Eva is a longtime organizer in the animal freedom movement. Her movement work began in 2015 when she began organizing with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) in Chicago, where she focused on building community, writing protest music, and compiling the movements’ songs into an online songbook used by advocates around the world. She began to serve as DxE’s legal coordinator in 2018, managing the organization’s many legal cases, organizing trainings, and orchestrating large artistic demonstrations, which continued until she co-founded Pax Fauna in 2021. For over two years, she faced felony charges for the rescue of beagles from a testing and breeding facility– charges that were dropped shortly before a scheduled trial in March 2024.Eva has a deep curiosity about culture in all its forms, and how social movements engage with culture both internally and externally. Through songwriting, she has explored how music and art can shape the messaging and attitudes of the animal movement. Building on a background in Kingian nonviolence, she is a dedicated student of Nonviolent Communication, and she is committed to bringing NVC’s repertoire of creative problem-solving tools to the work of building a better culture in the animal movement. She’s currently a certification candidate with the Center for Nonviolent Communication and regularly writes blogs and leads trainings to support the culture of the animal movement through NVC. Working for years as a music therapist in hospice taught Eva how to apply metrics to aspects of life that are difficult to measure- and how to judge when metrics aren’t working to tell the whole story.
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.
Charting a Course: Pro-Animal Future’s 10-Year Roadmap This post is intended to contextualize Pax Fauna and Pro-Animal Future’s current work in relation to our past work and future plans by elaborating on the 10-year plan outlined in the graphic above. I’ll start with a word about what this is ultimately meant to achieve, though I’ll […]
Given Pro-Animal Future’s ongoing dual-ballot measure campaign in the city and county of Denver, we sought to poll Denver residents to better understand their baseline level of support for these two measures, which would 1) ban slaughterhouse operations and 2) ban the sale of fur in the city and county of Denver. Additionally, we sought […]
By understanding and valuing individuals' reasons for meat consumption, rather than directly countering, we build bridges for meaningful dialogue. This empathetic approach makes others more receptive to alternate views, driving positive change in animal freedom discussions.
Anti-vegan bias, manifesting as alienating comments, jokes, and structures, can be viewed through the lens of microaggressions. Recognizing the parallels between these experiences and their often unintentional authorship can help us promote inclusivity and empathy, serving as a model for supporting marginalized groups across various contexts.
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.
