Nature Of Social Progress
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FARM held their yearly animal rights conference last Thursday afternoon until Monday morning. For anyone who wasn’t able I’m sharing my notes from the conference right here on Vegan Soapbox. Below are my notes from “Nature of Social Progress” by Alex Hershaft.
“All social progress requires a struggle to wrest power from established interests. A basic grounding in this process should make our struggle more effective.”
We all have needs, perhaps structured as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests. But resources are sparse. So there are conflicts of interests.
Social progress is basically about redistributing power so as to meet everyone’s needs.
Frederick Douglass – “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”
The point of social chagne is to make those who have power uncomfortable with their power so they will share.
Stages of social struggle (in general):
1. Attention
Methods = strikes, civil disobedience, media stunts, uncomfortable images, basic thought is that activists must feel uncomfortable
Pitfalls = shortage of creativity, lack of willingness of activists to get uncomfortable
Countermeasures = ignore or personal attacks,
Currently the issues at this stage are: killing animals for food, fishing, research on mice, zoos and circuses
2. Discussion
Methods = educational stage, appeal to feelings and beliefs
Pitfalls = stuck in alerting stage (attention style activism becomes a habit)
Countermeasures = economic scare, death by study, split the opposition (this is happening now, our movement is split)
Issues at this stage: environmental and economic damages of animla agriculture, hunting, fur, dog and primate research, product testing
3. Reform stage
public agrees but isn’t changing (example: gun control, Vietnam war)
Methods = at this point there are trigger events (dramatic events with relatively small number of victims)
Pitfalls = activists quit because it’s not exciting or fun
Countermeasures = failure to fund, ineffective regulations, counter laws, repression
Issues currently at this stage: humane mehods of slaughter act, humane treatment of farmed animals, human health consequences of eating animals, spay-neuter, endangered species act.
Even when everyone agrees with us, that’s not enough to change behavior.
Recognizing progress – assessing success
- short-term victories vs. long-term (or bang vs whimper)
- undesirable secondary consequences – reduction in “meat”
- consumption results in increase of bird consumption
- successes in our movement: cosmetic product testing, dissection in lower schools, medical school instruction on dogs, most restaurants understand that there’s a market for vegetarian and vegan food
- Remember that in 1776 a group of people got together and wrote “all men are created equal” and we’re still struggling to make that statement more true and more inclusive over 200 years later
- Dont lose courage, eventually we will prevail!
Questions:
- Why are will still having to educate young people about issues like fur and neutering when these issues are old?
The world doesn’t change as quickly as we want it to. - Thoughts on intimidation?
response: should only be used as a last resort on people who are so entrenched and so influential that there are no alternatives that result in change
Humans avoid cognitive dissonance so if you change feelings or beliefs, eventually you change behavior and vice versa - How do you feel about companies that offer both cruelty-free and cruel products?
response: the cruelty-free products are an open door that we should go through and push open wider - What about supporting 100% vegan companies?
response: I don’t know the answer, it depends on the specific case - How do you prevent changing yourself and becoming more violent if you engage in so-called violent direction action?
response: I know people who can do it so it’s possible
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Our notes from this year’s conference will be all at http://www.vegansoapbox.com/topics/ar2011/.
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