This Thursday, Feb 18 from 6pm-8pm, VegWorcester will hold the first meeting of the second annual Animal Liberation Theory & Action reading & discussion group. Last year, 8 people graduated the Animal Lib group after spending two months discussing animal rights, feminism, utilitarianism, veganism, direct action, and many other topics. This year we’ll look at different books, watch different films and even bring in an outside speaker.

Overview

The goal of this 8 week reading and discussion group is to develop a strong philosophical understanding of the animal rights movement. Animal rights is a topic that is particularly well-suited for a reading group because the movement is solidly grounded in philosophy and ethics. We’ll discuss why animals matters, speciesism, where animal rights and other social movement intersect, the legal standing of animals, the corporate and government response to effective organizing, we’ll talk about strategy, compare and contrast the diverse tactics used to advocate for animals and other topics.

Logistics

The group meets weekly from Thursday, Feb 18, 2010 until Thursday, Apr 15, 2010. We’ll read 3 or 4 books, watch 2 films, and host 1 speaker. Together these books, films, speaker, and our discussion will paint a picture of this diverse social movement and place animal rights in the context of the social justice and environmental movement. Each meeting will have a free vegan dinner and lots of good discussion.

To cover the cost of using the materials, we’ll ask for small donations for VegWorcester. But no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Meeting Structure

We meet every Thursday from 6pm-8pm. The first meeting will be held in the Academic Commons at Clark University (the open area under the library). At the first meeting we’ll have a overview of the animal rights movement and the literature that has made a big splash. As a group, we will choose which books to read and plan our group’s schedule.

At each of the remaining 7 meeting, we will have a somewhat structured discussion about the reading or film from the past week.

Book List

We will read either 3 or 4 books, likely from the following list:

The Foundation of the Movement

Works establish the philosophical foundation of the modern animal liberation movement.

• Animal Liberation
• The Case for Animal Rights

The State of the Movement

Writing that paint a good picture of where the animal rights movements stands today.

• Ethics Into Action
• Eating Animals
• Animals, Property and the Law

Tactics & Strategy

Books that discuss the tactics commonly employed by activists and the strategic value of those tactics.

• Free The Animals
• Terrorists or Freedom Fighters
• Strategic Action for Animals
• Bite Back Mag

Connection to Other Social Movements

Literature that connects animal liberation to other social movements.

• The Pornography of Meat
• Fast Food Nation

Downloads

• Workshop overview & schedule (pdf)
• Book list (pdf) with full descriptions. We will choose 3 or 4 books from this list.
• Printable flyer (pdf)

There are three notable veg books that are creeping up the Amazon.com 100 best sellers list. Each of them look like pretty kick-ass books, especially Jonathan Safran Foer’s. At a time when the United States is abusing and killing over 10 billion animals every year for food, it’s good news that vegetarianism is getting so much play.  Here are the three books.

Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, Eating Animals, has been creeping up the Amazon.com bestseller list for the past 10 days. It’s now at number twenty, which is pretty amazing. You may recognize his name because Foer is also the author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. He’s really been making the round, promoting the new book. He recently appeared on the The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The next incarnation of the Worcester’s Animal Liberation Theory & Action discussion group should definitely include Eating Animals.

The Conscious Cook

Also in the top 100 is The Conscious Cook: Delicious Meatless Recipes That Will Change the Way You Eat by Tal Ronnen. It is currently at #60 and has been on the top 100 for the for the past 15 days. I have not seen this book yet, it’s got to be amazing. I have eaten food that Tal prepared at animal rights conferences. The veg chicken salad sandwiches at Taking Action for Animals a few years are still the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. If my testimonial doesn’t convince you, Oprah also loves him. Ronnen worked as a personal chef for Oprah during her 21 day vegan challenge. He’s just downright awesome. Will the Conscious Cook challenge the Veganonicon for best vegan cookbook in America?

The Kind Diet

She may be a washed-up actress, but Alicia Silverstone is using every bit of fame she has left to help animals and advocate veganism. That’s cool, right? In that vein, she just published a new vegan cookbook: The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet. It’s in the top 100 list, so apparently people like it. The Kind Diet is now at #87, which is impressive for a cookbook. I’m pysched to see what she’s got in it.

What do you think? Have you read any of these books yet?

The Details

July’s monthly VegWorcester general meeting is happening on Thursday, July 23 at 6pm at Dynamy (27 Sever Street, Worcester). Dynamy is acting as Stone Soup’s temporary space and it located at 27 Sever Street, Worcester. It’s a potluck, so bring a vegan dish to share. (No worries if you can’t, there will be plenty of food to go around.)

Map

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On The Agenda

We will recap on our fundraiser buffer at Buddha Hut. Get updates on the restaurant outreach efforts. See where we are at with distributing the 2009 veg dining guide. Move forward with our newsletter. Further explore our plans to hold a vegetarian food festival next Spring. Take some steps forward on the second edition of our reading & discussion group. Plus some other neat things. Feel free to bring agenda items!

Now’s the time to get involved

This meeting is a great chance to meet other people involved in VegWorcester and plug in. We have a handful of projects going on that could use more people.

If you’re on facebook, you can add this meeting to your events.

Hope to see you there!

Tomorrow is the 2nd meeting of the Animal Liberation Theory & Action reading group.  It is also the last chance for new members to join the group. Tomorrow we are discussing the first 2 chapters of Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. We will meet every Thursday for the next 7 weeks at the Stone Soup Community Center (4 King Street). Over the course of the reading group we are reading and discussing 4 books and watching two films.

Also! The reading group made the newspaper!

In today’s Telegram & Gazette there’s a photo of one of our lovely members doing her weekly reading for the group. Well, I don’t actually know for sure what she’s reading, but it’s probably Animal Liberation.

Last night’s kick-off of the Animal Liberation Theory & Action reading group was awesome. There’s a solid group of people who are pysched about animal rights philosophy, how it relates to other aspects of the social justice movement and who want to critically discuss tactics and strategies to achieve liberation.

The group decided yesterday that over the next 2 months, we will read the following four books:

• Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

• The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery by Marjorie Spiegel

• Igniting a Revolution, Voices in Defense of the Earth

• The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams

It is still possible to join the group next week. It will be meeting again on Thursdays from 6pm-8pm at Stone Soup (4 King Street). Free dinner.

Reading for next week: Animal Liberation, Chapters 1 & 2 (up to page 95)

Read the initial announcement for more info.

Today we’ll decide which 4 books we will be reading and get an overview of animal lib theory and the movement. Here is today’s handout:

Animal Liberation Theory & Action: Syllabus and Book List (pdf)

This Thursday (Feb 12) from 6pm-8pm will be the first meeting of the Animal Liberation Theory & Action Reading group at Stone Soup (4 King Street). All are welcome. The goal of this 8 week reading and discussion group is to develop a strong philosophical understanding of the animal rights movement. Animal rights is a topic that is particularly well-suited for a reading group because the movement is solidly grounded in philosophy and ethics. We’ll discuss why animals matters, speciesism, where animal rights and the environmental movement intersect, the legal standing of animals, the corporate and government response to effective organizing, we’ll talk about strategy, compare and contrast the diverse tactics used to advocate for animals and other topics.

The group meets weekly from Feb 12, 2009 until Apr 2, 2009. We’ll read 4 books and watch 2 films. Together these books, films and our discussion will paint a picture of this diverse social movement and place animal rights in the context of the social justice and environmental movement. Each meeting will have a free dinner and lots of good discussion.

To cover the cost of using the space and materials, we’ll ask for small donations for Stone Soup. But no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

At the first meeting we’ll have a overview of the animal rights movement and the literature that has made a big splash. We’ll also choose which 4 books we will be reading. They will most likely be 4 of the following:

• Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

  The Book That Started A Revolution

  

  Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of concerned men and women to the shocking abuse of animals everywhere — inspiring a worldwide movement to eliminate much of the cruel and unnecessary laboratory animal experimentation of years past.

  In this newly revised and expanded edition, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s “factory forms” and product-testing procedures — offering sound, humane solutions to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency and justice, Animal Liberation is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike.

• The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan

  

  More than twenty years after its original publication, The Case for Animal Rights is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book’s revolutionary position.

  “Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Bentham, Mill: all thought seriously about the role of animals in our lives. But not until Tom Regan published The Case for Animal Rights did the world possess a theory of the rights of animals. When philosophy students come to this issue hundreds of years from now, they will read the greats in light of the arguments presented here.”—Gary L. Comstock, editor of Life Science Ethics

  “Tom Regan’s now classic Case For Animal Rights blends careful argument with intense moral concern. For two decades, where Regan has been taken seriously, animals have been better off and people have become better persons. This new edition is a welcome sign of this influence continuing.”—Holmes Rolston, III, University Distinguished Professor, Colorado State University

• Igniting a Revolution, Voices in Defense of the Earth

  

  Global warming, acid rain, deforestation, air and water pollution are but a few of the overwhelming indicators that the earth’s health is worsening. For decades, environmental groups have been resisting the destructive trends set by industry and government, but as the social and political climate has changed, popular protest movements have become less and less effective. As the earth’s situation worsens, those opposing its destruction have out of necessity become increasingly militant. Corporate and federal properties have been vandalized, set ablaze-even bombed-and the government is meeting this new brand of environmental militance with an increasingly heavy hand.

  Whether you’re drawn by frustration with environmental strategies that, to date, have been ineffective against this growing ecological crisis, or simply by curiosity (Who are these people? Why are they doing this? What do they hope to gain?), Igniting a Revolution offers a fascinating and compelling look at the emerging movement of revolutionary environmentalism.
  Includes essays by Marilyn Buck, Robert Jensen, John Zerzan, Ashanti Alston, Jeffrey “Free” Luers, Derrick Jensen, Ann Hansen, and a preface by Bron Taylor.

• Animal Factories by Jim Mason

  This book raised a storm of controversy upon its original publication in 1980. Now authors Mason and Singer have updated their animal rights classic for the 1990s. More than 50 black-and-white photographs.

• The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol Adams

  

  Many cultures equate meat-eating with virility, and in some societies women offer men the “best” (i.e., bloodiest) food at the expense of their own nutritional needs. Building upon these observations, feminist activist Adams detects intimate links between the slaughter of animals and violence directed against women. She ties the prevalence of a carnivorous diet to patriarchal attitudes, such as the idea that the end justifies the means, and the objectification of others. In Frankenstein , Mary Shelley made her Creature a vegetarian, a point Adams relates to the Romantics’ radical politics and to visionary novels by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dorothy Bryant and others. Adams, who teaches at Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, sketches the alliance of vegetarianism and feminism in antivivisection activism, the suffrage movement and 20th-century pacifism. Her original, provocative book makes a major contribution to the debate on animal rights.

• The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery by Marjorie Spiegel

  Spiegel, executive director of the Institute for the Development of Earth Awareness, has revised her 1989 book to present an in-depth exploration of the similarities between the violence humans have wrought against other humans and our culture’s treatment of animals. Using considerable scholarship, she makes a strong case for links between white oppression of black slaves and human oppression of animals. Her thesis is not that the oppressions suffered by black people and animals have taken identical forms but that they share the same relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. These comparisons include the brandings and auctions of both slaves and animals, the hideous means of transport (slave ships, truckloads of cattle), and the tearing of offspring from their mothers. Her illustrative juxtapositions are graphic, e.g., a photograph of a chimpanzee in a syphilis experiment beside a photo of a black man in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. As Alice Walker writes in the preface, “This powerful book…will take a lifetime to forget.” Chilling yet enlightening, this provocative book is vitally important in our efforts to understand the roots of individual and societal violence. It belongs in all libraries.

• Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

  

  Isaac Bashevis Singer first suggested that “for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.” Charles Patterson (Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond) expands on that risky analogy in his latest book, Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. Patterson hypothesizes a risky causal relationship, too, when he writes, “since violence begets violence, the enslavement of animals injected a higher level of domination and coercion into human history by creating oppressive hierarchical societies and unleashing large-scale warfare never seen before.” Was human “enslavement” of animals the first step on the road to the Holocaust? Patterson doesn’t say as much, but it’s clear that he feels our inhumanity to the nonhuman is one of our greatest evils.

• Free the Animals: The Story of the Animal Liberation Front by Ingrid Newkirk

  

  The shattering account of one woman’s struggle against the forces supporting the abuse of animals, Free the Animals is the best-selling and action-packed story of underground adventure, as well as an eloquent plea for the rights of nonhuman animals.

  Free the Animals, with a foreword by Chrissie Hynde, is the story of Valerie, a 23-year-old police officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, whose world was turned upside down when she learned about the abuses of animals in laboratories. The book describes how this law-abiding woman came to challenge the system by taking direct action and examines why ordinary people are moved to do extraordinary things on behalf of animals.

• Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals by Steven M. Wise

  

  In a groundbreaking study, Harvard lecturer Wise argues that chimpanzees and bonobos (sometimes called “pygmy chimpanzees”) should be granted the status of legal personhood to guarantee the basic protections of bodily integrity and freedom from harm. A lawyer who lectures on animal rights law, Wise has spent 20 years fighting for the interests of nonhuman primates, dolphins, deer, cats, dogs, bald eagles, goats and other species. Documenting the treatment of our close primate cousins, which are routinely kidnapped for biomedical research, slaughtered for their meat and caged in roadside zoos, Wise notes that chimpanzees and bonobos are nearing annihilation. Their DNA structure is a 99% match to humans’, and our brain structures are incredibly similar. Furthermore, Wise cites studies of primate social life revealing that chimps exhibit keen sensitivity to others, conflict resolution, reciprocal exchanges and toolmaking abilities; “enculturated” chimps can add numerals and learn abstract symbols. Indeed, an increasing number of biologists insist that chimpanzees and humans should be grouped in the same genus, Homo. Ten years ago this book would have been ridiculed or ignored, but the tide is turning: in 1996, the British government banned the use of great apes in biomedical research, and respected international law commentators now support whales’ legal right to life. Although one could argue that overlegislation is not the best way to combat society’s maltreatment of animals, Wise’s proposal to accord animals fundamental legal rights could some day be adopted (as chimpanzee expert Goodall believes it will be). This impassioned, closely argued brief presents a formidable challenge to the treatment of animals perpetrated by agribusiness, scientific research, the pharmaceutical industry, hunters, live-animal traders and others. It’s a clarion call for rethinking the animal-human relationship.

• Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating by Erik Marcus

  

  In this book, you will find the latest information about how what you eat affects your health, the environment, and the existence of the animals who share this planet. Vegan explains clearly how simple but significant the switch to an all-plant diet can be. Adding weight to marcus’s own arguments are in-depth discussions of ground-breaking work by these internationally respected experts: Heart specialist, Dean Ornish, M.D.; Nutrition scientist, T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D.; Weight loss expert, Terry Shintani, M.D.; Farm Sanctuary founders, Gene and Lorri Bauston; Vegetarian nutritionist, Suzanne Havala, R.D.; Population analysis, David Pimentel, Ph.D.; Mad Cow disease expert, Stephen Dealler, M.D.; Rangeland activist, Lynn Jacobs.

• Animals, Property, and the Law by Gary L. Francione

  

  “Pain is pain, irrespective of the race, sex, or species of the victim,” states William Kunstler in his foreword. This moral concern for the suffering of animals and their legal status is the basis for Gary L. Francione’s profound book, which asks, Why has the law failed to protect animals from exploitation?

  Francione argues that the current legal standard of animal welfare does not and cannot establish fights for animals. As long as they are viewed as property, animals will be subject to suffering for the social and economic benefit of human beings.

  Exploring every facet of this heated issue, Francione discusses the history of the treatment of animals, anticruelty statutes, vivisection, the Federal Animal Welfare Act, and specific cases such as the controversial injury of anaesthetized baboons at the University of Pennsylvania. He thoroughly documents the paradoxical gap between our professed concern with humane treatment of animals and the overriding practice of abuse permitted by U.S. law.

Again, we will only choose 4 books to read for this Theory & Action series. These are just the ones from which we’ll choose.

Hope to see you there!