one issue campaigns is that I think that by getting people to think about the exploitation of animals in one domain, and if the message is put across to them in an intelligent way, some people will naturally make the connection between the exploitation of animals in other domains, and will make some people rethink their whole relationship to animals (and humans too, because I always stress in my animal rights activism that no form of exploitation is ever acceptable, whether it be to non human or to human animals). The message I get across when I talk about animal rights always includes other forms of speciesm and exploitation, such as racism, sexism or ageism. To me it's all one and the same thing, because the problem stems from the need for man (generic) to dominate and exploit not only their own species but other species too.

As long as a campaign has as its underlying basis abolition, and if this message is clear enough, I am okay with single issue campaigns.

Thoughts???

Diana:

Single-issue campaigns raise several issues:

1. They suggest that certain sorts of exploitation are "worse" than other sorts of exploitation. For example, what is the difference between fur on one hand and leather or wool on the other?;

2. Single-issue campaigns are almost never explicitly (i.e., as part of the campaign) abolitionist. The people running a particular campaign may be abolitionist but that does not mean that the campaign is abolitionist and explicitly aims to incrementally reduce the property status of nonhumans. Is the anti-circus campaign part of an overall campaign that says that no animal use is acceptable?

3. Single-issue campaigns almost always raise other moral hazards. For example, the anti-fur campaign is focused primarily on women (at least in the U.S.).

4. These campaigns represent investments of time and resources (e.g., labor). There is a serious question as to whether they are cost-effective. If I have a day to spend on animal advocacy, am I better off giving a talk at my local secondary school or college on veganism, or distributing vegan literature, or trying to get people to see that fur is a problem?

5. To the extent that single-issue campaigns seek legislative changes, the pressures of the legislative process and the dominance of exploitative industries almost always weakens these measures.

Gary L. Francione
Professor, Rutgers University

Gary, I recall one of the Flicker presentations on your old website that specified certain criteria for acceptable single-issue campaigns. Of course I remember that they should only advocate actual abolition of the practice in question and also that there be an explicit call for the end of any instrumental use of animals. And I knew of your "zero-sum" game argument. But from the presentation I came away thinking "well he doesn't like them but isn't condemning them outright.

I understand your point that it's a waste of an abolitionist's time, but do you also feel that even if a new welfarists spends time on them, it actually hurts our cause because it reinforces a skewed perception?

thanks!

I think SI campaigns can be counterproductive by sending a very wrong message. For example, I think that the anti-veal campaign implied that there was some moral difference between veal and other animal flesh.

Gary L. Francione wrote:.Single-issue campaigns raise several issues:

1. They suggest that certain sorts of exploitation are "worse" than other sorts of exploitation. For example, what is the difference between fur on one hand and leather or wool on the other?;

I agree entirely. Which is why I want to have on my information stall documentation about veganism as well, and also I'm not having anyone wearing leather shoes nor a woolen jumper there to speak to the public who we will be addressing. Because I know that a lot of people who come up to argue with us say "but you wear leather shoes, don't you??" and then, because the people there do NOT wear leather shoes, we can start talking to them about exploitation of animals in general and why this is wrong.

2. Single-issue campaigns are almost never explicitly (i.e., as part of the campaign) abolitionist. The people running a particular campaign may be abolitionist but that does not mean that the campaign is abolitionist and explicitly aims to incrementally reduce the property status of nonhumans. Is the anti-circus campaign part of an overall campaign that says that no animal use is acceptable?

The people who started the campaign are, I believe, all vegans (I asked this at the first meeting) and are radical AR activists. But I think we could in our future documentation stress more that we are against all forms of animal abuse. It is perhaps implied only, and it may not be as obvious to the general public as it is to us. I will keep this in mind for the future discussions we have for the follow-up of our campaign.

3. Single-issue campaigns almost always raise other moral hazards. For example, the anti-fur campaign is focused primarily on women (at least in the U.S.).

Excellent point! As I fight as well against sexism, will definitely pay attention to this.

4. These campaigns represent investments of time and resources (e.g., labor). There is a serious question as to whether they are cost-effective. If I have a day to spend on animal advocacy, am I better off giving a talk at my local secondary school or college on veganism, or distributing vegan literature, or trying to get people to see that fur is a problem?

It is very hard to approach people in Switzerland with a direct vegan approach. Or perhaps I have just not tried hard enough. Need to think on this and perhaps be a bit more creative.

5. To the extent that single-issue campaigns seek legislative changes, the pressures of the legislative process and the dominance of exploitative industries almost always weakens these measures.

Again, a good point.

Thank you Gary, for your thoughts.

(edited because I was having problems getting the quote thingy right!!)

Gary L. Francione wrote:I think SI campaigns can be counterproductive by sending a very wrong message. For example, I think that the anti-veal campaign implied that there was some moral difference between veal and other animal flesh.

I would never campaign for anything that is speciest. There was this big fuss and ado and outcry in Europe recently, with a European petition signed by thousands and thousands of people to stop the European Community importing cat and dog fur from China. The European Union made some cosmetic changes to the law (they decided that they would ban the imports if the animals had been killed only for their fur). I made a few enemies when I refused categorically and virulently to support the petition. (The same as the petition I mentioned further up, asking the Swiss Parliament to end the production of cat fur in Switzerland - the welfarists and new welfarists think I'm a nutcase not to support it.)

Reading your post in answer to panthera, made me think back to your comment further up as to why an anti-fur campaign could be counterproductive as it implies that other animal skin like leather is okay. As if there is a hierarchy somewhere. Although I will, as I said, be promoting veganism during my campaign... as well as one very other important issue regarding human rights in Switzerland. Human Liberation-Animal Liberation is a slogan I strongly adhere to.

I think bringing exploitation to people's attention, even if it stresses mainly only one form of exploitation, is not wrong if done intelligently.

And after all, I go, for instance, to anti-racist demos. This obviously does not mean that I think that racism is worse than child prostitution.

Diana wrote:And after all, I go, for instance, to anti-racist demos. This obviously does not mean that I think that racism is worse than child prostitution.

I think that the important difference between racism and child prostitution on the one hand and animal exploitation on the other is that the fomer are taken to be wrong according to firmly established moral norms whereas the latter is not. Because animal exploitation is not as a general matter taken to be morally wrong, campaigns that focus on a certain animal use implicitly send the message that that use is problematic whereas others (those that the campaign does not focus on) are not. I think that this is very problematic for a movement based on the claim that veganism is a moral imperative, for the latter is the negation of the idea that there are intrinsic differences between animal uses (e.g. between eggs and dairy on the one hand and meat on the other).

By contrast, campaigning against racism but not child prostitution does not send the message that child prostitution is okay, for both racism and child prostitution are condemned according to firmly established moral norms.

Moreover, the idea that there are differences in extrinsic value between animal species is a salient aspect of speciesism in general, and one of the bases of the animal use industries in particular. If we took pigs, chickens, and cows to be as extrinsically valuable as cats and dogs, then we wouldn't eat them. Therefore, in a context in which animal use is not taken to be problematic, campaigns that focus on a certain animal use, thereby implicitly distinguishing that use from other animal uses, actually feed into one of the bases of the animal use industries, namely the speciesistic idea that there are differences in extrinsic value between animal species.

Gary L. Francione wrote:5. To the extent that single-issue campaigns seek legislative changes, the pressures of the legislative process and the dominance of exploitative industries almost always weakens these measures.

I would delete the word "almost." And put "ALWAYS" in bold.

I hadn't really thought of the fact that single issue campaigns usually demand some legislative or policy change. Which is a big money- and time-sucking hole. Whereas vegan outreach demands personal lifestyle change. On the one hand, uncomfortably open-ended - you don't get a sense of closure for both the campaigner and the petition-signer. But on the other, what good is a sense of closure if it closes the door on someone's heart, with all the other animals still stuck behind it? (is there a "spouting streams of tears" smiley somewhere?)

panthera wrote:I hadn't really thought of the fact that single issue campaigns usually demand some legislative or policy change.

Strong structural, institutional, and economic considerations militate against legislation being passed in a form that represents genuine incremental progress, i.e. an incremental eradication of animals' property status.

yes, I had just been thinking in my mind: "against veal" or "against fur" without remembering that usually there is some demand for a ban that accompanies the information.

You know how people say that it's useful to divide the issues up, to catch different people's attention in different ways? I think it's also quite overwhelming to see so many separate campaigns, all clamoring for attention at once. You start to care about one thing, then see information about another, and start to care about that, and then another thing, again and again. You can't divide yourself among all the different issues, but they all seem to have separate booths at the fair, so what to do?

Part of that is just the nature of the beast, so to speak, but at least if you can attack all the heads from one place you have some stability. And of course by advocating veganism you're attacking the belly of the beast. (I'm sure that is a common image but I don't know if it's specific to anyone in particular or I'd cite it).