It occurs to the Grumpy Vegan that we’re in the midst of a fundamental change in the personae of the animal advocate. This transition corresponds to the Five Stages of Social Movements that I articulate with The Animals’ Platform, a program of the Animals and Society Institute. By personae, I mean the role and personality of animal activism.
The first stage in my social movement analysis is Public Education. This is our present stage. Our objective is to educate people about animal rights, which is framed as a personal cruelty-free, lifestyle choice. We’re all familiar with the encouraging cries of “Go vegan!” and “Choose cruelty-free!” But not everyone is going to empathize with the animals’ plight and be motivated by compassion to act by taking positive steps in their lives. This is why we – the animal protection movement – must move our issue forward and expand it to include the next stage, the second stage of Public Policy. This is the stage where the institutions which constitute society (e.g., business, professional associations, political parties) pass policies and adopt pro-animal positions. Recently, a number of schools and retailers have, for example, adopted a policy of buying cage-free eggs.
The rate at which pro-animal public policies are being adopted suggests to me that progress is being made. We may well be reaching the tipping point where we are simultaneously active in the first two stages of public education and public policy.
I’m not suggesting we no longer need to educate the public. There is still a tremendous amount to be done. Nor am I suggesting we haven’t achieved until now some victories in public policy. Clearly, this isn’t true. For example, the decision to stop animal testing and no longer use animal ingredients by a significant number cosmetic and household product manufacturers ably demonstrates that there have been successes.
The significant point here is the increasing rate and diversity of pro-animal public policy decisions currently being made.
It’s also worth recalling that the remaining three stages in my five-stage analysis are legislation and litigation and, of course, finally, public acceptance. Notwithstanding some promising developments with state referenda and recent court victories we still have a long way to go before we can recognize that we have expanded the reach of the animal protection movement into the areas of legislation and litigation.
The unknown is how many years is it going to take to successfully navigate our way through from stage one – public education – to stage five – public acceptance? But what I think is true is that we reduce the time frame if we were to achieve what I believe is our single greatest challenge: making animal protection a mainstream political issue with a series of movement-wide coalitions timed to coincide with the two-year election cycle.
