NZ Vegan Podcast

Listen HERE I am very pleased to welcome back Francis Glass, coordinator of Animal Liberation Youth, from Animal Liberation Victoria. In our last interview we talked about non-vegan volunteers handing out literature, and this episode we would like to respond to the comments and concerns that raised about this subject, as it is definitely something that needs to be discussed. Thank you to Karin Hilpisch for your comments! We also talk about young people who are going vegan and how important they are to our future, and what it is like for a young person who is still living with their parents to go vegan, the resistance some kids get from their families and 13 and 14 year olds dealing with parents who are hostile to veganism and actively try to prevent their children from being vegan. We discuss the different reasons why the parents may be reacting in this way and try to come up with more ideas on ways to help them and their children through that. This is something us independent, adult vegans can't relate to as we control our own home environments and the products that we buy, so I am very grateful to Francis for offering us some insight into that, and for reminding us that it is not so easy for young people living in controlled environments as it is for independent adults. We also go on to talk about why we promote ethical reasons to go vegan above all other reasons such as health, environment etc, while still stressing that knowledge of these other aspects is essential too. In my next interview with Francis we will discuss further comments raised about protesting in front of KFC and the like with regard to promoting veganism and not single issue campaigns. We didn't get a chance to cover that this time as we went off to talk about other things (as often happens on this podcast) however please be assured we will be talking about that, as it is also very relevant and valid topic for discussion. Thanks again to listeners for the great feedback and insight and suggestions and thanks to Francis for coming back on the show! Here is the link to the Vegan Easy Challenge mentioned on the show: link here This is what ALL the animal groups should be doing. I mentioned a book written by a teenage vegan called Claire Askew, who I heard interviewed on Vegan Freak Radio. Claire wrote a book for teenage vegans called Generation V, and it is a fantastic resource for teenagers. Listen to the Vegan Freaks interview with Claire here I also mentioned a quote by Marin Luther King, Jr. which in my usual style I had not committed to memory and so totally screwed up. Please forgive me as always. I will work on that! Here is the quote: "History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." - Marin Luther King, Jr. UPDATE: If anyone's audio is messed up about halfway through, please re-download. I am so sorry for making anyone download this twice. I totally messed up, and there is some audio from the last interview mixed in by accident. I loaded up the correct file. Please delete the messed up audio and re-download. Sorry!

Listen HERE Part two of my interview with Francis Glass from Animal Liberation Youth, of Animal Liberation Victoria. We talk about the social conditioning we are up against, the deep rooted moral schizophrenia in our lives as human beings and the profound effect on our psyche and our peace of mind. We talk about young men, or all men, in many cultures who are terribly depressed and repressed because of being pressured into being so unreasonably "tough" and expected to be violent in order to prove their "toughness" (i.e. eat meat etc), and relate this to the violence we tolerate in our lives on a daily basis, violence we can end if we so choose! We emphasize how damaging this perpetual violence is to our world and ourselves, and discuss different methods to open people's minds to the knowledge that they no longer have to struggle with the guilt and the fear and the violence, and they can go vegan. Thank you Francis for coming on the show!

Listen HERE Part one of my interview with special guest Francis Glass, an 18 year old abolitionist vegan from Australia,and coordinator of Animal Liberation Youth, which is part of the abolitionist vegan advocacy group Animal Liberation Victoria. We talk about activism, vegan education, the counterproductiveness and elitism of welfare reform, and emphasize the fact that the abolitionist movement is part of the peace movement. You can find information about this abolitionist activism in Australia by going to http://www.alv.org.au/ and http://www.animalliberationyouth.org.au/ Stay tuned for part two...

Listen HERE I am very pleased to welcome back to the show Dr. Roger Yates. This is a topic I have been wanting to tackle for the longest time, and I am very glad Dr. Yates agreed to help me. The article we refer to in the the podcast is the following: Independant.co.uk/world/australasia/australia-gets-the-hump Please contact me if you have any comments or questions, this is an extremely complicated subject and I would love some feedback, as always, and I am happy to revisit this in the future. I am, as always, very grateful to Dr. Yates for his insight and input and help. Thank you Dr. Yates!

Listen HERE I am honoured to have again as my guest Professor Gary L. Francione of The Abolitionist Approach. We talk about the abolitionist approach and why it is fundamentally different from the welfare reformist approach, and we refer to the frequent discussions that occur between the two separate groups of thinkers, which is wonderfully illustrated on the blog My Face is on Fire, in a recent blog post. Please read the post and the ensuing comments to see what Professor Francione is talking about in this interview. I also very strongly urge everyone to read this wonderful essay A Revolution of the Heart at The Abolitionist Approach which, as well as being wonderful in itself, is pertinent to the aforementioned article and commentary. Also keep an eye out for "The Animal Rights Debate—Abolition or Regulation?" written by Gary L Francione and R. Garner - to be released from Columbia Press in the coming weeks...A MUST read for ALL involved in non human animal advocacy/activism, no matter what your position on strategy. Thanks for coming on the show again Professor Francione!

Listen HERE Part two of my interview with Adam Kochanowicz from The Vegan News, The National Vegan Examiner and abolitionistvegans.org. We continue our talk about activism, abolition versus welfare, and the best news of all - there are vegans EVERYWHERE! And remember to check out http://abolitionistvegans.org/ where you can get all you need to make your own Vegan Kiosk! If you have new ideas and modifications to suit different places and needs - please do it, and update us and share this with us too!

Listen HERE This week I interview Adam Kochanowicz from The Vegan News! We talk about what Adam found out after he discovered veganism, packed his bags and went to Europe, looking for the animal rights movement, and looking to find out what people meant when they called themselves "animal rights activists" to see what kind of action they were taking. We talk about veganism, abolition, and all that good stuff. Check out Adam's bio at the National Vegan Examiner, I recommend reading the great articles already written and keeping up with future articles, and please leave comments! Also check out http://abolitionistvegans.org/ where you can get all you need to make your own Vegan Kiosk!

Listen HERE This week I read an essay written by Eva Batt, long standing member of the UK Vegan society. It is so well written, I am going to print it out and hand it around as part of my activism. Thanks to Nathan Schneider who has it available on his blog Vegan Abolitionist and to Randy Sandberg who added it to the text page here at Abolitionist Approach One of the things I loved about the article was this point: "...veganism has no connection with any political party or system, national or international. Similarly, individual vegans may be deeply religious, perhaps devout Christians or disciples of one of many other faiths and creeds in this world, but this is not a requisite of veganism, which is an everyday, fundamental way of life concerned with living without hurting others. The hereafter may, or may not, solve all our problems; but what we do now certainly affects all those around us..." That is a wonderful statement is it not? There are many more gems like this in the article. It is worth a read or a listen, and I will be passing it along. Enjoy! Cool! - as I was uploading the audio, I watched Episode 7 of The Vegan News hosted by Adam Kochanowicz, and the show featured this very same article! Check out the coverage at Vegan FM UPDATE: Professor Roger Yates left the following comment, and we were trying to get the links to become hyperlinks but I can't figure that out in the comments section either so I am posting the comment here, so you can access the links here: Hi Elizabeth, There are a couple of things I’d like to say on this important issue. First, we should remember that we are also vegan pioneers but in different and better circumstances. For example, we have the advantages of the internet and need never feel as isolated as the first vegans probably often did. Being a vegan is easier now than in the 1940s and 1950s (even compared to the 1970s when I became vegan). However, some new vegans are going to find it harder than others and we should help these new pioneers as much as possible, for mainstream animal advocacy neglects the fact that there is a vegan moral baseline to animal rights advocacy. This brings me to the second point: what are we campaigning for. It seems to me that campaigning to grow the ethical vegan community (the surest means by which we can help other animals at this time) is campaigning for what we WANT as opposed to campaigning for what we DO NOT WANT in the name of politics, or pragmatics, or ‘living in the real world.’ For example, look at this 3-min video (just released this very week) about a cage-free system: http://www.worldpoultry.net/news/video-special-layer-aviary-system-4066.html Do we want to campaign FOR this sort of thing as many do, or do we want to campaign against by growing the numbers of ethical vegans? Look at the pictures here: http://www.ciwf.ie/farminfo/farmfacts_egghens.html We could say, ‘spot the difference,’ but the picture on the left is an ‘enriched’ battery cage and the other is a standard one. The first will probably have a perch in the back and maybe some ‘nesting material.’ Leaving aside the issue of who is going to monitor this new way of regulating atrocities, do we want to campaign FOR this sort of thing as many do, or do we want to campaign against by increasing the numbers of ethical vegans until we have enough numbers to make some real changes for nonhuman animals? The real question is where do we put our energy, commitment, time and money. Do we concentrate on what we actually want, or on something else - which we then have to campaign against anew later on. The advocates of ‘cage-free’ (or one big horrible cage) must assume that, later, they will be campaigning against the system they helped to put in place in the first place. Roger Yates

Listen HERE Talking about sincere animal rights and vegan activism and believing in the message. Please contact your local soymilk supplier and ASK THEM WHAT THEY FILTER THE SOYBEANS THROUGH - i.e do they use silk? We are trying to find out, and if they do, we want everyone to write and make a case so they will stop doing that. In the meantime Sarah has a great recipe for homemade soy milk at The Vegan Mentor see Making Soy Milk We also talk about Animal Rights July which I would love to replicate at a university here in Auckland. Check it out! It looks good. See the link at Roger's blog On Human-Nonhuman Relations I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I did! Thank you Dr. Yates!

Listen HERE In part one of this interview we talk about Dr. Yates early involvement in the beginnings of the animal rights movement in Britain and the changes he has noticed since then till now, his writings and studies as a sociologist with regard to human behaviour, community activism and grass roots movements, and why we need more vegans! I hope you enjoy the interview! Stay tuned for part two.

Listen HERE This week I talk about some great local activism done by Sam, a NZ Vegan who is 13 years old, who blew me away with his new website, the first real website from New Zealand that gets to the truth of what dairy products really are, using a New Zealand perspective which is so important in our culture, and spreading the word about veganism in a very effective way! NZ Dairy Cruelty Thanks Sam! I am very grateful, I can now recommend this site to local people to show them the truth right from their own backyard, and it is a fantastic resource for us who are spreading the word about this cause and to educate people about veganism. This week I talk a lot about my country as I am trying to bring the vegan abolition message to more people here, and I am looking forward to doing some grass roots activism with my abolitionist colleagues, and I am hoping to be prepared for anything, but I know we will learn as we go along. I hope to have more guests on the show soon!

Listen HERE Today I make an announcement, and also finally respond to the hugely publicised campaign by the NZ animal welfare group S.A.F.E to promote "free range" pork consumption. I must admit I really let the side down. I wallowed in a level of self indulgment that is really inexcusable, especially from someone such as myself who claims to be such an activist. I apologise. I didn't write any letters to the papers or participate in any discussions, because I allowed myself to be negative. Well, now I finally made a comment on an animal welfare page (not a local one), maybe it was the wrong place to do it -maybe all the people who read that blog are vegan, I don't know. Here is the article if you want to comment also: Animal Welfare Examiner That is the comment I should have left on every NZ paper opinion page and every discussion board across the country while everything was going on, and I didn't. I admit I let everyone down especially all of the poor suffering pigs. The story is still out there though, so I will now be participating - better late than never. I want to thank all of you who did respond on these opinion boards and to the papers and talk about veganism. For example Bea Elliot wrote in, and she lives in America, where they have so many detrimental welfare campaigns of their own to deal with, and I live here and I didn't write anything, so I am put to shame. No excuses, I let the side down. However, I have addressed the issue in this episode and I welcome comments. I am not trying to turn this podcast into a rant, or into a negative website dedicated to criticising S.A.F.E - in fact I hope to not mention them again - they do what they do, I do what I do. However, it was so highly publicised, and I was so disturbed by it that I needed to get it off my chest, and now I feel so much better. This is really a good way to resolve inner conflict - I recommend starting a blog or podcast! It is worth it. Also, as I told someone recently, we can't let the others do all the work for us. Grass roots means community level, and that is what we need, in all languages, by actual members of those communities in their own words. And that is what grass roots activism is all about. Also, in light of campaigns such as this one, we need it more than ever, so that is what I hope to do in New Zealand. Also, I would like to acknowledge another abolitionist vegan in New Zealand! I hope I am not incorrect in pinning this description on you Bron - but I think you get it! Thanks for keeping in touch, and I am sorry I didn't include you in the tally. Now we are FOUR! Finally, coincidentally as I was uploading this post, I checked my email and there was a new update from the Abolitionist Approach about an article in which Gary Francione mentions the importance of seeing animals as individuals - this is how I understand it to be when they are described as persons. So I thought it was a good coincidence. UPDATE: check the comments section of this post to see input from Roger Yates where he also mentions Professor Francione's book Animals As Persons and some quotes to explain some of the concepts as presented in the book. P.S I am aware that Anthony De Mello passed away many years ago, so although I did talk about him and his writings in the present tense I do know he is no longer alive. P.P.S The following is the passage I referred to in this episode. Mr. De Mello was primarily concerned with the human condition, was a Jesuit Priest, and was not a vegan, but even as a non-religious vegan I find his writings very helpful. It appears the Krishnamurti is the originator of the quote. "...The great Krishnamurti put it so well when he said, "the day you teach a child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again". How true! The first time the child sees that fluffy (sic), alive, moving object (sic) and you say to him, "Sparrow", then tomorrow when the child sees another fluffy, moving object similar to it he says, "Oh, sparrows. I've seen sparrows. I'm bored by sparrows". If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique. Every sparrow is unlike every other sparrow despite the similarities. It's a great help to have similarities, so we can abstract, so that we can have a concept. It's a great help, from the point of view of communication, education, science. But it's also very misleading and a great hindrance to seeing this concrete individual..." - Awareness, Anthony De Mello

Listen HERE I am trying to bring the abolitionist movement down here to New Zealand where it doesn't exist at all, and to do that I need to get out in the community and work on my people skills and gear them towards the culture I live in, while at the same time trying to circumvent the wasteful tangents they get led down by the expensive, publicized and highly promoted welfare campaigns that are getting people all hung up on the size of cages and whatnot, as opposed to talking about the real issue. The REAL ISSUE!!!!! It has been a very frustrating couple of weeks down here in New Zealand for anyone who cares about animals and who is trying to open peoples minds up to abolishing animal use and going vegan, rather than patting themselves on the back about how they can be morally superior by going down to their butcher and demanding "happy" meat. If people care enough to be bothered about the treatment of the exploited animals at all, then they care enough to GO VEGAN and end the exploitation, or at the very least they certainly deserve to be talked to directly and honestly about that option. And that is what everyone who wants to help non-human animals should be talking about with people who are expressing any interest at all in the "horrible treatment" or the "welfare" of animals. It is truly a magically uncomplicated solution, it is astonishingly simple and we need to stop confusing the issue. Meanwhile I need to figure out how to talk to people who haven't even begun to think about the issue, and steer them away from thinking about anything but the truth of the matter. It's a never ending process of theory and practise, but how to do it with people who just flat out ignore the entire deal, especially when you are sitting amongst them while they are eating dinner, and all you are thinking and feeling is how can I get the message through? At the very least how I can get them to understand why I am so not enjoying sharing this dinner with them, because of the anguish I am truly feeling for the animals they are eating and feeding to their children? That is quite a tough one for me, I am still figuring that out, but that won't take time away from my jumping on any opportunity I do get to spread the knowledge of this astonishingly simple concept

Listen HERE Today there was a story from here in New Zealand that I just had to mention, funny how things closer to home can seem to affect you more - wrongly or rightly I am as prone to that as anyone else. I mourn this tiger and I remind myself that the pig slaughtered in Egypt from swine flu paranoia or the chicken gassed in Canada by KFC or the "free range" hen in Austria being slaughtered at the end of her short tortured life or the rat in the lab in Kentucky or the sable in the fur farm in Russia or the sheep in the slaughterhouse here in New Zealand and all of the millions and millions of equally innocent victims that also died today, in all parts of all places all over the world, and are dying right now by the million are all just as valid as this tiger, who was killed today. I am not trivializing the death of the zookeeper who was fatally injured, but it is certain the loss of his life is receiving plenty of respect and mourners and I am sure they are paying homage to him as we speak. Well, I am paying homage to this tiger and his fellow animals, because I know that not enough people are thinking about them or talking about them, and they need our voices. Here is the video about Post Traumatic Stress in animals, specifically elephants, which mentions the tragic death of a volunteer at a sanctuary and how the caretaker and elephant involved coped with the tragedy. They didn't kill the elephant - because these people get it. Although of course I don't know if they are vegan. I would love to talk to them about veganism - I think we would have a good chance getting through to people like them. And who knows - they may be vegan?

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