ALDF's National Justice for Animals Week

categories: Activism and Actions, Politics and Law

Published February 24, 2009 @ 02:35PM PT

Did you know that this is the Animal Legal Defense Fund's first annual National Justice for Animals Week? Well, you would have if your no-good Change.org Animal Rights blogger had told you this past weekend as planned. Why on earth are you still putting up with her and her perpetually behind ways?

Anyway, National Justice for Animals Week. Check it out. Lots of stuff going on at the Web site.

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Lots of confusion going on. Search that page for the word vegan. Nothing. The "Daily Action" page? Nothing there either.
Veganism is the integration of animal rights within an individual's life. It is an indispensable baseline — what someone recently characterized as a "minimum standard of decency". There simply is no animal rights movement without veganism.
How can justice for nonhuman animals mean anything other than, as an essential underlying commitment, becoming vegan? Analogously, how could justice for enslaved humans mean anything other than a commitment to respect the personhood of the enslaved, and stop participating in the system that exploits them?
Additionally, because there is not yet a significant vegan movement, along with the entrenched property status of nonhumans, opportunities for meaningful legal work are severely constrained. Much of the current work, which focuses on "cruelty" and "pets", is counterproductive because it reinforces the property status of animals. To learn about what the focus of any animal rights law should be at this time, I recommend the following presentation by Gary Francione (the preeminent animal rights theorist), and an interview that features him:
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/index.php?page_id=45
http://www.animalvoices.ca/shows/taimie_bryant2

Posted by Nathan Schneider on 02/24/2009 @ 04:56PM PT
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Nathan, I'll admit that I just haven't had time to go through the resources too much myself, but yes, if there's not any clear mention of veganism, that's disappointing, though it could be argued that lack of focus in that direction might be expected, given this specific nonprofit's area (i.e., law & legislation, not vegan advocacy; diet isn't something they can legislate right now). The main page explains that this particular effort is about "raising public awareness nationwide about how to report animal abuse-and how to work within your community to create stronger laws and assure tough enforcement." "Justice" in this sense seems to be intended in the narrow legal-system sense, not in the sense that many of us think of it generally.

But to be fair, I don't think we can judge the Daily Actions feature yet--actions are going up one day at a time, and the week has just begun. Today's just the 3rd of 7 days.

Posted by Stephanie Ernst on 02/24/2009 @ 06:04PM PT
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Author

Stephanie is an independent animal rights advocate, a vegan, a tree-hugging environmentalist, and a freelance editor and writer. She lives in St. Louis with an aging corgi-lab and an adolescent rescued pit bull.