ICAS: When, why, and where did you become aware of animal rights/liberation?
Kelly Nix: My awareness of animal rights developed gradually, but my consciousness truly shifted when I began to question the arbitrary boundaries I’d internalized about which lives “count.” As a former educator who spent years teaching critical thinking about racism, sexism, and classism, I believed myself to be progressive. Yet I had never turned that critical lens toward my own participation in animal exploitation. The awakening came as I began researching intersectional frameworks and encountered the uncomfortable truth that every justification I’d accepted for animal use mirrored those historically used to justify human oppression: they’re less intelligent, they’re meant for this purpose, it’s natural, it’s necessary, it’s tradition.
The deeper transformation occurred through direct encounters in sanctuary spaces and, eventually, through my work at Luvin Arms. Meeting individual animals, learning their stories of survival and resilience, watching visitors connect with a 700-pound pig named Gilmour who drops to the ground for belly rubs just like their beloved dogs at home, I witnessed how quickly the ideological walls crumble when people actually see the individuals our systems render invisible. That experiential learning became the foundation for my scholarly work on the “Web of Liberation,” recognizing that animal liberation isn’t separate from but deeply interconnected with all justice movements.
ICAS: What was your first advocacy for nonhuman animals and why?
Kelly Nix: My first conscious advocacy for animals emerged from my role as an educator. Before transitioning to sanctuary work, I recognized how education systems actively perpetuate oppression by determining which violence remains invisible, which questions stay unasked, and whose suffering gets rationalized as necessary. I began integrating critical perspectives into my teaching, encouraging students to question normalized practices rather than accepting them. When a student once asked me, “Why do we say we love animals but eat them? Isn’t that oppression too?” I realized the profound impact of simply creating space for those questions.
That early advocacy through education eventually led me to Luvin Arms Animal Sanctuary, where I now serve as Executive Director. The sanctuary became both my advocacy and my greatest teacher. Here, advocacy isn’t abstract; it happens in every tour when visitors meet survivors of the systems we’ve all been taught to accept. When children and adults connect with individual chickens, goats, and pigs and suddenly see them as the sentient, complex beings they’ve always been, that’s advocacy at its most transformative. Education and direct encounter together form the strongest web for changing hearts and systems.
ICAS: What do you think is the hardest part of being vegan and why?
Kelly Nix: The hardest part of being vegan, for me, isn’t the practical aspects. Those become second nature quickly. The challenge lies in navigating a world that constantly normalizes the violence you’ve chosen to see. Once your consciousness shifts and you recognize the suffering embedded in everyday choices, you can’t unsee it. You walk through grocery stores, restaurants, and family gatherings, witnessing what others have been conditioned not to notice. That awareness can feel isolating.
What compounds this is watching people you love participate in systems you’ve come to understand as deeply harmful, while knowing that pushing too hard can close doors rather than open them. The balance between speaking truth and maintaining relationships requires constant navigation. I’ve learned that the most effective advocacy isn’t about moral purity or judgment, but about meeting people where they are and trusting the process of awakening. The animals at the sanctuary taught me this. Gilmour doesn’t judge anyone who visits him; he shows up as himself, and in doing so, he changes more minds than any lecture ever could. The most challenging and most necessary part of being vegan is holding both the grief for what continues and the hope for transformation.
ICAS: Can you speak about your wonderful job working at the Sanctuary and what you like working there and what is hard in working there?
Kelly Nix: Working at Luvin Arms is the most meaningful work I’ve ever done, and I’ve been privileged to have meaningful work throughout my career in education. What I love most is witnessing transformation, both in the animals who arrive traumatized and learn to trust again, and in the visitors whose perspectives shift in a single afternoon. When someone meets our rescued residents and says, “I never knew pigs were so much like dogs,” or when a child asks their parent why we treat some animals as family and others as food, those moments remind me why this work matters.
The sanctuary is also where my academic work comes alive. My dissertation, “The Web of Liberation,” emerged in part from watching how interconnected systems of care operate here, where the well-being of one animal affects the whole community, just as my son once explained using Spider-Man’s web as a metaphor. The residents themselves are my teachers, showing me daily how resilience, connection, and trust can emerge even after profound trauma.
What’s hard is that sanctuary work means constantly holding grief alongside hope. We receive weekly calls about animals in crisis that we cannot always save. We form deep bonds with residents we will eventually lose. The emotional labor of caring for survivors of violence while operating within systems that perpetuate that violence is exhausting. And the organizational demands of nonprofit leadership, fundraising, staff well-being, and facilities maintenance, while simultaneously pursuing doctoral studies and maintaining a family, sometimes feel impossible. But then I walk into Big Barn, and Gilmour greets me by flopping over for belly rubs, and I remember that this work isn’t about what’s easy. It’s about what’s necessary.
ICAS: As you grow older, what is something you have learned within activism that you wish you knew when you were a younger activist?
Kelly Nix: I wish I had understood earlier that liberation movements are a web, not separate silos. For too long, I approached different justice causes as distinct efforts requiring me to choose where to focus my limited energy. Through my scholarship and practice, I’ve come to understand what I now call “Interliberation”: that racism, speciesism, patriarchy, capitalism, and environmental destruction are interconnected strands of the same oppressive web. When we fight for one form of justice, we create vibrations that affect the whole structure.
I also wish I’d known that sustainability in activism requires community and self-compassion. Younger me believed that the urgency of injustice demanded constant sacrifice, that any moment not devoted to the cause was a moment of complicity. This path leads to burnout and, ultimately, less effective advocacy. Now I understand that caring for ourselves and building genuine relationships isn’t separate from the work; it’s the foundation that makes sustained transformation possible. The animals at the sanctuary taught me this. They heal through connection, safety, and patience, not through urgency or demand. We’re no different. The web is strengthened not by individual strands stretched to breaking, but by many strands woven together, supporting each other, creating something more resilient than any of us could be alone.
