Ethical and Political Approaches
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Kim Stallwood
March 2017

My chapter "Are We Smart Enough to know when to take the Political Turn for Animals?" will be published in the new anthology, Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, edited by Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade.

Andrew Woodhall is an independent researcher working on anthropocentrism and global interspecies ethics. His works include: Anthropocentrism and the Issues Facing Nonhuman Animals, Intervention or Protest, and Saving Nonhumans: Drawing the Threads of a Movement Together.

Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade is a Doctoral Researcher in Global Ethics at the University of Birmingham, UK, working on the intersection between interspecies ethics and the ethics of war and self-defence. He co-edited Intervention or Protest with Andrew Woodhall.

The anthology includes:

  • Making Light of the Ethical? The Ethics and Politics of Animal Rights by Mark Rowlands
  • Far-Persons by Gary Comstock
  • Evolution to Liberation: Political Reflections on Morality and Nonhumans by Steve F. Sapontzis
  • Robert Nozick on Nonhuman Animals: Rights, Value and the Meaning of Life by Josh Milburn
  • Reinventing Left Humanism: Towards an Interspecies Emancipatory Project by Zipporah Weisberg
  • Justice for Animals in a Globalizing World by Angie Pepper
  • Animal Rights and the Distorting Power of Anthropocentric Prejudice by Gary Steiner
  • Interspecies Encounters and the Political Turn: From Dialogues to Deliberation by Eva Meijer
  • Gandhian Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue by Tony Milligan
    Shame: From Defensive Fury to Epistemological Shifts and Political
  • Change by Elisa Aaltola
  • Interspecies Atrocities and the Politics of Memory by Guy Scotton
    Animal Research and the Political Theory of Animal Rights by Gardar Arnason
  • Cross-Species Comparisons of Welfare by Tatjana Višak
  • Population Dynamics Meets Animal Ethics: The Case for Aiding Animals in Nature by Oscar Horta
  • Afterword by Carol J. Adams

I’m honoured to be included among some of the world’s leading thinkers about animals and our relationship with them.

Here’s how my chapter "Are We Smart Enough to know when to take the Political Turn for Animals?" begins:

The 2016 presidential election in the United States had its share of street theatre, but not all was attributable to Donald Trump. Early on in the primaries, on March 30, three protestors from the animal rights organisation Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) interrupted US Senator and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders while he spoke at a town hall meeting in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This was one of a small number of protests targeting Sanders by DxE. A YouTube video showed the protestors holding a banner declaring “Animal Liberation Now.” They shouted that Sanders once said, “The greatness of a nation is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable,” but claimed that Sanders — who campaigned as a “Democratic socialist” — continued to “ignore the most vulnerable in our society,” meaning nonhuman animals. The protestors eventually were drowned out by the crowd’s hand-clapping and chanting of “Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!” From the stage, Sanders gestured for the protestors to sit down. The activists eventually went silent but continued to make the banner visible to as many people as possible. The crowd cheered when the banner was torn down and security escorted the protestors from the auditorium.

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