Most of us in the movement wish that showing people the violence, the cruelty and the resistance of our animal cousins would be enough. Unfortunately, most people don’t change their minds or change their actions just because something is wrong. They change when they see how that wrong also hurts them. The SHAC campaign (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) offers a powerful example of interest convergence in action. By targeting not just the lab itself but its suppliers, clients, insurers and even financial backers, SHAC turned testing on animals from a hidden injustice into a reputational and economic liability. They mobilized public sympathy through hard-hitting storytelling, but they also shifted the terrain of the fight – making silence and complicity costly. In doing so, they showed how strategic disruption can make justice impossible to ignore.
PROJECT PHOENIX: In the 1980s, African American legal scholar Derrick Bell offered a sharp insight that still holds resonance for social movements today: progress only happens when those in power see it as being in their own interest. He called it Interest Convergence – the idea that the interests of marginalised groups will only be advanced when they overlap with the interests of those who hold the power to make change.
Bell didn’t believe that racial equality was achieved through moral arguments alone. He believed that legal victories – like the desegregation of schools, buses and lunch counters – came about not because America suddenly grew a conscience, but because the global embarrassment of segregation was hurting the country’s image during the Cold War.
Boycotts also deprived segregated businesses and services of vital revenue. In Montgomery, Black people made up the majority of bus riders. Their refusal to use the city buses for over a year drastically reduced the transit system’s income. This affected downtown businesses, which saw fewer customers overall. This kind of pressure motivated business owners to lobby city officials and political leaders to end segregation – not out of moral concern, but economic necessity.
In other words, the US ended segregation not because it was wrong, but because it was inconvenient… To many, that might sound cynical. But Bell saw himself as a realist. He believed racism was deeply embedded in American life – not because it couldn’t be challenged, but because it wouldn’t be dismantled by good arguments alone. Instead, real change would only come when justice aligned with interest — interest convergence. And this idea doesn’t just apply to racial justice. It’s shaped how many other movements have won…
The SHAC campaign (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) offers a powerful example of interest convergence in action. While rooted in fierce moral opposition to the violence inflicted on individuals inside Huntingdon Life Sciences (Europe’s biggest facility that tests on and kills other animals), the campaign also made that violence deeply inconvenient for companies connected to it.
By targeting not just the lab itself but its suppliers, clients, insurers and even financial backers, SHAC turned testing on animals from a hidden injustice into a reputational and economic liability. They mobilised public sympathy through hard-hitting storytelling, but they also shifted the terrain of the fight – making silence and complicity costly. In doing so, they showed how strategic disruption can make justice impossible to ignore.
This strategy is continuing to be used to great effect in our movement. One recent example is the online group MBR Suppliers, a pilot campaign by Project Phoenix that calls on customers and suppliers of MBR Acres (a facility that breeds beagle puppies for testing) to boycott it. More than 30 companies have joined the boycott since it started a year ago…
It’s hard to hear, but vital to say: moral arguments alone won’t be enough to win animal freedom. Especially when exploiting other animals is so embedded in the economy. Most of us in the movement wish that showing people the violence, the cruelty and the resistance of our animal cousins would be enough. That people and politicians would look, see the truth, and bring about change. But decades of experience – and a wealth of social movement research – tell us otherwise.
Unfortunately, most people don’t change their minds or change their actions just because something is wrong. They change when they see how that wrong also hurts them. When they see how a better world for others is also a better world for them. They change when a ‘side issue’ suddenly feels personal.
As a society, we’ve been taught to believe that eating/wearing/hunting other animals is a matter of personal choice. That it doesn’t affect anyone else. But this lie has made it easier for people to disconnect, to justify and to look away. As a movement, we can show that this issue is not just about fellow animals. It’s about all of us. It’s about all of our best interests, our health, our shared joy, our communities, our future…
Animal oppression has changed ourselves and the world for the worse. It devalues life and devastates ecosystems. It fuels pandemics, poisons rivers and pushes families – both human and other animal – into crisis. It cuts us off from fellow animals we might otherwise know, love and care for. It trains us to numb ourselves to pain and pretend it doesn’t exist. It turns acts of love – like the desire to protect others – into awkward exceptions, not the rule.
And perhaps, most cruelly, it makes humans believe we’re free, when in fact we’re not. We’ve been lied to – sold a story that farming animals (and testing on them, confining them in zoos and aquariums, hunting them for fun etc.) is necessary, natural, normal and even nice. That it’s a tradition, a culture, a way of life. As a movement, we can communicate how we can honour our past without being held hostage by it. That we don’t need to lose our cultures. We just need to evolve them (as cultures naturally always do)…
There are powerful intersections where the interests of humans and other animals converge, and as a movement, we have a wealth to choose from… It doesn’t mean we stop centering fellow animals; it means we broaden the circle. We can make it clear that animal freedom isn’t a fringe issue – it’s a central one. It touches everything and everyone…
The reality is, most people are already with us. Most people love other animals. Most people hate cruelty. Most people want to live in a kind world. They’ve just been taught that these things are incompatible. It’s our job to show that they’re not. SOURCE…
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