Effective advocacy... or how can we do it better?

[vegetus]

I've been involved in animal rights/welfare activism to varying degree's for most of my life (hmm... I am getting old). I've seen alot of effort and hard work put in by activists with great results, which is fantastic. I've also seen alot of effort put in with minimal results and whilst not every campaign will work as well as you wanted it to,

Comments

[transcendancing]

I'm going to look at these when I have slightly more time :)

But many many thanks for the links, I have no doubt they'll be exceedingly useful in the years to come!

[vegetus]

*nods* Effective Advocacy is pitched at promoting veganism, but I don't see why you couldn't adapt it to other movements. Hillary Rettig has been involved in various social movements (including feminism and veganism/AR) but her book is aimed at all social progressive activists.

[transcendancing]

I expect there will be enough crossover to make it well worthwhile.

[alias_sqbr]

That was a very interesting read. I'm having a super sleepy dumb day but here's some off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts.

Odd as this may sound coming from me, I'm not sure he's right that being very conventional and polite etc is always the most effective approach. It's an effective approach, and is probably a good default unless you have good considered reasons for acting any other way, but some people may be better suited to a different approach

[vegetus]

but some people may be better suited to a different approach

This is a good point, though I think because AR activists are often seen as a bit mad by the mainstream, so the uber polite professional thing leaves a good impression on the majority of people you will encounter.

Something is better than nothing.Agreed, which is why I think events such as veg pledge, meat free monday, meetout monday, wanna veg and donderdag veggiedag are fantastic at bringing people forward. I also think the concept of "humane meat" is an oxymoron, but that there are some systems that have better practices than others and that people should choose the better systems because they are still steps forward

[alias_sqbr]

Oh yes. In between options like free range eggs etc are good for people like me, who are not heavily committed to animal rights but would like to help out a bit. But there's a large gap between the level of ethical behaviour of your average person and that of a committed activist, and people in the middle can't get too smug or complacent since there's so much more we could be doing. It's a confusing place to be. I know I encounter a lot of people who think of themselves as "anti-racist" because they're a bit above average in terms of not telling racist jokes etc, and then get a nasty shock when they meet actual anti-racist activists and get criticised for all the racist things they still do

[vegetus]

Anyway, thanks for posting that.

Thank you for replying, your comments, as always, are interesting :)