After several years of involvement in various forms of activism, Brent decided to begin working on animal legislation. In 2021 he organized a successful ballot measure to ban the sale of fur products in Boulder, Colorado. After completing a master's degree in community planning in 2022, Brent hopes to continue organizing campaigns to transform compassionate public opinion into public policy for animals.
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.
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 result, current strategies are insufficient to bring about the end of animal farming.
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 closest relationships. Eva explains what it was, why it was a good idea, and what went wrong.
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 Part Two: the practice of empathy Part Three: the building blocks of empathy, feelings and needs Part Four: observations and […]
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 silently or out loud.
Certain exercises can guide us in how we make these choices in certain moments.
This exercise is for moments when we’ve made an impact on someone else that we don’t enjoy.
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 pattern of anger.
Start simple, practice self-empathy, and prepare to navigate a challenging conversation. Journal exercises, observation of habits, and empathy are first steps in practice.
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. Connection requests enhance understanding during conversations, while solution requests emphasize mutual understanding over negotiation.
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 say that it would be naive to expect a movement without conflict. The ideal that we should hope for is that as a movement, we learn to process conflict in a healthy and constructive way.
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.
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 want to see the data. Methods Data was drawn from Meta’s Social Connectedness Index. We used Python to draw out […]
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 what “social movement strategies" are, you’re in the right place.
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 can use to challenge norms directly.
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.
