All posts tagged: racism

VIDEO – Ableism in the vegan movement. Intro to my talk at VegfestUK – Geertrui Cazaux

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Why do we need to address ableism in the vegan and animal rights movement? This is an introduction to my talk at VegfestUK, in London, Oct 27 – 28: Ableism, bodyshaming and healthshaming, Geertrui Cazaux Transcript below. Transcript. Hello, I am Geertrui. Or, that’s Trudi in English. And I will be presenting a talk at the upcoming VegfestUK festival in London. And my talk will be about ableism in the movement. Now ableism is discrimination or prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. So against disabled people. Now, I can immediately hear some of you think: oh, ableism what does that have to do with veganism? Why should we be discussing this at a vegan festival? It should be about tackling speciesism. About fighting for animal rights. We shouldn’t be talking about ableism or other forms of discrimination like racism and sexism, but only focus on the animals, because it’s about the animals, right? yes, of course veganism is about tackling speciesism and about the animals, but how we deal with each other as …

Recommended literature: Animal Rights, Human Rights (David Nibert)

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I recently read ‘Animal Rights. Human Rights. Entanglements of Oppression and Liberation‘ by David Nibert (2002) and found it truly inspiring. The thesis of the book is that human oppression of other animals is primarily motivated by economic interests, and is profoundly and permanently intertwined with oppression of other humans. The economic forces fueling oppression have intensified with the development of capitalism. The oppression of humans and other animals developed in tandem, each fueling the other. Nibert uses a three fold theory of oppression. This theory explains how oppressions takes place through mutually reinforcing social and economic mechanisms. There are three interactive forces: Economic exploitation, competition. The exploitation of other animals (and humans) is driven by economic forces. The motivation for the development and institutionalization of oppressive practices is primarly material, not attitudinal. Prejudice is the product of these arangements. Not the cause. The importance of power. A powerful elite (pivileged humans) uses political force over the oppressed, and they wield the power of the state. Ideological control. Oppression requires rationalisation and legitimation. Ideologies like …

Staring at humans: Les Zoos Humains, exhibition in Liège

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The exhibition  Zoo Humains. L’invention du sauvage  (Human Zoos. The invention of the savage) ran from September 2016 til the end of February 2017. We visited a week before it closed. It was in La Cité Miroir in Liège, a nicely renovated building, that used to house a swimming pool. Before our visit to the exhibition, we had lunch at Como en Casa, a nice vegetarian restaurant, and we also visited the GoVeg Vegan shop. The website of the exhibition Zoos Humains, gave this introduction (my translation from French): “One isn’t born racist, one becomes racist  For more than five centuries, the industry of human exhibitions fascinated more than 1 billion 400 million visitors and put on display between 30.000 en 35.000 figurantes in spectacle shows, all around the world. These spectacles, being the first visual contact between cultures, have drawn a divide and a hierarchy between the so called “civilised” and the “savages” in the minds of westerners. At Zoos Humains, visitors learn how racist prejudices became installed during the times of the great …

Inspired by the Intersectionality Conference at VegFest, London

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A couple of weeks ago, at the end of October 2016, we went to VegFest in London. This was a two day event at the Olympia Conference center, on Hammersmith Road (east London). It is not a free festival: we bought tickets in advance which were only £9 per person (buy one, get one half price). Tickets at the door were £15. We were especially interested in the Intersectionality Conference on Sunday. Arriving at the opening time of 11AM on Saturday, it became immediately clear that this is huge event! We found a long queue going round the block to get to the entrance at the west side of Olympia. We made good progress though, and after about only 10 minutes of queuing, scanning of our tickets and a security check, we could enter the venue. There were two large halls on the first floor, with dozens of stalls. The lectures were in the auditorium and conference rooms on the second floor, where there were also stalls from several NGO’s. The Olympia is a really well known venue, where …