Thursday, 18 July 2024

Episode 104: Interview with Ronnie Lee, co-founder of the Animal Liberation Front, about consistency and vegan ethics

This week, I am pleased to present my third interview with the long-time animal liberation activist Ronnie Lee. Ronnie has been a vegan for more than five decades and is best known for co-founding the Animal Liberation Front in the 1970’s. Currently he works to educate the public about the importance of becoming vegan. He also encourages vegans to become more involved in vegan education initiatives, in order to work towards the abolition of the exploitation and oppression of our fellow animals.

In this interview, Ronnie describes what it was like trying to obtain vegan-friendly food in the 1970’s. Then we discuss why war, environmental destruction, and human rights violations are not in alignment with the vegan ethic; why it’s important to challenge speciesism and human supremacism, rather than focusing primarily on cruelty; and how we can more effectively interact with the mainstream media. Ronnie also speaks about the role of anti-vivisection campaigning within the animal rights movement over the years, and he shares his views on celebrity culture within the vegan community.

After listening to this episode, you may be interested in tuning in to the two latest episodes of Still Alive!, the online talk show that Ronnie co-hosts with Roger Yates: The Media and the Message and Vegans and War.

You can listen to the episode above or on CKCU 93.1 FM's website. You can also download the MP3 file from Archive.org.

You can find Always for Animal Rights on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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

Wednesday, 3 July 2024

Episode 103: Discussion with animal rights advocate Jeremy Hess about engaging in vegan advocacy conversations, recognizing pigs as individuals, and challenging speciesism in the media

Rosebud
This week, I am pleased to present my fourth interview with Jeremy Hess. Jeremy has been a vegan since 2014 and has been involved in various forms of animal rights advocacy over the years
On his website (which will be back online soon) and YouTube channel, he provides resources to help advocates use accurate and non-speciesist language and learn about animal rights theory. He is a co-founder and former co-panellist on The Animal Rights Show on YouTube. With his partner Nisha-Taylor Hess, Jeremy runs a microsanctuary, Respect Animal Sanctuary, in Georgia in the United States.

In this interview, Jeremy and I use an abolitionist animal rights perspective to examine three articles that were published on mainstream media websites, and we explore how we can move away from speciesist language use. We also discuss whether the words that we use in our vegan advocacy are understood by the general public. As well, Jeremy tells me about the experiences of the pigs Rosebud and Daisy at the microsanctuary.

During this discussion we explored some of the ideas of the animal rights scholar-activists David Nibert and Joan Dunayer (see also here). You can find the Unlearning Speciesist Language Facebook group, of which Jeremy is an admin, here!

News articles that we discussed on the show:

At the end of the episode, we'll hear some excerpts from the song, "Creatures Great and Small", by the vegan singer-songwriter Ellie Sarty.

 

You can listen to the episode above or on CKCU 93.1 FM's website. You can also download the MP3 file from Archive.org.

You can find Always for Animal Rights on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

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

Jeremy the Ape and
Daisy the Pig