Animal rights advocates take a page from environmentalists’ playbook
The Save Movement's focus is on the plight of food animals. However, in spite of the vigils outside slaughterhouses, food animals continue to be butchered. It is time for new tactics.
THOMAS WALKOM: ‘Activists borrow from one another. In the past, radical environmentalists borrowed from the animal liberation movement. Now animal rights advocates are borrowing from environmentalists… One of the founders of the group Toronto Pig Save, Anita Krajnc made headlines in 2015 when she was criminally charged for offering water to thirsty pigs on their way to slaughter. She was eventually acquitted. But the case brought Pig Save and its strategy of bearing witness to public attention.
Taking her cue from Russian novelist and thinker Leo Tolstoy, Krajnc argued that the least humans could do for animals they kill is acknowledge their suffering. For many, it was a compelling message. What is now called simply the Save Movement took off worldwide – focusing on the plight of not only pigs but cows, chickens and other food animals.
Practically speaking, however, not much was accomplished. In spite of the vigils outside slaughterhouses, food animals continued to be butchered. Politicians wary of offending the powerful animal-use lobbies took forever to make even incremental changes to animal welfare laws. It was time for new tactics. For Krajnc, those used by a climate-change group called Extinction Rebellion seem most promising.
Extinction Rebellion started out last year in England but quickly spread to other countries, including Canada. It has three goals: Tell the truth about climate change; act now to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2025; set up citizen assemblies outside of the normal political structure to achieve this.
Its tactics include non-violent civil disobedience and disruption. To that end, Extinction Rebellion demonstrators have shut down major bridges in London and disrupted traffic. It is threatening to play havoc with London’s fashion week’. SOURCE…
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