Recently in AR-Veg Category

For many years, the VegGuide site has been hosted for free at Xmission, courtesy of Eric Waters. Eric has recently moved to a new position and is no longer at Xmission, so it's time for us to find a new host.

Update: The site is owned by my animal rights group, Compassionate Action for Animals, and we are a 501(c)(3) non profit organization.

If anyone in the lights of these pixels could offer free or cheap hosting for this site, please let me know.

The site needs a dedicated host, either real or virtual, with at least 1.5GB of memory and 20GB of disk space. It's bandwidth use is fairly modest, approximately 800MB of outgoing traffic per day at the moment (around 24GB per month). Incoming traffic is about half of that. However, we'd like room to grow in that regard, as I'm hoping we'll be able to increase usage over the next couple years.

We can take care of all the sysadmin bits, so all we need to start is a box running Ubuntu Hardy and the site will be good to go.

Thanks again to Eric and Xmission for hosting the site gratis all these years.

I'm going to be in Chicago for Chicago VeganMania on Saturday, November 5. I'll be arriving late afternoon on Thursday, November 3, and leaving in the afternoon on Sunday, November 6.

I'll be pretty busy, so I can't promise to get together with everyone or anyone, but ping me via email if you want to get together and I'll get back to you once I have a better sense of my schedule.

First, my apologies, as this isn't strictly related to either activism or programming, but it touches on both. Recently, the programming community has been talking about anti-harassment policies in light of a recent incident.

More recently, my animal rights group, Compassionate Action for Animals, was confronted with the need to create our own policy. Having a public policy in place is important. It makes it clear that the conference/organization takes harassment seriously, and provides a clear direction on how to report alleged harassment.

In the case of my animal rights group, the issue is a little different than with a conference. Conferences take place over a short period of time and they attract a large group of people, many of whom have never met before. In contrast, my animal rights group attracts volunteers and event attendees who we see repeatedly, many of whom stay involved for months or years. Over time, many of the people involved with the group will have repeated contact with each other. Our policy addresses both harassment and general interpersonal disputes.

While thinking about CAA's policy, I realized that there are several basic scenarios which could lead to a complaint. In each scenario, Person A will be the person who is the alleged harasser, and Person B is the alleged victim. Each scenario has a different ideal outcome.

• Case 1 - Person A has done something criminal to Person B, such as a physical assault, threat of assault, or stalking. In this case, the best approach is to encourage Person B to contact the police. We should also ask Person A to refrain from contact with the organization until the situation is resolved.
• Case 2 - Person A is acting out of malice and is knowingly causing Person B to suffer, but their actions are not criminal. Person A is a sadist, and we don't want them involved with our organization in the future. This is going to be fairly uncommon, but when it happens we need to deal with it decisively. Poisonous people can really hurt an organization.
• Case 3 - Person A is unknowingly causing suffering to Person B, and their behavior is generally agreed to be unacceptable. This case is going to be more common than cases 1 and 2. The ideal outcome is for Person A to understand why their behavior was problematic, change their behavior, and to stay involved with the organization. However, if Person A refuses to change, they will be asked to leave.
• Case 4 - Person A is unknowingly causing suffering to Person B, and the acceptability of their behavior is debatable. This case will also be reasonably common. In this case, the ideal outcome is for Person A and Person B to come to an agreement between the two on how they can get along in the future. If they can't, we still want both of them involved in the organization, but we may need to ensure that we don't force them to work together.
• Case 5 - Person A is unknowingly causing suffering to Person B, and their behavior is generally agreed to be acceptable. This case will not be very common. I hesitate to say that Person B is "too sensitive", since suffering is suffering, but in this case it's really Person B that is the problem. Any social interaction risks friction, and if Person B cannot tolerate any friction, there is not much the organization can do. In this case, the ideal outcome is to help Person B be a little more tolerant so that they can stay productively involved with the organization. It may also be possible to find tasks that Person B can do alone.

Since three and four are probably the most common cases, our policy should focus on dealing with these in the best way possible. Our ideal outcomes in these cases involve keeping everyone involved in the dispute working with the organization.

However, it's important to remember that when a complaint is initially made, we really don't know enough to categorize the complaint, except in the case where the complaint alleges criminal behavior (Case 1). Given that fact, CAA's current draft policy contains the following goals:

• CAA wants to be a safe and inviting environment for all participants.
• We want to respect the concerns of all activists, with attention to fairness and confidentiality.
• As a social justice organization, we strive to be sensitive to issues such as sexism and racism.
• CAA wants to maintain neutrality and resolve disputes amicably where possible.

Given these goals, our policy focuses on avoiding the need to appeal for a "judgement". We need people to be able to work together and resolve disputes if we are going to be effective as an organization. We assume that everyone involved is a reasonable adult, and that they want to get along with each other in pursuit of a common goal. Especially in situations like Cases 3 and 4, we think it's best for people to simply talk to each other.

We also want to avoid taking sides. If Case 4 is common, it's reasonable to think that both parties involved may be "right". We want to make sure that both Persons A and B are given a chance to participate in the process, and our procedure encourages a mediated discussion between the parties before the board will intervene, although we don't require it, since we can't really force people to talk to each other.

Compare this to corporate policies, which focus on covering the corporation's ass against a lawsuit. These policies are full of legalese, and aren't really oriented towards helping people get along. The policies focus on warnings and judgements, and don't encourage mediation. This is unfortunate, as it doesn't do much to help create a more civil society.

Conferences have different needs. They're short-term, so it's important to deal with things quickly. Unlike an organization, a conference doesn't rely on the same people interacting with each other repeatedly over a long period of time. If someone might be causing a problem, it's important to deal with that quickly in order to keep the conference fun and safe for everyone else. That means that speed becomes more important relative to fairness, though fairness (and the perception of fairness) are still important.

Ultimately, there's no such thing as a perfect policy. People are imperfect, and there's too much behavior that falls into a grey area. For people whose behavior is truly unacceptable, we want them to understand how their behavior affects others. When the conflict is greyer, we want both parties to adjust their behavior. The ideal outcome in most cases is for the people involved to keep working together comfortably in the future.

After some recent conversations with Unny, CAA's Development Coordinator, I've started thinking about whether or not the idea of being vegan is a barrier to entry for animal advocacy.

Is vegan something I am, or is veganism simply something I do?

I've long said that "I am vegan" to people when describing my diet and/or my ethics. It's a nice simple shorthand. However, it also defines me in a way that "living a vegan lifestyle" does not.

I'm not sure we should talk about veganism as part of one's identity. This sort of framing may actually discourage people from making a change. Changing one's self-identity is a big deal. On the other hand, asking someone to act on the feelings of compassion that they already have is much less of a big deal. Instead of telling that they need to change who they are, we are just acting them to change their behavior. Even better, we're asking them to change their behavior so that it's in accordance with their stated values.

At CAA, we've long taken a low-pressure approach of encouraging people to "explore veganism". If someone tells us that they can't become vegan, we encourage them to make whatever change they can. This change in framing seems like a natural extension of that "soft" approach.

The problem with all of this is that it's incredibly awkward to not say "I'm vegan" in spoken conversation. Saying "I live a vegan lifestyle" just sounds weird. I can't imagine that this language will be adopted. This is especially unlikely since the people who already have experienced a change in self-identity probably want to hold on to that identity!

However, I think that we can approach this sort of change slowly. For a beginning, we can look at the written materials we use to pursue animal activism, and modify them to emphasize that veganism is a matter of lifestyle, not identity. We can also make a point of describing things as vegan (food, clothes, etc.), not people.

Vegan Outreach has a great line in one of their essays, "we want a vegan world, not a vegan club." I suspect that making veganism an identity furthers the creation of that club.

At Compassionate Action for Animals, we explicitly do not promote veganism using arguments about human health. We are happy to talk about how to be a healthy vegan, but we don't try to convince people to go vegan for their own health.

Some people find this odd. Isn't veganism obviously the healthiest diet? Why wouldn't we use such a powerful argument? Shouldn't we make the best case we can for veganism?

I came across a blog post titled "The China Study: Fact or Fallacy?" that reminded me so well why we don't engage in this argument.

Go ahead, take a moment to read (or at least skim) that blog post.

Are you back? Great.

The China Study was big news in the animal rights world when the book first came out. I haven't read it, but from what I've heard it basically says "go (mostly?) vegan". Wow, a whole book backed by lots of data telling people that veganism is the way to go! How exciting!

That blog post a perfect illustration of why this isn't exciting. The blog post contains 9,000 words of statistical analysis, complete with tables, charts, and more. In the end, the author of the post concludes that The China Study is extremely flawed.

Is she right? Who the f*ck knows?

And that's the real problem. It is incredibly difficult for someone without expertise to assess claims about health. How do I know if the blog post author has any credibility? For that matter, how do I know if T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study) has any credibility? I am not a biologist, epidemiologist, statistician, or dietitian. That blog post sure has a lot of numbers and charts, though! I bet The China Study has some too.

It's trivial to find health arguments for dozens of radically different diets (vegan, Atkins, paleo, raw, and more). If I, as an animal rights activist, start making claims about human health, why should anyone listen to me? There are lots of people with better credentials ready to disagree with me. I can cite sources, but so can others. Without a lot of independent research, it's very difficult for a layperson to figure out the truth, and that assumes there is one truth to figure out. Scientific research is full of contradictions, especially in a field as complex as diet and human health.

Health arguments are a distraction from the real key issue, animal suffering. Animal suffering in factory farms is undeniable and easily proved. It doesn't take a Ph.D. to understand that being crammed in a tiny cage unable to move is torture. Few people in the general public will argue the opposite. An argument based on animal suffering appeals to the fundamental empathy all of us possess, and doesn't require statistics or studies to suport it.

I did my Outreach for Animals Week leafleting today, and it went surprisingly well.

I say surprisingly, because I thought that the weather was conspiring against me, but I was wrong. It was raining outside, but it turns out that the University of Minnesota does allow leafleting inside academic buildings (but not inside the student union). Unny suggested I try either Blegen or Willey Hall on the West Bank. I went to Willey near the Gopher Express.

I had thought that traffic would just be too slow for this to be useful, but I was wrong. In fact, compared to my experiences leafleting outside on the UMN campus, this was actually a better location. I think the weather may have driven more people inside, and I picked a spot that was at a good crossroads.

Surprisingly, no one "official" came to tell me I couldn't do this. I had asked Unny to print out a copy of the UMN's policy, which I brought with me. I was sure I'd have to show it to someone, but apparently not.

All in all, I handed out at least 450 leaflets, and maybe more than 500, in just about 2.5 hours.

After doing this, I had a few observations for future leafleting ...

With just one person, you really don't need a high traffic area. I heard a lot more refusals during peak traffic. I'm not sure how this breaks down numerically, but my guess is that I actually gave out fewer leaflets per minute during peak traffic.

The fact that people are less receptive during peak traffic makes sense. The busy times where I was located were between classes. Most of those folks are heading to their next class. They don't have free time to think about taking a leaflet. In addition, because I was at the top of the stairway, people probably felt pressure to keep moving rather than block the flow of traffic.

In contrast, the rest of the time was great. The traffic was low, but there were very few totally dead times. Instead, I'd see maybe 1-5 people per minute. This is perfect, since I was able to approach almost every one of them.

Even better, the slower traffic let me approach people in a more relaxed and friendly manner. People seemed most receptive when I greeted them, waited for them to make eye contact and respond, and only then offered the leaflet. I'm no psychologist, but I think the initial exchange of pleasantries probably helps humanize me in their mind, and gives them some sort of investment in our contact.

By contrast, if I said "hi" followed immediately by an offer, or I just offered the leaflet with my usual "information to help animals" phrase, I become just "the leafleter". The recipient hasn't invested anything yet, and they can say no or ignore me easily.

Of course, the downside to this sort of slow but steady traffic is that it really doesn't work well for multiple leafleters. I was joined by another person later in the morning, and there really wasn't enough traffic for both of us to be there most of the time, so she ended up going to a different spot.

If I was trying to find a good event for a group, I'd prefer something like leafleting the end of a concert. The traffic is incredibly heavy, and you can actually make use of a decent size group.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how this went. I'd like to do more outreach like this, but I seem to end up spending all my volunteer time on fundraising, tech, finances, and event planning. Those are rewarding too, but it's nice to go out and do something simple.

I'd really like to thank everyone who sponsored me in this event. You helped raise a good chunk of change for a cause I dearly believe in.

First off, there's no technical content in this blog post. Sorry.

I'll be participating in a leaflet-a-thon next week with my animal advocacy group, Compassionate Action for Animals. This is like a walkathon, but with less walking and more handing stuff out.

To those within the light of my pixels, if you'd like to support me, you can do so by making a donation online. Even if you don't particularly support the cause, please consider doing this to support me. If you've used a module I've written, you could say thanks by making a donation.

Thanks,

-dave

I've been thinking about this idea of ruthless pragmatism over the last few days. What is ruthless pragmatism? How can we actually be ruthlessly pragmatic? Do we even want to be?

Defining ruthless pragmatism is harder than you might think. The problem is that it's easy to claim we're being pragmatic, but I think mostly that consists of acting out our biases. If you are inclined to think that people won't hear our (animal rights) message, you'll probably tend towards so-called "direct action", because you think that intimidation and property damage are the most pragmatic approach. If you think otherwise, maybe you tend towards outreach and education. Either way, it's easy to give lip service to pragmatism.

The other problem of definition is one of scope. Anyone concerned with animal rights should also be concerned about human rights. For example, non-human animals might be best served by the forced extinction of the human species, but that doesn't consider all animals' rights. Similarly, we need to be careful not to sacrifice other social justice issues on the altar of animal rights.

But I think a ruthless pragmatist needs to have an even broader and longer-term view. It's easy to push yourself to give 150% for animals all of the time, but how long can that last? If you are unhappy with your life, will you be a lifelong activist? Is it better to push as hard as possible for ten years and then stop, or should you aim for a reduced effort over fifty years? If you engage in actions that violate your own sense of justice, are you being pragmatic, or does the inevitable psychological backlash make this ineffective in the long run?

These are all hard questions. It's easy to say things like "by any means necessary" or "we must all do things we don't like", but I'm not convinced that this attitude is truly pragmatic. It certainly feels pragmatic. Activists, more than most, are prone to mistake self-denial and self-abuse for pragmatism. It's easy to look at all the suffering in the world and think that only if you are personally unhappy are you really doing all you can. But that's a trap that leads to burnout and increased despair. If you've been active in animal rights for a while, you've probably known people who've left the movement, many giving up veganism or even going back to eating meat. A pragmatic movement will do its best to keep people active and living their values for their entire life.

There's another part of ruthless pragmatism that we're missing as activists, and that's measurement. I've heard very little in the movement about concrete strategies for measuring the success of various actions. Does the ALF have a feedback loop built-in? Do they stop and evaluate every few years? Sure, they may measure their economic damage, but do they actually have a way to evaluate the impact of that damage?

But let's not pick on the ALF. Do we at Compassionate Action for Animals do this? We do, actually, but we could do much better! Most of our metrics are not measuring the actual impact on animals. Instead, we measure things like number of attendees at events and their evaluations, number of leaflets distributed, etc. These are all interesting, but we haven't actually established a concrete connection between these numbers and the actual impact on animals. Even worse, we don't have any good way to figure out if we should be doing some other set of activities entirely.

Pragmatism requires more than measurement after the fact. We also need to constantly be on the lookout for new research to direct our actions. As a movement, I don't hear much talk about the latest research in psychology, sociology, or economics. Much as it may be painful, we need to take a page from Madison Avenue and figure out the best ways to influence people (hint to the so-called abolitionists, it's not logical argument!). More and more these days, research is showing that people's behavior is shaped by unconscious factors they can't even articulate. How can we take advantage of that in our movement?

So do we want to be ruthlessly pragmatic? I'll give that a qualified "yes". First, we need to expand the scope of our ruthlessness. Our ruthlessness must be both ethical and sustainable. Anything else just isn't ruthless or pragmatic enough. Second, we need to work past our built-in biases and use measurement and research to make our actions as effective as possible.

I'm not trying to pick on pattrice, I promise. In fact, I thought her keynote was thoughtful and thought-provoking, and that means I actually have something to say about it.

During her keynote, pattrice stated that meat consumption is at an all time high. I can't argue with the raw numbers. More animals are being killed for food now than ever in the past. But I'm getting a little tired of hearing this fact quoted without any context.

First, I think it's important to realize that meat consumption has been going up for a long time. I don't have any facts to point to (I'm lazy), but it's reasonable to assume that meat consumption started increasing long before there was an animal rights movement. In fact, increases in meat consumption probably date back to the beginning of agriculture, when people were able to raise animals, rather than having to hunt them.

The beginning of the modern animal rights movement is generally placed some time in the 1970s. Many people say it began with the publication of Animal Liberation in 1975. The fact that meat consumption has increased since the movement began is part of a longer historical trend of more people having more money, and also the increased industrialization of meat production. So meat has gotten cheaper, and more people have more money to buy it.

Additionally, since the animal rights movement began, the worldwide human population has increased dramatically. In the US alone, our population went from 200 million in 1970 to 300 million in 2007.

We can measure the success of the animal rights movement in part by measuring the increase in meat consumption against the increase in the human population. If we really wanted to get fancy, we'd also measure it against the percentage of people living in poverty (more richer people means more meat).

Ultimately, I don't know if we're winning. I do think pattrice (and many others) are using the wrong metrics, and statements based on said metrics are useless at best, and harmful at worst.

If anyone out there is doing any solid work on understanding trends in meat consumption as part of larger population and wealth trends, I'd love to know about it.

Update: The first version of this entry was all mixed up with the next entry. That's now fixed.

This past weekend's TLOV 2009 conference is over, and I have a lot to think about. In particular, I both agreed and disagreed with much of pattrice jones' keynote on Sunday afternoon.

Her keynote outlined an approach to animal rights based on the axiom that "animals exist". This means that animals are creatures with desires that need to respected right now, as opposed to in some future theoretical sense. As a consequence, this requires animal activists to act with "ruthless pragmatism", which may mean doing things that make us ethically uncomfortable.

I (mostly) agree.

She said that simply getting people to go vegan is not enough. She stated that in order to win we have to both reduce demand and raise the costs of doing (animal abuse) business.

I agree with this as well, but with some caveats.

Pattrice praised both the ALF as well as welfare legistation like Prop 2. It's true, both do raise the costs of doing business. The welfare legislation also has a real impact on actual animals, and so is worthy in and of itself (as long as there's not something even more useful we could be doing).

But let's tackle the ALF. Is the ALF ruthlessly pragmatic? I don't think so. In fact, the ALF is one of the most idealistic "organizations" I know of. Certainly, they're not metrics-based, methodical, or any of the other things I associate with pragmatism.

Pattrice says that the ALF has cost animal abuse industries millions of dollars through their vandalism and animal releases over the years of their existence. So how much is "millions"? In 2002, The FBI testified before Congress that the ALF and ELF combined had caused $43 million in damage since 1996. From my reading online, it seems like ELF is more damaging in their activities, but let's be generous and split it. That means that the ALF is doing approximately $20 million in damage (in the US) every five years.

The first question, then, is does this damage raise the cost of doing business? Second, is this the most effective thing that these activists could be doing?

I think the first question is relatively easy to answer. In the US alone in 2006, the mink "crop" sold for approximately $136 million at auction. Looking back at previous years, wholesale mink pelt values at auction were more than $1 billion from 1998-2007.

So we have an industry making $1 billion in 10 years (in the US alone) at wholesale! The retail amounts are even more staggering. Retail fur sales were $1.34 billion in 2007 alone.

So given those numbers, is it reasonable to think that the ALF's generously estimated $40 million in the same time period had an impact on the fur industry? I don't think so. Even if all $40 million in damage had been taken just by mink "farmers" (which it wasn't), that's less than 5% of their income. Unless their margins are ridiculously low, it's hard to imagine this being a major problem.

Even if this caused a 5% increase in retail costs, fur coats are a luxury good. Luxury goods have a lot price elasticity, and a 5% increase in price may have a 0% impact on sales! And given the 10x markup from wholesale to retail, there's clearly room for retailers to absorb a 5% increase in the costs paid to wholesalers.

This might all sounds like I'm saying that the ALF just needs to get out there and do a lot more damage. At some amount of damage, they would be able to have a serious impact on prices, and this would eventually decrease sales, which in turn would decrease production.

The problem with this approach is that we haven't yet looked at the costs to the animal rights movement. I'd love to argue that the ALF's actions are detrimental to the movement as a whole. They make us look bad, and make it hard to get people to listen to us. But that's a somewhat nebulous argument.

A more solid argument is that the costs to the ALF activists themselves are very, very high. Any activist who is involved in a significantly damaging action wil become a high-priority target for law enforcement. The most likely outcome is that they will be caught, turned into witnesses against their cohorts, and/or put in jail for long periods of time. Either way, they are no longer able to be activists for a significant period of time, and they are certainly not able to repeat their ALF actions on a regular basis.

So the price of "success" for an ALFer is to stop being an activist for a non-trivial amount of time. Of course, this "success" also imposes a cost on the larger movement, as well-meaning supporters spend money and time on the ALFer's legal defense and jail support.

The animal rights movement cannot compete with animal ag when it comes to money. In their 2007 fiscal year, HSUS had approximately $100 million in income. HSUS is by far the biggest 501c3 working on animal rights in the US, and arguably only some of their money goes to "animal rights" work (I'm not knocking HSUS for that, BTW, I think they're great).

PETA, which is probably the next biggest organization, brought in about $30 million.

That's pocket change compared to the combined financial resources of the animal abuse industries. Mink wholesale alone is equivalent to the income of the two top AR charities in the US. The fur industry is miniscule compared to farmed animals. In 2007, beef producers alone brought in $50 billion wholesale.

That's a lot of big numbers, and it seems overwhelming. How can we possibly win? Well, we need to be ruthlessly pragmatic. I think that strategic nonviolence is the ruthless pragmatic philosophy that shows us the way to victory.

Strategic nonviolence analyzes the disparity in power between us and our opponents, and shows us that we do have one big advantage. We are on the side of justice, and our cause is morally persuasive. Animals do deserve equal consideration, and they are being horribly tortured by humans. We can use this morally persuasive argument to convince members of the public to join our cause and support us.

But we cannot fight toe-to-toe with money or violence. Our opponents can outspend and outfight us quite easily. We cannot engage them on the battlegrounds where they are strongest.

We will not win unless our movement grows quite significantly. How will we know it's grown big enough? Instead of covert releases of animals at night, 1,000 of us will march to a factory farm and liberate animal in broad daylight, unopposed. 500 of us will stand arm-in-arm blocking a slaughterhouse entry, and we'll do it every day for a month. When we do these things, the public at large will praise our bravery and commitment to equal consideration for all beings.

But we're not there yet.