Last night, we got the opportunity to attend a really wonderful panel discussion at UCLA titled Compassionate Connections: The Intersections of Feminism and Animal Rights. As the name suggests, the speakers addressed issues of feminism and animal rights and how they’re related. The concept of intersectionality, for anyone who doesn’t already know, is the basic belief that all forms of oppression—sexism, racism, ableism, speciesism…all of the isms—are related, so one such ism can’t effectively be addressed without taking into account the rest. We did an interview last year with the grassroots animal liberation organization Resistance Ecology where we go into more detail on this idea if you’re interested in reading it.
In short, the panel was deep and wildly inspiring, with each of the three panelists bringing their individual work, theory, and wealth of knowledge to the fore to the benefit of us all. The panelists were Jacqueline Adamescu of Project Intersect (who did the art on the program, above), Aph Ko of Black Vegans Rock + Aphro-ism, and lauren Ornelas of Food Empowerment Project, who we’ve actually been working with since 2007 or and our days in Brooklyn, but had never before met in person (we did their logo and site and do a lot of their print work). The whole thing was organized by a group a friend of ours recently started up, Intersectional Feminists for Animals, a group that “works to create and foster a safer, inclusive space for all who are women-identified and non-binary folks in animal rights.”
There was a taping that was done of the talk, which we’ll share as soon as it’s public, but we wanted to nonetheless shout out to all the people who made last night happen as it was truly magical. In the meantime, you can (and should) check out lauren’s TedX talk on the power of our food choices below.
