Episode 96: Interview with Laura Schleifer about total liberation, post-scarcity veganarchism, and why human rights are relevant to veganism

"Embracing the Future"
by the vegan artist Jo Frederiks.

This week, I am pleased to present my interview with the writer, theatre artist, educator, and activist Laura Schleifer. Laura is the Total Liberation Campaign Director with the Institute for Critical Animal Studies and a co-founder of Plant The Land Team, a vegan food justice group based in Gaza, Palestine. She is also a veganarchist and communalist who writes and gives presentations about the interconnections between human, other animal, and earth liberation. A number of her essays will be published as book chapters in forthcoming anthologies. She is currently writing her own book, titled Liberating Veganism.

In this interview, Laura describes what led her to become vegan and get involved in Critical Animal Studies, and she tells me about a concept that she has been developing called post-scarcity veganarchism. Laura explains how the oppression of other animals enables and reinforces the oppression of marginalized human groups. She also outlines the concept of total liberation and examines whether or not it’s appropriate to make comparisons between animal exploitation and the Nazi Holocaust. Then Laura speaks about the histories of and entanglements between animal liberation and human liberation struggles in Israel and Palestine; she gives her response to those who would prefer to ignore the atrocities and crises taking place around the world; and she describes some of the best things about being vegan.

Here are some additional links, based on what we discussed in the episode:

• Laura's "Post-Scarcity Veganarchism" talk on The Animal Rights Show
• Laura's article, "Beyond Vegan-Washing: A Brief History of Animal and Human Liberation Struggles in Israel and Palestine", published in the June 2021 edition of Força  Vegan magazine
• Laura discussing "vegan-washing" on what is now called the Total Liberation Podcast (previously called the Vegan Vanguard Podcast)
• David Naguib Pellow's 2014 book, Total Liberation
  

How to listen to this episode

There are two ways you can listen to this episode.

1. Listen to the episode on CKCU FM's website at https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/553/60993.html.
   
2. Listen to or download the podcast from Archive.org at https://archive.org/details/afar-june-21-2023.
   

You can also find Always for Animal Rights on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you'd like to receive an e-mail every time there is a new post on the AFAR blog, feel free to enter your e-mail address into the appropriate box in the right-hand sidebar of this site.

Go vegan, stay vegan, and let's remember to stand up and speak up for animal rights today and every day. Thanks for listening to the show!