November 2018 – Top Five Problematic Tactics for Animal Liberation

Here are the Top Five Problematic Tactics that are EXCLUSIVE Within the Animal Liberation Movement. ICAS, which is made up of activist-scholars, is proud of promoting total liberation and intersectionality in the animal liberation movement.  Here are some small and larger complex tactics that can exclude people from the cause. We bring this up, not to point fingers, but rather aid in developing successful inclusive social movements.

1. HIJACKING OTHER SOCIAL MOVEMENT EVENTS and promoting another movement, rather than focusing on the issue the event was created for. This is exploitative and domineering to take up space and place in this manner.

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2. BEING SILENT for a time period of a week, month, or even a year, takes great privilege, not struggle. It is almost impossible to be silence for a minute not to even suggest a day for the working-class. Those in the workforce being silent can get one fired, especially for a year.

 

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3. ORGANIZING A MARCH is problematic as not everyone can march, walk up stairs, or move long distances. Many disability activists are calling on social movements to do events on flat accessible ground and note at the beginning of the march or ROLL to have those with disabilities and those that might be elderly or with children up front to establish the speed of the procession.

 

 

 

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4. USE OF METAPHORS in social movements simplify always unique experiences. Further, to foster simplistic metaphors with imagery at an event, without explaining the complexities of oppression and the dependent socio-political climate variables, can be problematic. Therefore, many oppressed groups often feel offended when their experience or historical related experience is used to explain and capture the sympathy of another movement.

 

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5. SUPPORTING PUNITIVE JUSTICE supports also a racist and classist, criminal justice system that needs to be reformed if not completely transformed. To promote jails is to promote the history of prisons, which came about after 1865 in the U.S., which was the end of the Civil War and the signing of the 13th Amendment, which allows for slavery, if someone is duly convicted of a crime, meaning all people in prison.

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