In Praise of the "New Welfarism"

By Norm Phelps
Date: Saturday, June 13, 2009 02:00 PM
Duration: 45 minutes
Target audience: Any
Tags: activism animal new one rights track welfarism

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It is essential that we maintain absolute moral equality between human beings and nonhuman animals as the clear goal of the animal rights movement. But if we ever hope to achieve that goal, we have to be strategically flexible and willing to adopt a variety of tactics, including so-called "welfarist" reforms". Animal exploitation is the most universal, deeply entrenched form of oppression in the history of the world, and it will not be ended simply by reciting vegan mantras over and over. We must meet people from all cultures and all walks of life wherever they are and move them forward one step at a time. Nor will animal exploitation be ended in the near future, no matter what strategy we adopt, and we must not abandon animals who are suffering and dying today on factory farms and in laboratories for the sake of a future Utopia that they will never live to see. Vegan advocacy must be the core of our message, but it has to be supplemented by a variety of other tactics to appeal to people at different points along the path and to relieve suffering in the here and now. The measure of success is not our ideological purity, but the progress we make for nonhuman animals.

Attended by:

• Trish Sutton
• Suzy Sorensen
• Brock Meyer
• Jen Gross
• Dave Rolsky
• Kathryn Quam
• Tracy LaChance
• Katherine Stewart