Welcome to The Vegan Report, my name is Ryan,
and before you attend your next pro animal protest,
listen to today's episode on why you could be
doing more harm than good, and how to make sure
your protest has the impact you want it to have.
To discuss this topic, I have with me Bjorn Olofsson,
a researcher, science communicator and animal
rights advocate who has recently written for
Phonalytics, the science of protest and demonstrations.
Visit the episode notes to connect with Bjorn.
You will also find there a link to the Phonalytics
article, which is a must read. For the sake of
being a more effective movement, Please share
this episode far and wide. This is an important
PSA episode on the science behind protesting
effectively. We have all of this data, all of
those studies, all of those, you know, analysis
of what are the best methods to make progress
in the pro animal space. and we're not using
those resources. They're just ignored and activists
seem to be completely indifferent to them. How
do you explain that? That's a great question.
This is the question that sometimes keeps me
up at night, right? It's like, why are people
defaulting to strategies that aren't effective
or at least aren't proven to be effective? What
I come back to Is we tend to use strategies that
we think would work on us. So I'm assuming most
people listening to this are vegan and or, you
know, vegetarian or flexitarian or whatever your
diet is or whatever you've done to benefit animals.
You likely have thought back in your life about
the things that have convinced you to change
your lifestyle and change your diet and change
your behavior. And then instinctually, you take
those ideas and then try to work on other people
the same way. This doesn't work for two reasons.
Number one, most people are actually really bad
at understanding their own motivations. This
is just true for everybody. I am as well. And
when we try to trace our personal vegan journeys,
we probably are going to look at very big salient
moments And ignore some of the smaller aspects
that have transitioned us. So for example, I'm
going to make this up. Imagine you're thinking
about watching the documentary Earthlings. And
for you, this is huge like this transition to
overnight. But then you might not think about
the fact that you had a conversation a month
before you watched Earthlings with a friend who
convinced you to watch it. That conversation
might not be part of your journey. Then you might
not think about the week after you watched Earthlings,
you chatted with a vegan friend who gave you
a lot of recipes. That might not be part of your
journey. You might not think about your access
to vegan foods in a supermarket, even though
if you aren't able to find good foods nearby
you, you might have been less likely to maintain
your diet change. You might not have thought
about the fact that friends and family might
have reacted differently. If when you told people
you're doing this diet change and they were either
neutral or supportive of you that helps you maintain
it but if you happen to have a social group that
was dismissive or rude. That could have turned
against you so we think of this big moment like
a documentary or or a protest or. a really meaningful
Ted talk or whatever it happens to be. And we
ignore a lot of these subtler moments that guide
us on the way to changing our behavior and changing
our lifestyles. And another reason is that motivations
we have are often not had by other types of people.
So vegans tend to be more open minded. A lot
of the times vegans tend to care less about what
other people think of them because we are going
against the curve, going against the grain a
little bit. But for a lot of people, social cohesion
fitting into their culture, into their surroundings
is very valuable to them. Even if they might
not say that on a survey, that is something that
guides their motivations and guides their behavior.
And we have to reconcile with the fact that a
lot of people but we might be different than
the people we're talking to psychologically.
This is not to say we're better or anything or
like we're inherently more valuable. It's just
there are differences. And when we think about
what worked on us, that's not going to work all
the time. So instead of looking back, we need
to be looking at evidence, at data. We need to
be looking to the future. It's not what has worked
on me. That's not the good question. The question
is, What methods have been tested and will work
on other people to make them change their behavior
or change their attitudes? Fascinating. And it
resonates with me so much. I've had I was interviewed
recently by Veg Network in Canada and they asked,
you know, the traditional question, what made
you go vegan? And I will, you know, give myself
a pat on the back because I said, I don't know.
I really don't know. You know, multiple reasons,
most likely, but I really don't know. Okay. Why
protest? Why, you know, people think about protest
as I feel a default way of giving, you know,
shape to their activism. Why is this the traditional,
you know, default way of thinking about activism?
Great question. We often associate activism and
protest so frequently that, you know, if you
do Google image searches or things like that,
and you search activist, you will see a protester,
even though I would say the majority of activism
is often behind the scenes or in different corridors
of power. Lobbying could be activism, a conversation
could be activism, anything like that. But we
associate protests so much with traditional activism
because it just feels right in a way. You know,
you're on the streets, you're shouting, you're
making a sign. Maybe you're chanting, you're
singing, you're having, you're really, it's the
most visible type of pro, this most visible type
of activism that exists. i would say i think
most people would agree on that it is the most
visible the most salient it's purposefully in
your face designed to make you question things
and i think many people when they start activism
don't have access to systemic ways of changing
power dynamics So if you're trying to be an activist,
maybe you're in a university, you're young, you're
trying to figure out a career path. Not all not
all activists are like this, but a lot are. What
are you going to do? Are you going to be able
to walk into the CEO's office at Tyson and start
talking to them about cage free reforms or talk
to a member of Congress or Parliament about shifting
your dietary guidelines? No, that just seems
impossible to you. What can you do? You can post
on social media. That's another avenue or you
could stage a protest because these are the options
you have available to you when you're young and
passionate and I want to be clear. I think this
is really good. I think having forms of activism
that work regardless of if you've been working
in NGOs for 20 years or if you're just starting
out and are passionate, that's a good thing.
But because protest is so visible and so accessible
to younger and more inexperienced activists,
it is often associated entirely with activism
itself. And what I'm trying to do is some people
have interpreted my work as saying that I don't
like protest or I think it's ineffective. I think
protest needs to be used more critically. I think
we need to be thinking. when we use protest,
which I think is one of the inherent contradictions
here, because protest is so passionate. It's
so energetic. It's so over the top sometimes.
But passion needs focus if it's going to make
long term change. And if you're a young person
or any person thinking about protest, there are
some ways we could do this. We could be doing
this more effectively. I would also add that
it is cheap. You know, even doing this podcast,
I consider that as activism, but I had to spend
money on microphone on recording devices on all
of that. So it's not reachable to maybe a younger.
pro -animal activists, someone who has a tight
budget. But protests are cheap. You just need
to walk in the streets with a cardboard. It's
accessible to everyone, every wallet. Do you
feel that protests are also the default mode
of doing activism because they're more left -wing?
Because I started thinking what conservative
right -wing group is doing protest and I have
a few Notable examples in mind, but I don't feel
it's common to the culture of more conservative
leaning people to go out in the streets and you
know to protest but I do feel it is more in the
culture of maybe left -leaning people and thinking
that most vegans and pro -animal people are left
-wing, you would expect them to be more attracted
to protesting. So I agree that protest is often
more utilized by left -leaning groups, but it
definitely is a tactic on the right. A lot of
the research I looked at was examining the Tea
Party protests in the United States around 2009,
which is a right, very conservative organization.
if you're not familiar. And we can see protests
from right -wing groups in many parts of the
world as well. I would agree it's more common
on the left. And the reason why is we can think
about the actual ideologies of the left and the
right. The right is conservative. Let's think
about that word. They want to conserve what we
have. They value tradition. They value the past.
They value history. Maybe it's an imagined past,
but it still is the idea of the past. Whereas
left leaning progressives value progression.
They want to change things and move differently
into the future. It's a lot easier to protest
for change than to protest for the status quo.
I mean, just imagine it. You're going to go out
in the street, have a sign that says, you know,
let's make this the same as it is right now.
Like it doesn't really work rhetorically. You're
protesting to not change things. It just doesn't
lend itself well to that form of ideology. And
then we can think about right -leaning protests
that have either been successful or very salient.
And those are right -leaning protests that have
advocated for change. The Tea Party in the United
States, Brexit in the UK, for example, these
are types of things that are trying to change
and go back as opposed to maintaining the status
quo. So that's I think the key difference here,
vegans and rights activists, we want change.
We don't want the status quo at all. Most left
leaning people don't want the status quo. They
want some sort of progression socially or economically.
And that's where that overlap comes from, because
this tactic works better when we're advocating
for change. Yeah, I'm also thinking about pro
-life protests. which are discussed from an animal
rights lens in Beating Hearts, a book I always
recommend. You brought up an interesting point
about how it is passionate and how your work
has been interpreted as being against protest.
Well, it is much more nuanced than that if you
go and read you know what you wrote, you see
that no, it's not a definite no against protests.
But I'm afraid that not all people will understand
the nuances of that. So my first recommendation
after reading the analysis would be for an activist
would be avoid protests. And if you have to protest,
you know, read this analysis or think about it
really carefully. But this should not be the
default mode for your activism. Do you agree
with that advice? I would say we should never
have a default mode of activism. I would say
we need to think about what is our goal. And
then choose a series of tactics and interventions
and strategies that are most likely to get us
to that goal. Sometimes protest is one of them.
Sometimes it's not. So that's really the question
we're at here. If you're trying to do something
that's good for the animals, what are the three
steps along the way that is going to get us there?
And maybe it's protest. Maybe not. Okay. Let
me submit the scenario to you. I've watched a
video years ago of vegans, pro -animal activists
entering a barbecue restaurant and you had people,
you know, eating peacefully, having fun, families
and so on and then entered the angry pro -animal
vegans who started screaming and shouting and,
you know, pouring blood on their clothes and
all of that. And when you looked at the faces
of the people eating at that restaurant, you
could see how upset they were. And I feel like
that is the image of the vegan activists. That's
what people think about every time you tell them
Hey, I'm a vegan activist or I'm an animal rights
advocate or something like that. They see that
that protester entering that restaurant and screaming
and the militant vegan. Yes. So what's up with
that? Is it productive to to do that kind of
protest? And why has that image been stuck with
us since forever? Great question. And I think
you're 100 % correct that that is often an image
associated with vegans. Same with throwing blood
on fur coats or being really annoying at family
gatherings, things like that. We have to realize...
Let me say this. That is true. Protest is the
most unpopular tactic available for animal rights.
In polling, it's always the most unpopular people
have negative stereotypes about vegans often
associated with these protests. And i want to
make it clear that this is not inherent to the
vegan movement or to the animal rights movement
stereotyping angry protesters goes back centuries
and every social movement has to deal with this
in a. In their own way like we can think about
climate protesters throwing soup on paintings
which are very common images that are we can
see on our social media feeds even to this day.
We can think about women's suffrage we can think
about gay rights. We can think about how black
lives matter protesters are often the stereotype
is being very violent this is not unique to us
this is something that is inherent within social
movements. But. This is a problem we need to
take very seriously. So this is what's often
called the backlash or the backfire effect. Protests
make people who watch them angry. This is true
of most types of protests, especially disruptive
protest, which I think would fit into the, which
your example fits into. I, in that scenario,
I don't think that's an effective form of protest
because protest doesn't make people who watch
it change their diet. It just doesn't. I wish
this weren't the case, but it just is. In fact,
in one study, which was done by one of my colleagues,
Andrea, she found that people who watched protests
a week later actually ate more meat than people
who didn't watch a protest or who saw images
of a protest in the study. So that's not great,
is it? We actually might be making people eat
more meat because they might be so irritated
by these protesters and associate them with veganism
that we're actually harming the cause. However.
I would incur if you wanted to go into a barbecue
restaurant and associate the eating of meat with
violence or murder or blood or all of this aggressive
imagery. Maybe we can think about a different
goal that we could use protest for. If we can't
convince people to vote, if we can't convince
people to change their diets, what else could
we make them do or convince them to do? Maybe
there's a ballot measure in the state that would
benefit animals and you could convince people
to vote for that. That's one scenario. Maybe
there is a corporation that has egregious animal
welfare violations and you're trying to convince
people to boycott that corporation. That's another
possibility. Maybe you're trying to convince
a politician or a corporation to change one of
their policies and you're going to protest outside
of the parliament building or the corporate office
or something like that. That's another possibility.
So no one is going to go vegan right after seeing
a protest. But they might do other things. And
this is where I think we can be a bit more critical
and tactful with the way that we're using protest.
In the scenario I used, I described a type of
protest called disruptive protest. You talked
about other social movements, you talked about
the suffragettes. I thought right away about
that event of that woman, you know, going to
the horse racing thing and dying, you know, from
being trampled by horses in the presence of the
king. Quite an incredible historic moment that
truly, you know, I think sent a message to all
social movements that being disruptive can make
a true impact, can really, you know, uh, give
attention and wins to, uh, your social movement,
but is it also the case for the pro animal movement?
Should we think about protests? You know, should
we think about investing our time in a disruptive
protest or in more like peaceful? Um, I guess,
uh, not reclusive, but like, um, Non -disruptive
protest. I wish there was a better, sexier word
for it, but it's just non -disruptive protest.
Yeah, this is a great question. The type of protest
here that we're dealing with. So let's talk about
disruptive protest. Disruptive protest is when
we are disrupting the lives of people around
us. This can involve blocking traffic, it could
involve going into restaurants like you described,
basically causing some sort of public nuisance
that people around you have to deal with in their
lives. Nearly always creates some form of backlash.
People, you know, don't want to have their lives
disrupted. That's a normal human response. Some
research from the social change lab shows that
this backlash subsides over the period of several
months. They had a study come out, I believe
it was last year, maybe 2023, that showed that
this had subsided after the grand national protests.
So that's a good thing that this is not inherently
sticky form of backlash. But we also have to
remember what I was talking about earlier that
we have these negative stereotypes of vegans
and animal rights activists that are inherently
tied to protest. And that's not going to go away
anytime soon. So does this mean we should never
use disruptive protest? I would say no. What
I'm excited about is something known as the radical
flank effect, which is basically a social social
change terminology for making the so essentially
if you have two groups one of which is extremely
radical and the other of which is extremely moderate
the existence of the radical group makes you
more likely to support the moderate group so
there's other phrases for this we can call this
good cop bad cop we some people call this a shifting
the overton window things like that where When
you have something very negative, it makes you
want to support the more positive thing because
you're getting away from that negative, radical,
crazy stuff. Let's give an example of what this
would look like. Let's say you're trying to get
McDonald's to... Let's not use a specific example.
Let's say you're trying to get a corporation
to remove... meat that was raised in station
crates for pigs and you have this really aggressive
protest you walk into a bunch of the restaurants
and. You put blood on the walls i like your example
you have pictures of pigs that are suffering
you get really in people's faces. And then a
week or two later a more moderate group has a
little social media campaign and they're much
more approachable. They're much more conversational
they say hey like we just want to talk about
this like you know i don't i don't agree with
what they're doing i don't think we should put
blood on people's floors like that's that's too
far but you know gestation creates a real issue.
We should be taking this seriously i'd love to
have a conversation with the the supply team
manager for your corporation about seeing what
we could do to make the animal welfare a little
bit better by removing these gestation creates.
Then. Ideally, that corporate manager would be
more willing to have that conversation and to
make that change. That's just one example. We
can do the same thing for politicians, for everyday
citizens, et cetera, et cetera. So that's where
I think disruptive protests can get really exciting.
Instead of just being disruptive, being disruptive
doesn't help animals by itself. But if we use
disruption as a way to signal for better change
that we could be doing right now, in which other
groups can kind of take up the, you know, we
pass the baton to these other groups, then I
think we're using strategy a little better. And
this is going to require some coordination. We
need to be working together, coordinating together,
to make sure that these moderate flank, radical
flank effects are being used correctly. Importantly
it should not be the same organization the same
organization should not be being the modern and
the radical arm because then we're going to be
that it's harder to get the conversation to come
across so. We need to be talking to each other.
You know what role does each group play are you
the radical militants who are going to make people.
go towards the more moderates or are you going
to be the ones to sit down and have those conversations
with the with the stakeholders? Yeah, that's
an issue. Internal coordination and having internal
conversations. What about you being offensive?
And we mentioned, you know, the blood. I would
just, you know, label that as offensive, maybe
nudity. We've seen that many times with, you
know, protests, mostly against dairy. Images
display of slaughterhouse images, such as, you
know, through the cube of truth. What is the
impact of that? So any form of I think there's
two, there's two questions at play here. One
is lewd imagery, so things like nudity or basically
anything that people or families might not want
to see in public for certain people. The second
is graphic imagery, which is images of slaughterhouses,
of animals under duress or blood, sometimes even
animal bodies, for example, in National Animal
Rights Day, that are displayed, although in that
case, it's rather empathetically displayed to
the public. So when we're talking about perhaps
lewd imagery, again, that's just an aspect of
disruption, I would say we're trying to cause
a ruckus and make people feel a little bit uncomfortable.
I haven't found any research about the effectiveness
of any of this. My gut instinct would be that
it falls into the same category of regular disruptive
protest. And I do know many scholars and activists
have criticized a lot of these protests for being
perhaps accidentally or sometimes even purposely
misogynistic or just just just not the just not
the vein we're trying to approach here where
we're basically objectifying human bodies instead
of subjectifying animals. So I kind of agree
with that criticism, frankly. I think maybe there
is a place for that, for lewd imagery. I just,
I haven't seen it been done very well in the
animal movement very often. Then the second question
is graphic imagery. I actually have an upcoming
resource that will delve into the idea of graphic
imagery a little bit more. But graphic imagery,
when we see an animal in pain, it creates something
that psychologists call moral shock. Where we
essentially freeze for a second and we feel if
we are not prepared to see this. It just kind
of makes you so defensive and you're in shock.
And I think we can relate to this as vegans,
even if think of the first time you saw some
horrific imagery of an animal suffering. And
imagine, you know, if you saw if you just were
walking on the street and you saw a dog, you
know, hit by a car, it would give you a horrific
feeling inside. And a lot of the time, this moral
shock. doesn't cause people to take positive
action afterwards because it kind of shuts down
your agency instead of opening it up. So if we're
going to use graphic imagery, we need to be really
careful. It should not be overdone. We shouldn't
be hitting people over the heads with it. It
should be contextualized. We should basically
guide people to understand what they're seeing
and what could be done about this, right? There
has to be hope. There has to be optimism added
to this horrible, disgusting, horrific thing
that we're seeing. Otherwise, it's not going
to make us want to do anything. So if you just
have a poster board of a pig in pain, and that's
the only thing that you're showing people, that's
not going to make people want to change their
behaviors. But if instead you use this imagery
strategically, guide them in a conversation,
Or in a in a in a documentary or a talk or something
and then you add in a really well crafted message
that helps them understand where their act where
their behaviors fit into this cruelty then they're
more likely to make a change. So again we can
use graphic imagery but. We have to be strategic
about this. We can't just go around showing this
horrible stuff willy -nilly That's not going
to just magically make people turn vegan or make
other pro animal decisions. I Think we should
address a point related to related to that You
advise people at the end of the Article you published
to track the effectiveness of their activism.
And I feel like this is something we're used
to now. Um, everyone in the corporate world,
you know, if you have a office job, every time
you launch a project or something, there's always
a phase of, you know, collecting feedback and
a postmortem of your project and what happened
and what can we learn about, you know, what we
did and, um, And so why haven't we brought that
good habit to activism? Many research organizations,
there's so many out there, phonetics, brain research,
animal ask, and a metrics that are helping people
with big picture data, but also sometimes helping
them with specific projects of tracking their
own work. I do this myself as a freelance researcher.
So you can always reach out to me as well. I
think this gets back to what we were talking
about earlier about why people haven't been tracking
it is because when A lot of times when you're
a young activist or a new activist, you're driven
by passion and intuition and instinct. And those
are great things. Those are great things, but
you need to harness them correctly. And if we're
not going to be learning from our past, if we're
not going to be looking at our mistakes and successes
and thinking and tweaking and like, what can
we do a little bit better next time to convince
one more person or to make a little bit more
change or to to shift the percentage points just
a little bit more. then we're not being the best
activists that we can be. Again, this is changing
and I'm really happy to see this is changing.
A couple years ago, I would have conversations
with people and I would have to convince them
why data was important. I'm having a lot fewer
conversations like that now. People know data
is important. Now the conversation is what is
the data and how can I use it? And that's a better
conversation to me because now people are open
-minded and they're excited and they want to
make this a little bit better. So for me, this
is a turning point. The idea that we are adopting
this idea of monitoring evaluation and learning.
We're adopting this idea of impact tracking.
And for some people, this seems so corporate,
right? We have KPIs and we have dashboards and
spreadsheets and everything. But without looking
to the past and looking inward on what has been
working and what hasn't been working. We're not
going to be able to make our strategies better
in the future. So I'm really happy to see this
this shift. So we discussed disruptive versus
non disruptive. Now let's talk about the motivation
part and the goal of the protest. So we mentioned
protests to convince people to go vegan. And
then there are the protests that would push for
change, political change, corporate change. If
I'm an activist and looking at the most impactful
way to invest my time and mobilize my friend
group or something like that, what should I choose?
Which lane? The political lane? um the the corporate
lane um uh or uh trying to convince people to
go vegan um this is a great question and this
is in some ways the question right of like what
what can we do what should we be doing how can
we optimize our work the most i i might not have
an answer that you like unfortunately i don't
think in my opinion this actually isn't the right
question i don't think If you're an activist,
you shouldn't be thinking to yourself, what is
the best way we can do activism? Because we need
every type of activism working together in a
string. They need to be working as a unit. For
example, we need documentaries to change the
media landscape. We need articles to get people
to think about animal issues when they're reading
the news. We also need protest to put pressure
on key decision makers and lobbyists. We need
to be working with corporations. We need to be
working with politicians. We need to be doing
everything. I meant in terms of protest, if I
want to organize a protest, what kind of thing
should I protest against? Oh, okay. I understand.
I understand your question more now. OK, I would
say. So. Number one, don't don't do a protest
to convince the people watching the protest to
go vegan. It's not going to work. So that's in
my opinion, that's pretty definitively off the
table. Number two. What? I would look into where
you are. and think about what issues are within
reach for us, right? Is there a bill that's going
to be on the docket this year or next year or
something like that? Maybe you can use protests
to work on that. Are there corporate campaigns
that are happening nearby you that you could
perhaps work with or coordinate with to get those
corporate campaigns to be a bit more successful?
You need to be thinking about the issues that
you can kind of push over the finish line and
to pressure people to take seriously. It's gonna
depend on where you are. It's gonna depend on
the language, the culture, physically where you
are. And I don't think there's one specific solution
all the time. Let me think, is there anything
else I would advise? And this comes back to who
else are you coordinating with? Because that's,
I think, a key issue in activism that isn't being
talked about enough. If you protest, if you're
on a campus, let's say, and you're trying to
convince your university to stop doing animal
testing, what is the next step after the protest,
right? Protest is good at getting media. It's
good at getting eyeballs. It's good at getting
clicks online, but then that's not going to be
meaningful if there isn't somebody you're going
to pass the baton to. Maybe it's you who talks
to the Dean and tries to convince them to do
this. Maybe it's a different group. Maybe you're
going to be working with the university network
across your country. So that's I think the key.
Right where where does the protest fit into this
larger. Systems chain systems changing network.
Right. If you're not working with others the
the the protest energy is just gonna fade that's
kind of one of the unfortunate realities passion
does fade energy does fade. I'm sure if you're
listening to this and you're the most passionate
person ever, I believe you that you're going
to be passionate. But at some point it will fade
for other people around you who are watching.
There has to be a next step. And I think that's
going to be where the real impact is going to
come from. You mentioned in the paper that you
should be in for the long haul. You mentioned
coordinating with maybe another organization
or something like that. There is something called
argument from authority and it is based on this
perception that we have of people with credentials,
institutions that have a long history and are
well established. But if I look at animal rights
organizations out there, not all organizations
are equal. And if I look at the way they organize
activism, they're not all based on data, on what
we know to be effective. And so how do we choose
to which organization we give our time and what
organization we should coordinate with? This
is a tricky one, because I completely agree that
a lot of organizations are more impactful than
others. And a lot of organizations take data
and research more seriously than others. I know
this firsthand. I can tell you that firsthand.
However, if you're working locally, because protest
is usually a local tactic most of the time. Right
you're working within your community sometimes
we have national protest that is absolutely true
and those are the ones that tend to dominate
the headlines but the majority of protests are
relatively small and local. There are hundreds
of protests every single year and a lot of countries
even for animal issues but most of them are going
to make the news. So because protest is usually
used locally you're going to you're almost constrained
by the local organizations that you have maybe
the national organizations so if you're. a protester
trying to think of which groups to coordinate
with, I would find the ones that are close to
you and then maybe work with them to use data
and impact and strategy more critically. If you're
thinking about Organizations to donate to to
maximize your impact there's a lot of charity
evaluators out there animal charity evaluators
is the most famous for animal nonprofits but
that's more on a global scale locally. We need
to be thinking about who can i work with who
agrees with my vision who is my theory of change
and how can we coordinate to be different parts
of that theory of change together. A lot of this
is just going to come out of community building
and networking and working together. That's something
I'm working on here in myself. I live in Barcelona,
Spain, and I'm working with a lot of the groups
here, and they don't always share my opinions
about the best ways forward. But we can agree
on the goals that we're working towards, and
we can agree that sometimes we might take up
different roles within the same movement. I obviously
am more research oriented. I'm kind of more of
the quote unquote, like professional type of
activist, but I still work with the more radical
activisty types of activists, even if it's not
the method I personally would use. So I think
collaboration is worth it more times than not,
even if you don't agree on the way the other
organization is approaching things. I want to
ask you, what did you make of effective altruism?
I like effective altruism. I consider myself
an effective altruist. I specialize in effective
animal advocacy within EA. EA has gone definitely
a bit of a bad rep, I think, the last couple
of years, a lot of which I think it deserves.
But one thing I really admire is they are willing
to tackle these issues and think about impact
and think about how we can maximize the positive
change that we're doing into the world. And I
really like that they take animal issues very
seriously. Most EA people, even if they're not
vegan, I've never met an EA person who's basically
said animal welfare isn't worthy of consideration,
or that animals aren't worthy of moral weight.
Maybe they exist, but I haven't met them. And
even if they're not purposely working on them
they agree that this is something we should be
taking seriously and i can't see the same for
a lot of other social change movements. So to
me that's definitely a win. And you know i obviously
there are criticisms of the movement it can get
a bit too. Theoretical to the point where the
actual practical advocacy might be. not as exciting
to some people, they like thinking about the
theory of activism more than the practical activism.
This is a criticism that you could levy at me
myself. I spend way more time thinking about
strategy as opposed to being on the streets doing
activism, although I do that as well, but to
a lesser degree. So I think. Again, if you're
an animal activist and you don't agree with everything
EA says, that's totally fair. But I think you
should take seriously the potential of collaboration
with EA folks I would reach out to an EA group
near you and see if you could work together on
some things I'm sure there are vegans and animal
rights activists within that group That would
love to have a conversation with you about the
most way the best way to have impact for animals
so to me, that's exciting the fact that they
take animal welfare seriously is Very optimistic.
It makes me feel very optimistic. And I like
that. One last thing about protests. And that's
kind of a weird question. Is it also impacting
animals? When I think about big protests, there's
a lot of noise. And I feel like, you know, is
it in a way creating distress in the local Fona.
What do you make of that? Very interesting question.
I have to admit, I haven't really thought about
this that much. If we're looking at a large protest
with chanting and people ringing bells and making
lots of noise, I agree that probably does have
some disruption on local animals, whether they
be companion animals or city wildlife like pigeons
or rats or things like that. I'm sure it probably
has some negative effect on them. But remember,
most protests aren't very large and they're usually
pretty localized. So I don't think it's likely
that they would have any sort of negative effect.
And perhaps a counter -argument might be that
protests that shut down Highways or roads would
also reduce the amount of cars, which create
a lot of noise and disruption and pollution and
things like that, even if it's temporary. So
perhaps those large protests kind of even out
in the way that they harm animals. That's my
guess. I haven't really found a study on this
specifically, but I think it's a really interesting
question to consider. And that's actually a good
point. And if you're doing a protest, think about
the local animals and how they might be affected.
I do think most protests tend to happen in cities
where we're looking at city wildlife as opposed
to rural wildlife and they tend to be more accustomed
to human activity. So I would imagine it'd be
not a huge concern, but you know, we're animal
advocates. We have to, we have to take this stuff
seriously. Do you have in mind an organization
that we can look up to and who effectively utilize
protests? I feel like it's always good to have
a model to look up to and practical examples
and maybe a champion of protest you can think
about. First of all, I would caution and say
we can look at protest examples from big groups,
but we should always be a little bit cautious
because protest often works best locally and
regionally. And a lot of these groups often will
have a decentralized network where they have
local leaders within a city. Maybe they have
like a continent wide organization, but then
local leaders. And this is really important to
keep in mind that because protest is often very
local, looking at large global groups can only
take us so far. OK, so with that said, I think
a couple that stand out to me are direct action
everywhere. I would look at, you know, extinction
rebellion, animal rising. I would look at We
the Free as examples of groups that are doing
this with a lot of tactic and a lot of thought
behind what they're doing. But if you are wanting
to get involved in protest strategically, you
can join one of these groups. You can join a
decentralized local version of this group. or
you can make your own group, or you could make
a group to coordinate with an existing organization
nearby, like what we're talking about with the
radical flank effect. So the bottom line, if
you want to take protests seriously, you need
to be thinking about how does this fit into the
larger theory of change for positive impact for
animals? Passion is great. Excitement is great.
Attention is great, but it's not enough. You
need to be getting that passion and then turning
that into positive change. That's going to take
a vision towards the future. You can't be looking
at next week. You have to be looking five, 10,
50 years down the line. How can I make good change
for animals? And that's what we have to take
seriously. I love that. Be a visionary. And yeah,
have also a fun protest, you know, I think that's
important. Protests can be joyful. It can be
joyful. I think, you know, I think of the queer
rights movement in many parts of the world. Pride
is a protest and it's joyful a lot of the times.
And I think we can take that seriously as well.
It doesn't always have to be doom and gloom,
you know. Yeah, and use it to socialize, meet
other vegans and also enjoy the summer. I think
summer is the season of protests. So yeah. Bjorn,
would you like to add something before we end
the recording? I would say regardless of what
you are doing for animals, you need to be thinking
critically about your impact at all times. If
you ever want to think about the strategy more,
you can reach out to me. You can go to my website,
bjornjohann .com, B -J -R -N -J -O -H -A -N -N
.com, or go to my sub stack, which is called
More Than Meets the Eye, MEAT spelled M -E -A
-T -S, because I love a good meat pun. Um, there
are lots of other researchers out there too,
who are doing, who are tackling really good questions.
You could look at the phonetics website. I mentioned
a bunch of them, phonetics, Bryant research,
animal ask, animal think tank, animatrix, um,
animal charity evaluators is doing some, I mean,
there's too many groups that I can think of off
the top of my head. The bottom line, you need
to think about strategy and there's people there
who can help you. A lot of whom can help you
for either not much money or completely free.
So I really encourage you to think about that.
Amazing, great parting words. Thank you so much,
Bjorn, for your work. Thank you so much for having
accepted my invitation to the Fijian Report and
having answered my questions. Thank you, everyone,
for listening. I kindly invite you to share this
podcast with the vegans you know. Let's encourage
more people to take action. Again, thank you
so much for caring and I will see you next Tuesday
for a new episode.