Wayne Hsiung: We’ve been attacked, what’s the next step?
Wayne Hsiung: We’ve been attacked, what’s the next step?
We have been attacked. Now everything depends on how we respond: with courage or fear. Hundreds of animal activists were tear-gassed, shot with rubber bullets, and assaulted by dozens of police protecting Ridglan Farms. Now we must care for our injured and defend those who are arrested. Above all, we cannot give up on our purpose. We cannot give up on the dogs. If we stay focused on this purpose, the repression will backfire, as long as we don’t give up the fight. The brutality of those attacking us will highlight the injustice of a system that uses state violence […]
When Progress Misleads: The hidden baseline problem in animal advocacy
When Progress Misleads: The hidden baseline problem in animal advocacy
Animal advocacy has undergone a remarkable transformation. What began in the 1970s as a largely grassroots movement grounded in moral persuasion has evolved into a highly professionalized sector, with sophisticated legal strategies, measurable outcomes, and significant institutional funding. By many conventional measures, this trajectory represents success. And yet, during the same period, the scale of harm has expanded dramatically. In the U.S. alone, roughly 9-10 billion land animals are slaughtered each year, the overwhelming majority raised in industrial systems. When institutions claim their work ‘benefits animals’ or advances ‘liberation’, what baseline are they using to measure that impact? LAProgressive: Earlier […]
Wayne Hsiung: They attacked a disabled grandma; here’s how we can make it backfire
Wayne Hsiung: They attacked a disabled grandma; here’s how we can make it backfire
Repression can feel terrifying and insurmountable. And that is precisely its goal: to scare people into inaction. But one of the secrets to successful social movement is that there is a way to make repression backfire. Indeed, from the Civil Rights Movement to Occupy Wall Street, effective movements have harnessed repression to bring attention to the injustice of a system. In these cases and others through history, it was the repression and not the activism directly that led to transformative change. We can do the same for animal rights if we keep these four things in mind as we confront […]
