What Anti-Vegan Bias Can Teach Us About Allyship
These blogs are an attempt to put the content of Eva’s NVC trainings online into a readable format. If you missed them, here are previous blogs in this series. Part One: why we study nonviolence...
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The Movement Needs a Repair Kit
In the most basic sense, Nonviolent Communication gives us two options in every moment: we can give empathy to someone else’s experience or we can express our own, and we can do either of these...
Nonviolence
When Enemies Appear: Untangling Our Anger
This blog post introduces an exercise to understand and channel anger, which can be both a protective force and an overwhelming emotion. It shares a personal example of how the exercise helped diminish a recurring...
Nonviolence
Beginning a Practice in Nonviolent Communication
Start simple, practice self-empathy, and prepare to navigate a challenging conversation. Journal exercises, observation of habits, and empathy are first steps in practice.
Nonviolence
Facilitating Conflict: Making Requests in Nonviolent Communication
Observations and requests are NVC strategies to foster collaboration and minimize defensiveness. Observations offer clarity without blame, covering both external and internal experiences. NVC requests are clear and positive, differentiating between non-coercive requests and demands....
Nonviolence
Needs Consciousness for Better Conflicts
This post covers feelings and needs, emphasizing the importance of empathy by identifying underlying needs in conflicts and interactions.
Nonviolence
What We Mean When We Talk About Empathy
Empathy is a central aspect of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and is essential to transforming interactions and conflicts.
Nonviolence
Why the Animal Freedom Movement Needs Nonviolence
In work that is mainly limited by person-hours and the ability to work together, conflict represents a grave threat. At the same time, conflict is, to misquote Melanie Joy, normal, natural, and necessary. That’s to...
Movement, strategy
Embracing an Inside-Outside Strategy for Animal Freedom
By switching to the vocabulary of inside game/outside game, the animal freedom movement can shift from infighting to collaboration.
Movement, strategy
"Welfarism vs. Abolitionism" is Obsolete
Aidan argues that the narrative of "welfarism vs. abolitionism" missed the mark and created unnecessary conflict among animal advocates.
Examining the Value of Open Rescue in Light of the Smithfield Victory
Eva speaks from her experience as DxE’s former legal coordinator and current felony Open Rescue defendant, reflecting on some lessons learned from the Smithfield victory and the implications for future movement strategy.
Dispelling Carnism at its Intergenerational Roots
Eva advocates for an empathy-first persuasion approach and proposes understanding objections to animal freedom through a trauma lens.
Showing Our Work on Social Connectedness
This piece contains the processed data informing the findings we present in Where the Animal Movement will be Reborn. We recommend reading that piece first if you haven't already, then coming back here if you...
Where the Animal Movement Will Be Reborn
Informed by research on social change and data published by Facebook on connectedness between certain geographies in the US, Eva suggests a new strategy for concentration in the Animal Freedom Movement.
What Moves In a Social Movement?
In part 3 of "It’s Social Norms, Stupid," Aidan shows how social movements can unleash the power of social networks to change norms at scale, including for the animal freedom movement. If you don’t know...
It's Social Norms Stupid
Dentists Don’t Spread Veganism
In part 2 of "It’s Social Norms, Stupid," we see how the science of social networks has cast new light on how changes in norms spread. This research points to a new strategy animal advocates...
It's Social Norms Stupid
The Animal Movement’s Biggest Blind Spot
In Part 1 of the "It’s Social Norms, Stupid" series, Aidan explains how the farmed animal movement’s dominant theory of change neglects the role of social norms in shaping people’s attachment to meat. As a...
Vegan Tables: A Letter to the People I Love
Eva shares a sample letter to start the conversation with loved ones in light of the updated Liberation Pledge.
An Evolution of the Liberation Pledge
Eva proposes the new Liberation Pledge: to have brave conversations with people we’re close to, where a solution is found in collaboration with the other, to ask for meaningful solidarity.
Rethinking the Liberation Pledge
It was a fascinating idea and a bit of a disaster. Instead of energizing supporters’ social networks to create change, as its creators intended, it often had the opposite effect- to isolate advocates from their...
Preliminary Research Findings at ALC 2021
Watch our fellows present preliminary findings from Pax Fauna's ongoing messaging study.
Reclaiming our Animal Emotions: Nonviolent Communication for Advocates
What do emotions have to do with animal rights advocacy?
Report: The Promise of Direct Democracy for Momentum-Driven Social Movements
Ballot measures are an underutilized strategy animal advocates can use to get our movement on the agenda.
The Two Competing Strategies Behind Every Protest
There are two fundamentally divergent theories of change behind direct action campaigns. They should never mix.