Racism is NOT putting Non-Humans First!
A small number of human privileged ‘animal activists’ have attempted to link the Declaration to racism, homophobia, etc. this could not be further from the truth. Spending ones time promoting racist, etc ideas is putting human issues above non-human animals. Secondly the Declaration specifically states that we do not put non-humans above humans in moral status. As moral equals discrimination is to be seen as wrong.
What we advocate is simply, with in the animal rights movement, we should put Non-Humans First! This should be a easily accepted concept – why do animal rights groups not do human rights demonstrations? Because, despite the fact we are all animals, we see our role as helping the non-humans!
We believe that those holding racist, etc ideas should be educated through integration to change those ideas and to instead see that we should all be focusing on the non-humans we all agree on helping. We do not think generally however those individuals should be excluded from protests any more than it would be appropriate to exclude speciesists from an anti-fash demo.
Of course there are some exceptions, and those exceptions are decided by individual groups with the spirit of the Declaration in mind, but for example someone bringing their hateful views to a protest maybe a reason for exclusion or if that person poses a physical danger.
If we begin to thought police the views expressed by people outside of protests we reduce diversity not increase it. Should we exclude a Muslim/Christian if she does not support equal marriage? Should we exclude a young working class lad that has grown-up in Northern Ireland who has sectarian views? Should we exclude a Pakistani who still holds anti-Indian views due to the conflict?
We say the answer is inclusion, not exclusion. We say people working together for non-humans despite their differences is positive for human rights. We say leaving our human politics at the door when protesting for non-humans is the right thing to do.
What do you say?
Non-Humans First Declaration 