Chapter Sections
1. Introduction
2. Campaigning
3. Civil Disobedience
4. Direct Action
5. Action Planning
6. Lobbying
7. Picketing
8. Starting a Group
9. Publicity
10. Leafleting
11. News Media
12. Internet
How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals
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"Campaigning can be as easy as writing to your local newspaper’s letters page, or as elaborate as being at the centre of a busy local group." Animal Aid (1) |
Ever thought "...this is important - surely I can do something - I'll feel wretched if I don't..." Whether student, worker, mother or pensioner we can all campaign to make our voices heard. Campaigning is about changing society for the better by persuading and motivating people to act in some way. Do not think you must campaign by demonstrating at rallies or otherwise by making big noises. You can accomplish a lot effectively in numerous ways from professional or semi-professional work to relatively low key activities (see Chapter 4 for examples). The main thing you need for campaigning is a will to act and drive to keep you going. Winston Churchill said "Persevere to conquer".
We have a right to be involved in decisions that affect our lives and society around us. We have a right to influence decision makers, especially the people in powerful positions, to do what we think is best whether what we are after is local or global, high-key or low-key. Much of the change in society comes from a few dedicated people who are largely unknown but work hard in the background and small groups of committed activists can stimulate big changes. A few people chucking tea cases into Boston harbour are widely credited for significantly leading the way to the independence of the United States from Britain (see Chapter 5 under Terrorism).
Where to Begin?
Sometimes the most difficult part of taking action is choosing what to campaign for from the many possible issues. Unless something has already fallen into your lap, as a starting point look at the divisions of animal rights, below, choose one that interests you and pick something within it.
You can categorise animal rights in a number of ways (which inevitably overlap each other). One way to think about animal rights is according to main controversies:
Sentience vs the whole of the animal kingdom.
Speciesism vs anthropocentrism.
Animals as property, their legal status as objects.
Exploitation of animals for food, experimentation, trade, etc.
Animal rights vs animal welfare vs nature conservation.
Practical campaigning for animal rights.
Veganism vs vegetarianism.
Why be a vegan or veggie.
Vegetarian history and demographics.
Nutrition and vegan/veggie recipes.
Health and disease, eg salmonella, bird flu, foot and mouth disease.
Social impact of the meat industry, eg third world starvation.
Practicalities of organising a veggie/vegan food stall.
The industrial scale of animals slaughtered annually.
Inhumane housing conditions.
Gourmet dishes like shark fin soup, foie gras, veal and tiger penis.
Mutilations of farm animals.
Pollution of the environment.
Health hazards to humans.
Sweeping use of drugs for disease prevention.
Deformities induced by confinement or breeding.
Factory farming vs traditional farming vs organic farming.
The Sixth Extinction.
Climate change and animal survival.
Habitat destruction.
International trade, eg for body parts, quack medicine and exotic pets.
Bush meat.
Hunting wild or canned animals for sport.
The role of zoos.
Animal rights vs nature conservation.
Biomedical research, diseases and illnesses.
Toxicity testing.
Animal housing.
History of animal experimentation.
The morality and legal history of 'unnecessary' pain.
National and international animal protection laws.
Science and ethics.
The three R's and alternatives to animal experimentation.
Kinds of entertainment, eg film industry, rodeos, circuses, bull fighting, badger baiting.
History and culture of animal entertainment.
Animals used for entertainment, eg horses, dogs, chicken, wild animals.
Selective breeding of entertainment animals, eg race horses, greyhounds, beagles, foxhounds, ferrets.
The fate of retired entertainment animals.
What is fur and leather?
The fur-bearing animals, eg rabbits, racoons, mink, cats.
Fur farms and farming fur-bearers.
Traps and trapping wild fur-bearers.
Numbers and kinds of pelts traded internationally.
The fashion industry.
The leather industry: cattle, snakes and crocodiles.
The fur industry: for or against nature conservation?
Alternative synthetic materials.
Numbers of animals bred specifically for the pet trade.
Exotic pets: reptiles, birds and mammals taken from the wild.
Animals perishing in transit.
Animals confined in cages and other unsuitable quarters.
Abused, neglected and unwanted pets.
'Controlling' pet numbers: neutering and euthanasia?
Cosmetic surgery or mutation, vanity or tradition?
The billions of animals killed annually to feed pets.
Animal moral status.
The moral community.
Equal consideration of interests vs intrinsic and instrumental value.
Consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics.
Moral agents and moral patients.
Moral autonomy and marginal cases.
These are just some areas of interest in animal rights and you can come up with other topics, among them animal abuse (and its relationship with human abuse), caged hens and open rescue, cruelty-free shopping, xenotransplantation and zoophilia. If you are still stumped for an objective to campaign for then contact organisations you fancy that may want to set up a group in your district.
Keeping Going
When you are well into campaigning you could be having fun, but you will also experience workaday frustration when your efforts appear to be falling flat. At times we all get fed up, frustrated and think we are failing. But think again and be heartened for your may simply be going through the normal development in any movement for social change.
Bill Moyer (1933 - 2002) was an American activist for social change during most of 40 years. Moyer says that a movement for social change evolves through a number of stages and outlines several (2). Moyer would say that we in the animal rights movement are at a particular stage in our development. We have successfully passed the initial stages: the animal rights issue is on the social and political agenda and is hotly disputed; citizen groups are growing in number and strength and are educating the public; some of the public are even being alienated by violent activist rebels. However, Moyer would say that we have not yet won support from the public majority (Moyer's stage six) and still have a long way to go before the public will push for change (Moyer's stage eight). Such stages in the development of a movement for social change, however, are not clear-cut, as George Lakey another old-hand American civil rights campaigner reminds us (3). Different groups in the same movement for social change, he says, may in their development go back and forth a number of times, at different rates and overlap each other.
Let us be wise to the prescriptions that make for successful social change and we will be more likely to keep going and succeed. Keep Moyer and Lakey in mind and you will despair less in your off moments or when rampaging in frustration like a bull in a china shop.
Ten Essential Campaigning Tips
Here are important pointers for success common to most campaigns that every campaigner should know from the start.
1. What Is Your Campaign?
What are you ultimately trying to achieve? Your ultimate aim must be clear and precise. If you are not completely clear about what you are aiming for you are not likely to achieve it. A good exercise is to write down your ultimate goal in less than a dozen or so words. You need to record it anyway and keep it safe so that over time it does not insidiously change, for it could change into something that seems the same yet in effect is really different. The route to the original goal may not be the same as the route to the changed goal so that you could go round in circles and fail.
2. Break Down Goals Into Manageable Chunks
Break down your ultimate goal into small chunks you know you can attain. For instance, to shut down an animal abusing pet shop or aquarium (ultimate goal), your sub-goals could be: (1) Itemise how the shop may respond to your attack and how you will counter each response. (2) Complete a file of facts that supports your case on the shop. (3) Convince the community in the shop's neighbourhood about your cause and document their support. (4) Lobby and win over your local political representative (see Chapter 3: Lobbying) to support your case. And so on... Completing each sub-goal will give you a sense of achievement, will keep the momentum going, be good for moral, boost your credibility and bring you closer to your ultimate goal.
3. Is It Outrageous?
Outrage is what the news media thrive on and what the public love to read about. Issues that may make you fume but for which nothing can be done, or for which everything possible is being done, are not outrages in this sense. An outrage has to be something that nothing or little is being done about yet a great deal can be done about it. Make the focal point of your campaign an outrage and you are more likely to succeed. People who hear about an outraged may turn into fellow campaigners or support you in some other way.
4. Do Sufficient Research
You must convince people generally and policy makers in particular that your campaign issue is important. So get as many relevant and accurate facts as you can about your issue from different perspectives: background, some quantitative figures, the major players, relevant legislation and government policy. Write it in a simple form that people can understand easily. Issues often generate conflict between people because they get their facts wrong or are biased. The more you know, the more expert you will become and people will have more confidence in you. For a regional issue you could get information by carrying out a local survey. For a wider issue a web search might bring up lots of information; go for reputable, authoritative primary sources, that is first hand evidence, not what someone says someone else has said.
5. Know Who You Must Influence
Once you know exactly what you are going to campaign on, work out who you need to influence and whose support you need to win. Influencing and winning over 'the public' is too vague. Does your issue involve the people in your locality or region, an institution, a local or national authority, a senator or member of parliament - perhaps a combination? How are you going to reach them? (See Lobbying, Chapter 3.)
6. Your Resources
Do not worry about money - good actions do not necessarily have big budgets if any budget at all. However, start campaigning with something within your reach. Do members of your group have complementary abilities and experiences? Is anyone good at organising events, speaking in public, handling the news media or expertise in web design? If you do not have what you need, and cannot get it, think up another campaign.
7. Alternative Viewpoints
No matter how you see your issue, how do the people you must influence see it? Examine the forces, people and organisations at work for and against the change you want to bring about. See things from their points of view. Say you want to save a wood for its animal inhabitants and need to persuade your local authority not to bulldoze it. You might think the wood is important for frogs, owls and weasels, but they see it as a resource for a recreation park and timber. So emphasise the issue in their terms – dog walking and renewable wood felling – and they will be more likely to listen to you.
8. Broaden Your Public
Your campaign is more likely to succeed the greater the number of people who support you. So find a part of your issue that most people can identify with. Say you are campaigning against the building of a new abattoir. Most people tolerate killing animals for food but few willingly endure bad smells. You should therefore concentrate your campaign on the issue of odours rather than on vegetarianism. Better to campaign on five per cent of the problem and get 95 per cent support.
9. Join a Coalition
Individual groups joining together to work toward the same goal make a coalition. By joining a coalition your group may be able to do more than by working alone: you can snap a single stick but you cannot break a bundle of sticks. Look for other groups and what they are doing. Introduce your group to them and give them an idea of the benefits your group can offer them.
10. Can't Get No...
You might think that you need hope and passion to change things or that you should have fun and an agreeable time while campaigning. These are important, but what you really need is a measure of satisfaction. Aim for a dose of satisfaction, that is a measure of having achieved something, at least weekly, or daily if possible. You can best get it by setting yourself small goals and achieving them, eg completing a newsletter, bagging a new member, assembling all the bric-a-brac for a fundraising drive. These are solid stepping stones on the way to success that should raise your spirit and keep you going.
More Tips
(1) Animal Aid’s Guide to Campaigning. July 2007. (Accessed online March 2008.)
(2) Moyer, Bill. Abstract from 'The Practical Strategist: Movement Action Plan (MAP). Strategic Theories for Evaluating, Planning and Conducting Social Movements.' Social Movement Empowerment Project, San Francisco. 1990. (Accessed online 4 July 2007.)
(3) Lakey, George. Strategizing for a Living Revolution. (Accessed online 3 July 2007.) Also in Solnit, David (ed.) Globalize Liberation: how to uproot the system and build a better world. City Lights. 2003.
Links
Campaign Strategy Campaigning strategies to save the world.
Books
Rose, Chris: How to Win Campaigns: 100 steps to success. Earthscan: London. 2005.
| How to Do Animal Rights - and Win the War on Animals. © Roger (Ben) Panaman, April 2008. All rights reserved. |