Tag Archives: Colonization

What They Do to Her, They Do to Us: On Feminism and the Dairy Industry

Posted on by

By emilie isch

I, like many others who have made an active effort to remove dairy products from our diets, know the industry to be cruel and senseless. There are numerous negative effects of dairy on our collective and individual health, our environment, and overall wellbeing. The production of milk, cheese, and other dairy products amount as a massive contributor to global temperature rising, despite the prominent focus on factory farming for meat. Dairy production accounts for increased water pollution, land degradation, air pollution, poor soil health, and deforestation – just to name a few of the major contributors (Hussain, 2022). For example, one single litre of milk requires 8.95 square meters of land and 628.2 litres of freshwater (Hussain, 2022). The dairy industry in Canada is responsible for nearly 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions, and 90% of that comes directly from farm related activities with the greatest level of emissions released happening during forced lactation (Vergé et al., 2013; Mcgeough et al., 2015). Additionally, nearly 70% of the world’s population cannot digest milk sugars (lactose intolerance), a phenomenon which is occurring more specifically amongst people of African, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American identity (Del Prado Alanes, 2022). Meaning the consumption of dairy is directly responsible for worsened indigestion, IBS, and health sensitives. It’s also resulted in a prominent racial bias as milk continues to be sold and marketed to folks with lactose intolerance, as mentioned, typically those of racial identity. This why folks who are vegan say that giving milk to our Indigenous and black or brown friends is actually a continued act of colonization.

According to Gabrielle Victoria Fayant, a member of the Assembly of 7 Generations, milk is part of the three deadly ‘whites’ brought to their communities during colonization along with flour and sugar (Panel discussion held in Ottawa on April 14th, 2025). Indigenous peoples in Canada were not consuming milk before the arrival of cattle during the 1500’s to 1700’s when cattle first appeared off Nova Scotia, then Quebec, and later Newfoundland and Manitoba (MacLachlan, 2006). The import of Portuguese, British, and French cattle assisted in the takeover of land through trading posts and foodstuff (MacLachlan, 2006). Mathilde Cohen, professor of law, has long written of this tie between milk and colonialism as part of a growing scholarship on ‘Animal Colonialism’. In her 2013 paper she argues “that lactating animals became integral parts of colonial and neocolonial projects as tools of agro-expansionism and human population planning” (p. 297). Not only is there themes of population control, eugenics, and expansionism, but as I will expand on in this article, the treatment of female cows and lactating animals is a direct reflection of the ongoing sexual assault of women, girls, and gender diverse folks. In essence, what they do to her (the animal), they do to us (the human). Dairy is inequitably an intersectional issue, and one that is necessary for any conversation on the rights of mothers (both animal and human), and the rights of female bodily autonomy (of animals and of humans). More importantly, it’s a conversation we are long overdue having around the conscious efforts for anti-speciesism as part of any liberatory or abolitionist ideology. We are not truly liberated unless we are all liberated.

Part One. Milk as a Colonial (and Neo-Colonial) Tool

Let’s return to the work of Mathilde Cohen. Cohen, along with many other scholars interested in the intersections of law, ecology, and our society have begun to write on milk as a tool of power and colonialism. How this has proliferated will be explored throughout this article, but specifically as we discuss milk as a colonial tool. Anthropologist Rosa E. Ficek explains how cattle began to take more and more space through conquest, and as a result, native inhabitants like animals and humans were invaded not only just by the colonizers but by the very animals that surrounded them. The land began to shape to fit the needs of colonizers, and not the people from that land. Moreover, writer Matilde Nuñez del Prado Alanes (2022) expands on capital interest and the growth of forced milk consumption throughout the Americas even after independence was granted from Europeans colonizers. This is why scholars name milk as a tool of colonialism.

Milk as a colonial tool extends to the behaviors of numerous colonists who used animals to conquer ecosystems from the time of Christopher Columbus in 1617 with the import of horses, cattle, swine, sheep and goats, to Dutch settlers who brought their own cows in 1629, and to the British who arrived with sheep and bovine on the shores of Australia and New Zealand in the 18th and 19th century (Alanes, 2022). Before modern colonization, the act of animal milk consumption was confined to only select parts of the globe, those being Central and Northern Europe, what is known as the ‘middle east’, sub-Saharan Africa, central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Historian Deborah Valenze expressed how the global history of milk was really the emergence of it as a cultural and universal commodity. This depicts a story “of [the] conquest of space, energy, and dietary preferences.” The arrival of these various domesticated animals to colonized lands suited European interests, as settlers continued their habits of milk product consumption abroad. As we approach the late 19th century, dairying became one of the leading industries in Europe and the United States through “economic rationalization and new technologies which transformed milk from a substance that spoiled so easily that it had to be consumed on the spot into a commodity that could travel huge distances” (Cohen, 2013, p. 269). This where we begin to see connection between the globalization of food markets, which it possible to consume dairy products in one side of the world, produced in a completely different part of the world.

Part Two. Cultural Hegemony, and Media Representations of Dairy

In Marxist ideology, cultural hegemony is defined as the domination of culture in a society whereby the ruling class shape the culture of that society. This refers to the ways in which our culture is influenced by norms, representations, and the status quo – all which is determined by those who hold power, the capital owners. To contextualize cultural hegemony within the dairy industry this section will unpack the interests of the dairy farmers, the industry as a whole, and more pointedly, the media and advertising realm that control the attention of our minds and wallets.

‘Got milk?’ advertisements ran from the early 1990’s, peaking in popularity throughout the late 90s into the 2000s. Created by one American advertising agency in 1993, the campaign was originally created with interest of the California Milk Processor Board, a non-profit marketing board funded by the California dairy processors (James, 2015). The board came into existence in light of declining milk sales in the 90s as Americans consumed other beverages such as soft drinks. The ’got milk? ads typically displayed celebrities or models drinking milk with the very infamous milk mustache. In Figure 1, we see Beyonce and her mother, Tina Knowles posing with text below that reads “milk your diet, loose your weight” accompanied by so-called expert advice that encourages women to low fat or fat free milk as part of a way to lose weight. Not only has milk been used as a feminine and puritan symbol, as discussed in culture and film commentator Mina Le’s video (2024) on the “Evil Symbolism of Milk”, this along with countless similar advertisements reminds women to hate our bodies and always be looking for ways to improve ourselves. The ad can also be analyzed as an insidious celebrity marketing tool targeting younger Black women, given the immense sway and fame someone like Beyonce has in the Black community. Moreover, pulling insights from Le (2024), milk within the media often represents whiteness, making got milk? ads that feature black people an ideal marker of culture’s obsession with whitewashing Black people and further positions a cultural hegemony that places whiteness at the centre.

These ads, and many other depictions of milk showcased muscular or fit bodies also cement a manufactured tie between sex appeal and milk. Milk was, and is, desperate to be sexy and cool. And by that, I mean those who ran the milk lobbies were desperate to keep milk relevant in our culture. Since its peak there has been an attempted resurgence of these ad campaigns. The board was also part of a few other marketing endeavours and the more recently in 2023 with the ‘Get Real Inc.’ targeting Hispanic American consumers in Spanish (Get Real). The desire of this ad was to encourage the supposed ‘real’ benefits of consuming milk during these unprecedented times of AI, and ‘new’ fad milks (California Dairy, 2023). Essentially, this the board’s attempt to position dairy milk as ‘real’ and other types of milks as ‘not’ real. This stance is illustrated in their media campaigns with cow milk juxtaposed alongside alien, octopus, bee, and salmon milk. The emphasis of this campaign on ‘real’ is a shallow attempt to combat research coming out around milk being an insufficient source of nutrients (Alexander et al., 2016). It is also meant to poke fun at the rise and popularity in alternative milks such as oat milk (more on that later). The intentional ploy to have these ads run in Spanish and feature Latinx faces is also yet another example of racial capitalism and the very direct ways in which the health and wellbeing of some of our most vulnerable community members are not taken seriously. I repeat. Milk consumption has been proven to not be healthy. Most Black and Brown people are lactose intolerant. This is simply greed and intentional life denying politics.

Beyonce and Tina Knowles posing in a got milk? Advertisement

Figure 1. Beyonce and Tina Knowles (2006)

Meanwhile, Fortis B.C and the Canadian Dairy Industry have been hard at work greenwashing campaigns of their own. Specifically, the two have partnered up to boost lies that Fortis B.C will help produce RNG (renewable natural gas) with the offset of a dairy farm in Chilliwack, BC. However, feeding cows to produce milk is not, and will never be, a sustainable process. This will only continue to be a harmful practice and dairy will never be a comparable RNG source. Secondly, the Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) are also claiming they will be “net-zero” by 2050 (Figure 2). I should note here that DFC is the national policy, lobbying and promotional organization representing Canadian dairy producers. Meaning, just like ads like got milk? and the DFC has a vested interest in maintaining the positive image of milk in order to continue profit generation. The DFC ads which ran in 2022 used a lot of fluffy, nonsense language like ‘planting trees to purify the air’ and ‘reducing emissions’, all the while images of hand drawn cows next to a red barn with a windmill and trees covered the landscape. These imageries, parried with greenwashing lies about the dairy industry foster a sense of whimsical bliss and unrealistic positivism. Greenwashing campaigns heavily rely on childlike imageries, and this evident as we see the DFC ‘cute-ifying’ their aesthetic. These fictious ads prey on the consumer with a promise of feeling good, and ethical, because the images used are pointing to a make-believe world where the worlds roam the fields in glee, with nothing scary or violent happening to them at all. This is doubled down in a recent campaign from Farm Boy (an Ottawa based chain grocery store) where plush cows were neatly positioned in woven baskets next to the diary aisle. The cow has a name, a cute face, and is something your kid can take home with them. Attempts to make the dairy industry palatable and cute is no different than Japan’s ‘Kawaii’ culture, a deliberate strategy to deflect their war crimes, and have their culture instead known for hello kitty and other cute iconography. I won’t spend too much time getting into the history and concept of Kawaii, but I will link resources to learn more in the reading list at the end. How Japan is externally branded reflects this internal cultural denial of their rampant violence and imperialism, and just like the dairy industry across North America.

Two cows stand in grass with trees, a windmill, and a red barn behind them

Figure 2. Net Zero Graphic

The power of the dairy lobbyists in both the US and Canada are extremely strong. Just like the meat industry, dairy has the single interest of maximizing profits. They want to uphold a particular cultural hegemony to be successful in maximizing those profits. The culture they are building and maintaining is one where dairy and meat are central to the diets and lifestyles of the traditional all-around American family. However, the recent rise of alternative and plant-based milks has left dairy with an interesting new association, and one that is seemingly unfavourable to many gen-zers. Oat milk is cool, hip, and queer, and dairy milk is not. In fact, there’s been so much relevant cultural indicators of this shift, that some baristas will ask if you want a non-dairy milk right off the bat. Although the vast majority of these trendy cafes charging sometimes upwards of two dollars extra for plant-based milk will never be cool, hip, or queer. Now, the consumption of plant-based milks as a trend isn’t entirely evil, since I do marvel at the fall of big dairy, but there’s a fine line to walk when it comes to consumption because of ideology and out of an ethics, and consumption for status or for an attempt to fit in. This lends itself to unsustainability in behavior, since there’s no real backing to your choice, just a desire to be Instagram worthy. If you’re catching yourself choosing plant-based milks, that’s awesome, and hopefully you’ll continue reading this article and decide to cut out all dairy products, not just pick and choose for your morning coffee.

So, I mention queerness and oat milk not because I personally identify with this stereotype as a queer woman who drinks a lot of oat milk, but to draw our attention to the very deliberate ways that food choices reflect onto our culture and vice verca. Raw milk for instance has become another one of these ‘new’ trends in the world of food culture. The consumption of raw milk has been heavily connected with what many are calling the “crunchy to far right pipeline”. Influencers all over TikTok and Instagram preach the supposed benefits of raw milk, oftentimes arguing in tandem for the consumption of other raw animal products such as raw beef. These individuals may also be against vaccines, believe in a whole host of conspiracy theories and generally, are advocates for an alternative (conservative) leaning lifestyle. They may have started out more benevolent, going on juice cleanses, or even being plant based, but the years post pandemic we see this dramatic shift from silo to mainstream. I won’t really be getting into all the nuances of raw milk drinkers here as I don’t condone attention on conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxers, instead I bring them up however as an example of dairy’s association to right wing ideologies and dangerous portrayals of so-called health and wellbeing.

Part Three. The Dairy Industry is Anti-Feminist: Exploitation, and Rape

This will likely be the heaviest section of the article. Please read with discretion.

Cows, like human mothers, give birth after carrying their young for 9 months. Cows, like human mothers, lactate milk from their breasts as food for their young. Cows, unlike human mothers, have their young taken away from them at birth because the milk they produce instead actually for their calves, it’s for us – grown adults, children, and even pets. Humans are the only species on this earth that drink the breast milk of another species.

Farmers can’t waste even a drop of valuable profit filled milk, so the separation of calves and mothers happens typically right away or within a day. USDA statistics reveal that “97 percent of calves are separated from their mothers within the first 12 hours of birth” (Cehn, 2023). Once the milk production begins for the matured female cows they undergo mechanical milking – different from the joyful images you may have in your head of a gentle handle milking on an udder early morning at the farm. These machines are instead hooked to the cow’s udders, and they are milked 2 or 3 times per day (Cehn, 2023). Dairy cows are bred to produce over 10 times the amount of milk they would naturally make, which means many suffer from painful udder infections, often resulting in pus in the milk (Najana, 2023). Yuck!

The fate of those separated calves is much like the fate of their mothers. A lifeless adolescence void of companionship and bonding from their mother and siblings. The calves, unable to be breastfed are forced to consume bottled formula and confined to cramped quarters. Once the female calves hit 2 years old and are considered fertile, the cycle begins once again. Insemination tools (see Figure 3, although please note it is mildly graphic) are used to forcefully impregnate cows who have reached puberty. Just as their mothers were once forced to endure, the farmer’s hand is inserted inside the cow’s anus to complete this invasive procedure. Let’s pause here. The cow in that moment has zero ability to consent to what is done to her – and before we get caught up in the speciesist debate claiming that a cow’s ability or inability to consent is not worth our time, because they are just a cow, I want to remind everyone reading that a cow’s consent is just as important as our own consent. Behaviour imposed onto one living being reflects all living beings. Why should a farmer stop at forcefully impregnating cows. We know well from history that female bodies are constantly disrespected, and their autonomy compromised, all the same as these cows. The point isn’t whether one body belongs to a human, and one belongs to a cow, the point is that a patriarchal society will always jeopardize and take control of what they deem the subordinate. In this case the cow and the human are not so different in how assault and rape become normalized.

A diagram illustrates how to artificially inseminate a female cow.

Figure 3. Their Turn, 2016

So, after around 5 or so years of non-stop milk production, the female cows have served their purpose and are usually no longer able to produce any more milk. This doesn’t mean they get to live happy lives free from torture, no, these cows are useful still as meat and are sent to the slaughterhouse.

We have not mentioned yet what happens to the male calves, those who cannot produce milk. Male calves are typically raised to be beef cows, and undergo the torture of being overfed, and under stimulated. However, some are kept to be slaughtered immediately as veal meat, and in some situations, they are raised to be higher priced veal. Higher priced veal requires the calf to have tender, pale meat. This means they need to be underfed, enough to be low iron and anemic (Cehen, 2023). This portion of the industry is more widely rejected for the known and inhumane conditions the male calves are put in, however the connection between the dairy industry and the veal industry are inherently tied. To condemn one part is to condemn it all. This draws parallels to the conditions in which one overarching harmful industry, dairy, also influences the harms of another industry, veal. Just as a patriarchal society harms women, it also harms men. Men are perpetrators of most of the sexual assault and violence, not because they are biologically predisposed to be the agitator, the conditions in which this system allows their behavior to proliferate and go unchecked is the cause for attention. Fighting for justice and liberation as a feminist also requires the ongoing work to unpack how all genders are forced to conform to social norms and behaviors.

Cows possess intelligence, social bonds, the ability to grieve, and form memories. Their emotional and physical torment experienced during the course of their life as a dairy cow or as a beef or veal cow is not without its own form of trauma and lasting distress. Women and all genders who have suffered from assault and violence are not magically healed one day and left to forget all that was done to them. Cows, like humans deserve a life that is mitigated from unnecessary harm and unwanted experiences. 

Part Four. On the rights of mothers: Reproduction and Breastfeeding

The violation of a cow’s reproductive system draws parallels on the forced sterilization of Black, Brown, and Indigenous women across time and place. Paola Alonso, scholar at the Texas Women’s University outlined reproductive rights and eugenics in one of their papers. They point to one district Alabama court exposing “between 100,000 to 150,000 poor people were sterilized annually under federally funded programs, and others were coerced into consenting to sterilization under the threats by doctors to terminate their welfare benefits if they denied the procedure” (Alonso, 2018, p. 4). This was almost exclusively happening to Black and Latino women in the US, with Puerto Rico having some of the highest sterilization rates of women in the twentieth century (Alonso, p. 5). In Canada, a very similar project of sterilization was occurring for Indigenous women, notably one of these being Alberta’s Sexual Sterilization Act from 1928 to 1972 (Stote, 2019). The reasons being disdain for these population groups expanding, and a desire to control the levels at which they reproduce. While forced sterilization is happening less overtly today, the eugenics programming is alive and well. Discourse around who should be ‘allowed’ to have babies, and why is very prominent in immigration policies, and media propaganda. The rights of mothers to continue their bloodline, especially if it is one the ruling class does not view of worthy of life, is a radical act. This of course is determined by the important notion of choice. Anti-abortion rhetoric continues to serve as a political pawn, fueling religious and cultural talking points. The bodily autonomy of women here is no different than the bodily autonomy of a cow. Ultimately, the commodification of cows for meat or dairy is the crux here and what leads to all this in the first place. An ideology which marries the patriarchy and capitalism is indeed our society’s treatment of animals and by extension, women. Specifically, this connects race issues, feminism, and the rights of mothers.

The forced separation of cow and calf is no different than the forced separation and kidnapping of Indigenous children by social workers and other officials during the 60s scoop, a colonial tactic which continues to this day. The commodification of early child nutrition has meant than millions of babies across the globe do not consume the breastmilk of their mothers and are instead given baby formula. This is the colonial capitalist output of years of melding in the affairs of mothers and families. When the Gold Coast was fighting for independence from the British in the 1950’s, the colonial British government released a cookbook which they claimed to be a source for nutrition and cooking (Nott, 2019). A long-utilized tool, as we discussed earlier, food as a power grab was maintained and the cookbook argued to add milk in tea for extra protein, and further encouraged the consumption of meat, and fish which were not typical parts of a traditional diet. Moreover, the cookbook suggested that breastfeeding was not an adequate source of nutrition for babies and instead began to market baby formula as the necessary ‘missing’ part. John Nott, professor of medical history discusses the rise in bottle feeding across colonial African countries arguing that in Uganda, the percentage of children who were bottle fed in the early 1950’s went from 14% to 40% by the 1960s (Nott, 2019). Additionally, long time evil villain company, Nestlé was found to be melding with affairs in the early 1970s, depicting their employees as nurses in uniforms in various maternity wards across Africa, South America, and South Asia (Sartore, 2022). These ‘Milk Nurses’ encouraged the growing curated dependence on breast milk substitutes and is explored in more detail in Mike Muller’s 1974 report titled ‘The baby killer A War on Want investigation into the promotion and sale of powdered baby milks in the Third World.’ Here, we begin to understand just how integral Black liberation, and food politics really is.

This incessant shift towards bottle-feeding is nothing new however, it goes back even as far as 1939, when a speech given by Cicely Williams, a Jamaican physician on the Gold Coast, called out the marketing and policy shifts for baby formula “murder” (El-Sherbiny, 2022). Of course, much of this was guised under the banner of foreign aid, with the caveat however of introducing dependency on billion-dollar corporations like Nestlé. It was estimated in 2015 six companies, including Nestlé, “spend close to $50 for each baby born worldwide to market breast milk substitutes, a total of $6 billion a year” (El-Sherbiny, 2022). This is no different than pulling cow mothers away from their calves, who the milk is produced and intended for, and instead is fueling the pockets of the dairy industry. Just as Indigenous peoples across this globe were sold the lie that formula was better for their baby than their own breastmilk, we are complicit in the intertwining of claves consuming formula, cow mothers producing milk for humans, and human mothers “choosing” oftentimes to consume both formula and cow milk. (I say “choosing” because as we have just learnt, the push for formula and for cow milk is largely curated for profit and capital growth by the ruling class).

A much simpler and more natural (but less profitable) solution to all this we leave the milk produced by cows and humans for their own respective babies.

Part Five. Towards Anti-Speciesism

There’s no better way to close a piece on animal and human liberation than with a push for anti-speciesism. Anti-speciesism is in its simplest definition is the case for a dismantling of the unjust hierarchies and power structures which impose human exceptionalism and an argument against positioning humans above animals. Speciesism promotes the systems of which the dairy industry exists and continues to shift norms and practices that harm our ecologies. Working towards a world without racial capitalism and heteropatriarchal values means working towards a world without speciesism. There is no way around that.

Now, this is not to say the point of this entire article is to pressure or ‘force’ anyone to go vegan. I’m just here to expose the contradictions and leave you to figure out the rest. Because I am a Marxist-Leninist, I also know there is no ‘forcing’ someone to become a communist, because well, once you begin to explain the scientific empirically tested method of Marxism to anyone who has begun to seriously question capitalism and imperialism, the rest just falls into place. I believe strongly in my duty as someone with the resources, time, and privilege of education to share my knowledge and the knowledge of countless other scholars in an effort to inform and empower the masses. There is no reason to walk away from this article feeling guilty – I have consumed dairy for the better of my life as a person who was raised not as a vegan, and I imagine many of you are in the same boat. But it’s not too late to shift habits, and to become an outspoken advocate of an anti-speciesit future. Going vegan is a fundamental way to be a better feminist, a stronger ally to our Black, Brown and Indigenous friends, and to really begin to advocate for total liberation.

Note to readers: I did not cover anything relating to the labour rights of human industry workers, interconnections between human and animal under capitalism or studies showing higher rates of toxic health issues, and violence and aggression amongst meat and dairy workers. This is simply because the article would have gotten too long. That is to say, another article on those topics will be coming out soon. 

References

Alexander, P., C. Brown, A. Arneth, J. Finnigan, and M. Rounsevell. 2016. “Human Appropriation of Land for Food.” Global Environmental Change 41 (Novembe): 88-98.
Alanes, M. 2022. “Dairy in the Americas: How Colonialism Left Its Mark on the Continent.” Sentient Policy.
Alonso, P. 2018. “Autonomy Revoked: The Forced Sterilization of Women of Color in 20th Century America.” Health Equity 2 (1): 249–259.
Cehn, M. 2022. “What’s Wrong With Dairy & Cow’s Milk?“ World of Vegan.
Dairy Farmers of Canada. n.d. Net Zero by 2050 | Sustainability.     
El-Sherbiny, E. 2022. “Baby Formulas and Cash Crops in Africa Led to Poor Diets.” New Lines Magazine.
Hussain, G. 2019. “The Devastating Impact of the Dairy Industry on the Environment.” Sentientmedia.org.
James, S. 2015. “Got milk? (A Brief History).”         
Maclachlan, I. n.d. The Historical Development of Cattle Production in Canada.
Mc Geough, E., S. Little, H. Janzen, T. McAllister, S. McGinn, and K. Beauchemin. 2012. “Life-cycle Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Dairy Production in Eastern Canada.” Journal of Dairy Science 95 (9): 5164–  5175.
Media, M. 2023. “California Milk Processor Board Launches ‘Get Real Inc’.” California Dairy Magazine.            
Mina Le. 2024. The Evil Symbolism of Milk.         
Muller, M. 1974. The Baby Killer.
Najana, P. 2023. “A True Feminist Is Also Vegan.” Medium.
Nott, J. 2019. “’No One May Starve in the British Empire’: Kwashiorkor, Protein and the Politics of Nutrition Between Britain and Africa.” Social History of Medicine 34 (2): 553–576.
Nuñez del Prado Alanes, M. 2023. Sentient.            
Sartore, M. 2019. “Nestle Bombarded Developing Countries With Their Baby Formula, and The Consequences Were Deadly.” Ranker.
Seger, S. 2023. Veganism Is Not Anti-Indigenous.
Staff, E. 2023. “RNG – Thoughtful Journalism About Energy’s Future.” Thoughtful          Journalism about Energy’s Future.
Stote, K. 2019. Sterilization of Indigenous Women in Canada. The Canadian    Encyclopedia.
Vergé, X., D. Maxime, J. Dyer, R. Desjardins, Y. Arcand, and A. Vanderzaag, A. 2013. “Carbon Footprint of Canadian Dairy Products: Calculations and issues”. Journal of Dairy Science 96 (9): 6091–6104.

Recommended Resources

Statistics and Data
Ritchie, H., M. Roser, and P. Rosado. 2023. “Meat and Dairy Production.” Our World in Data.

Collection of Animal & Earth Liberation Zines
Warzone Distro: Category: Animal Liberation & Earth Liberation. 2025. Noblogs.org.

Learn More about Kawaii Culture
Miller, L. 2011. “Cute Masquerade and the Pimping of Japan.” International Journal of Japanese Sociology 20 (1): 18–29.
Osenton, S. 2007. “Insidiously ‘Cute’: Kawaii Cultural Production and Ideology in Japan.” Library And Archives Canada = Bibliothèque Et Archives Canada.

Learn More about Veganism from Black Vegans

Events, Resources and More:
https://blackvegsociety.org
https://www.afrovegansociety.org/black-vegan-activist-resources

People to Follow:
Tabitha Brown @IAmTabithaBrown
John Lewis @BadAssVegan
Russel Simmons @UncleRush
Alexis Nicole Black Forager
Eats by Will @eatsbywill

Documentary:
They’re Trying to Kill Us (2021) directed by John Lewis and Keegan Kuhn

Music:
Wu-Tang Clan (most of the members are vegan!)
Stevie Wonder
JME
Lenny Kravtiz
Akala
Mya
Macka B

emilie isch (she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar and community organizer currently residing on unceded Syilx Territory in British Columbia. 

How to Celebrate the New Year the Vegan Feminist Way

Posted on by

As each new year unfolds on December 31st and January 1st bringing millions to contemplate new beginnings, the same period marks the annual massacre of marginalized nonhumans. Free-living animals, domesticated animals (such as dogs and horses), and even human children are traumatized, harmed, or killed by fireworks. In the United States, where fireworks are also discharged on July 4th, the number of accidents can exceed 10,000 each year.

Most of these victims are children. The number of nonhuman victims is, of course, unknowable, but presumably many times that. Following the 2021 celebrations in Rome, the bodies of hundreds of roosting starlings were found dead or dying on the streets as the sun rose on January 1st.

The fascination with fire, noise, gunpowder, and other explosives marks the practice as distinctly masculinized. The entitlement to the sky and landscape for the pleasure of a relatively small group of people is also patriarchal.

Fireworks may be clearly macho, but other forms of aerial celebrations demark anthropocentrism in our relationship to Nonhuman Animals and the environment. Balloon and lantern releases, while much more peaceful, cause horrific silent suffering for the animals who ingest the remains when they fall to earth or sea. Glitter and plastic confetti, likewise, collect in ecosystems (and digestive systems), slowly suffocating land and animal bodies. Closer to the ground, bonfires can set unsuspecting shelterers ablaze, such as hedgehogs and owls. They also run the risk of starting wildfires, a “natural disaster” that claims millions of lives every year.

Must we destroy and litter in order to celebrate? New Year’s Day is part of the larger yuletide season in which the northern hemisphere enters a period of rest, death, and decay. As the spring returns, new birth and growth begin with another rotation around the sun. Perhaps this explains humanity’s penchant for grievousness at times of celebration. Renewal requires destruction. Yet, while there may be an element of necessity to this process in the natural world, in the cultural world, we can certainly sustain one another through the process in communal, less violent means.

One of my favorite ways to celebrate is with vegan food! On the desirability of this practice, most of us, human or not, can agree. I often leave bits out for the animals in my community to share. We can make our celebrations opportunities for inclusion and togetherness, rather than another opportunity to terrorize other animals.

Neopagans and modern witches often leave offerings of food for the “fae” as part of their ritual practice. Faeries are, of course, fictional representatives of the seemingly magical unseen workings of the natural world outside our door. When I leave squash or berries out in the evening, in the morning they are gone. Was it the fae? A fox? A hedgehog? It’s fun to imagine.

A witch feeding her ‘familiars’

Although paganism often practiced celebrations that were violent to other animals (including animal sacrifices, feasts of animal flesh, ceremonial “hunts,” and wildlife-threatening bonfires),1 the pagan way also encourages communion. As Christianity colonized the West, the animistic pagan lineage, a threat to the newly establishing order, was through to survive in women. Witches were believed to be closely bound to other animals, as both represented the wild, potentially dangerous, natural world. Women’s relationship with other animals was thought highly suspicious, in fact. The stereotype of the “crazy old cat lady” is a vestige of this distrust of independent women who treat other animals as persons and reject traditional, patriarchal institutions like marriage and child production.

The witch’s new year begins at Samhain (literally “November” in Gaelic). Samhain Oiche2 (“Halloween” or “Samhain’s night”) is the traditional day of celebration. New Year’s Day came to be celebrated on January 1st with the spread of Roman culture across the West. It is a Christian and colonial imposition. How fitting that the witch’s new year, November 1st, also falls on World Vegan Day.

Caring for other animals and building relationships with them, both inside the home and outside, is an act of vegan feminist resistance. By celebrating the new year with attentiveness to others in our community, we can make the yuletide truly a season of rest and rejuvenation. Forgo the fireworks and feed your familiars!


1. Stonehenge, a neolithic site designed to celebrate the winter solstice and new year is now known to be a major site of animal sacrifice and feasting given the vast number of butchered bones left behind.
2. Gaelic is sure fun to pronounce! Samhain Oiche should be read as “sah-win ee-heh”.

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and is a member of the Research Advisory Council of The Vegan Society. She has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute and has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Environmental Values, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Why I’m Giving Beyoncé’s Vegan Campaign a Chance

Posted on by

Beyoncé and Jay-Z shocked mainstream news and vegan activists alike when they announced that fans who pledge to go plant-based have a chance to win free tickets to their concerts for life.

Some vegans have not been so enthusiastic about the campaign, citing that veganism “for the health” is not the same as veganism “for the animals,” and that veganism is not something that can be “forced” on others.

Whose Veganism is It Anyway?

To this I would counter that, although some (myself included) may understand veganism to be a matter of anti-speciesism, vegans should hesitate to insist that the Eurocentric interpretation of veganism is the only valid approach.

As a practical matter, a “master frame” of veganism is not especially useful in the context of a diverse audience. Personally, I critique the hegemonic vegan frame which is highly bureaucratized and prioritizes capitalist interests over the interests of effective social change (which I argue inevitably undermines veganism). To be able to criticize hegemonic veganism from this angle, however, is a reflection of my white privilege.

As a white person, I have to concede that other ethnicities will have other priorities. These include the deadly consequences of food deserts and food insecurity as well as the role that “animality” as a social construct has played in the oppression of people of color. These are priorities which have been beautifully outlined by activist scholars such as Dr. Breeze Harper and Aph & Syl Ko.

I concede that “my” veganism will not be the veganism that other folk feel compelled to adopt.

The Vegan Society defines veganism as:

a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.

Beyoncé definitely does not count as a “vegan” according to this definition. She claims to eat animals’ flesh occasionally since it’s “all about moderation.” I assume her stage outfits make use of real birds’ feathers and cows’ skin as well. Her makeup is probably produced from slaughterhouse renderings and tested on other animals. She could exclude these things quite “possibly” and “practicably.”

But is The Vegan Society’s definition the only definition that matters? More specifically, is it the only definition which should apply to everyone? What about people of color living in a racialized society?

I suggest that the vegan identity is multifaceted and that the terms of engagement must be contextualized.

Cultural Force

In any case, I think it is a stretch to claim that Bey (who is not even a vegan herself) is “forcing” veganism on others. Fans who claim to go vegan (how can their veganism even be verified?) only have a chance to win free tickets, they are not guaranteed free tickets. Attending expensive music concerts is not a requirement, it is only recreational. Nor do Bey or Jay-Z require a complete transition since they also promote reducetarianism or “meatless Mondays.”

As I have uncovered in my research on flexitarian campaigns of this kind, many people already identify as someone who does not eat “that much” meat or dairy, since reducing animal product consumption is seen as a social good (unlike veganism which is interpreted as “extreme”). Importantly, the flexitarian identity does not often correlate with actual behavior change. In some cases, those who identify as flexitarian actually consume more animal products than their non-flexitarian-identifying counterparts.

That said, Bey is using her cultural clout to promote a social good. This is no different from the efforts of white celebrities like Moby, Morrissey, and, if you stretch it, Miley Cyrus. Morrissey reportedly bans all sale of animal flesh at his concerts–is he forcing his fans to be vegetarian?

True, celebrities are rarely trained in social justice activism, and their politics are not always perfect. I also find it uncomfortable that society should rely on celebrities to promote social goods since celebrities, given their extreme wealth, are the very embodiment of social inequality. Yet, Bey is putting her money where her mouth is–she is using her celebrity and privilege to make the world a better place through the channels available to her.

As this essay goes to print, Senator Cory Booker (also a person of color) has just announced his bid for presidency. He is a fierce social justice advocate and a longtime vegan. But he, too, promotes veganism for a wide variety of reasons which do not always center other animals. Would the movement be so quick (and foolhardy) to write off Cory Booker if he were to become our first vegan president? Need the vegan movement even have to wait for a vegan president? Beyoncé is practically American royalty, after all. Her clout arguably exceeds that of Booker’s.

Whether white activists like it or not, celebrity influencers shape the cultural landscape. The vegan identity (unlike the flexitarian identity) is a highly stigmatized one, and social movements will need to normalize its goals before they can be widely adopted. If Queen Bey makes vegan cool, it might not be “for the right reasons” (that is, it might not seek to advance the interests of Nonhuman Animals), but it can have a significant impact on the community she serves.

The Master Frame

Social movement scholars acknowledge that collectives strategically design frames which are hoped to resonate with their audiences. Multiple frames can be at work, but it is sometimes the case that a “master frame” will come to dominate in the movement’s repertoire. The utility of a master frame is its ability to present a strong, united front to the public and policy-makers. The downside is that a “one-size-fits-all” approach can be unrealistic given that audiences (and activists themselves) are not necessarily homogenous. Persuasion is a complicated matter and it sometimes takes many approaches to push a social justice agenda.

The Vegan Society, which formed in 1944 Britain and officially launched the political concept of “veganism” in the West following a protracted debate with The Vegetarian Society, may have prioritized veganism as a matter of anti-speciesism, but, from its very conception, it drew on a diverse framework relating to human health, poverty and famine, war, and individual autonomy. Indeed, The Vegan Society, today, continues a multipronged approach.

As the society moved into the 21st century, it continued to promote veganism, not necessarily as an endeavor to liberate other animals, but as something “normal” and achievable. Its vegan labeling scheme, for instance, was a major campaign in this effort. I have my issues with such an approach given its pro-capitalist leanings and its watering down of the anti-speciesist radical politic, but it is the case nonetheless that the expansion of commercially available vegan products has made veganism easier to perform.

Beyoncé has been dragged before for not meeting the expectations of white activist frames. White feminists, for instance, have criticized her brand of feminism as sexually objectifying and complicit with patriarchy, if not ignored it altogether. Black feminists have responded by reminding the community that there is no one “Feminism” (capital F) but rather many feminisms, and the failure to embrace Black women’s activism reflects white supremacy in the public space.

Because inequality does not stop at the door of social justice movements, activists must consider how inequality can sometimes shape strategy. Who is the “master” in developing the “master frame”? What I am suggesting is that the “master frame” is too frequently racialized in its construction.

Likewise, the need to control the vegan discourse and the very definition of veganism itself is rooted in colonial politics. As European countries pushed their culture onto “inferior” and “ignorant” subjects, they expected full assimilation. There was little patience for adaptation or nuance; it was simply presumed that European cultural values were universal and should be adopted unquestioningly. This is the very definition of cultural domination.

In this vein, it must be remembered that, while non-Western countries have their own histories of plant-based resistance, “Veganism” (capital V) as it is understood and politicized today, is a deeply European concept. White activists must tread carefully when attempting to impose “their” veganism on “others.” Indeed, the vegan movement, dominated as it is by white activists, has been less than welcoming to the veganisms of other cultures. This is problematic if the goal is to expand veganism beyond middle-class white spaces.

Most people go vegan and stay vegan because of their concern for other animals. Bey’s health-centric, flexitarian approach does not alter this research-supported fact. But Bey also has a wider cultural influence and represents a nonwhite consumer base that has been traditionally overlooked by the Nonhuman Animal rights movement. I am interested to see if her efforts will contribute to the larger discourse. I am also deeply supportive of women of color who have the “audacity” to be political in a white-dominated cultural landscape. Celebrity persuasion is far from perfect, but it can contribute to the destigmitization of veganism. This cultural normalcy was The Vegan Society’s aim all along.

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Black Veganism and the Animality Politic

Posted on by

Why Animality Matters

In Ko & Ko’s 2017 publication Aphro-ism, the sisters critique popular applications of intersectionality theory, identifying that what has traditionally been defined as “human” has always been categorized as white, male, and European, while racial and ethnic minorities, women, and other marginalized groups have been dualistically constructed as “animal.” Thus, “animal” is not so much a catch-all category meant to refer to nonhuman species, but to all manner of disenfranchised groups, humans included.

Animality is, they insist, endemic to the colonialist project, providing justification for social control and suppression. The Kos argue that anti-racism activists, feminists, and vegans all have a stake in challenging the false divide between human and animal, and, more specifically, challenging the category of “animal” itself.

Without challenging this basic mechanism of oppression, activists are bound to fail in their efforts for liberation. In fact, they merely embrace the same oppressive logic by either ignoring (or rejecting) the relevance of animality or insisting that intersectionality praxis stop short of species solidarity. Doing so dangerously preserves hierarchies. As Aph warns: “What hasn’t occurred to many of us is that this model of compartmentalizing oppressions tracks the problematic Eurocentric compartmentalization of the world and its members in general” (71).

Why Race Matters

From the same reasoning, vegans who do not incorporate a critical racial lens are missing the entire point of speciesism: marking particular bodies as distinct from the dominant group based on perceived physical, cognitive, and cultural differences, and then employing this distinction to rationalize oppressive treatment. Racism and speciesism are inherently entangled. Explains Syl: “[ . . . ] the organizing principle for racial logic lies in the human-animal divide, wherein the human and the animal are understood to be moral opposites” (66).

The Kos are careful not to prescribe a “we are all animals” perspective to solve this boundary-maintenance, as this is poised to deprecate rather than accommodate difference. There is little need to push for sameness, and such a push usually maintains the dominant group as the standard to which others should aspire.

Read more of my review of Aprho-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters in Society & Animals here.

Corey Lee WrennDr. Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She received her M.S. in Sociology in 2008 and her B.A. in Political Science in 2005, both from Virginia Tech. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016) and was elected Chair in 2018. She serves as Book Review Editor to Society & Animals and has contributed to the Human-Animal Studies Images and Cinema blogs for the Animals and Society Institute. She has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals including the Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Disability & Society, Food, Culture & Society, and Society & Animals. In July 2013, she founded the Vegan Feminist Network, an academic-activist project engaging intersectional social justice praxis. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016).

Receive research updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to my newsletter.

Food Justice: A Primer

Posted on by

Food Justice: A Primer, edited by Saryta Rodríguez condenses a wide-angle view of ethical considerations surrounding the production and distribution of food into a concise collection of essays that is richly informative and thoroughly persuasive. This 239-page paperback covers a large range of topics, historical and contemporary. Each section is united by the common thread of undertaking the study “through a vegan praxis.” In other words, viewing non-human animals as deserving the same rights and dignity as people, when identifying the problematics of agriculture and proposing solutions. But this perspective should not be misunderstood as a narrowly defined scope through which to examine the topic. Rather, it is necessarily at the core of the issue and this book’s focus brings that reality to the forefront.

As the arguments put forward in each of the pieces show, food justice is not just about food; it is interconnected with many areas of life, such as how we work, our attitudes toward others, and how we perceive the world around us and affect it with our actions (or inactions). An essay by Lilia Trenkova draws bold parallels between racism as a driving force behind colonialism and neo-colonialism and speciesism—the idea that humans are superior to other animals and by extension, all manner of cruelty may be excused—as the widely unchallenged belief responsible for the inhumane treatment of animals, including their use as food. These parallels follow through their resulting effects on inequitable food supply. Just as the mercantile practices of colonial and neo-colonial countries squeeze the economies and drain resources from less developed countries, the (mis)use of land for animal agriculture significantly reduces the maximum amount of food that can be produced, and applies upward pressure on prices, thereby artificially limiting resources and increasing food costs. In another essay, Saryta Rodríguez points to data that show that cows used for beef consume twenty-five times more food than they produce. Conditions for farm workers are also netted in this equation of systemic superiority, as Trenkova dissects how racist attitudes baked into the North American Free Trade Agreement created second tier system, where laborers in Mexico and immigrants in the U.S. are not afforded the same basic rights that many American workers take for granted.

Land use is also addressed in other contexts throughout. The book’s introduction briefly describes some notable land rights campaigns including the formation of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in 1984 and Palestine’s Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) in 1986. The UAWC is referenced as an example of a group that fights for food sovereignty, which is under the umbrella of food justice and pertains to a peoples’ ability to choose how their food is produced, distributed, and consumed. The MST is a movement that settled people to work on unused land and was able to make legal claims on much of that land through a part of Brazil’s constitution enshrining land as serving a public function.

Among the essays, the book also includes an interview by Saryta Rodríguez with Gustavo Oliviera, a spokesperson for Occupy the Farm, which comprised of a couple hundred activist farmers who took over an unused plot of land belonging to the University of California, Berkeley that had been slated for commercial development. It is an inspiring story of grass-roots direct action that demonstrates that anyone can take part in effecting change.

Rodríguez aptly curates an enormous depth of information and perspective in this slim volume making for a well-paced read that is small enough to carry on the go. After reading this compelling compendium, one cannot ignore that achieving food justice depends on recognizing that animal agriculture is unsustainable. Therefore, the notion that a complete and internally consistent understanding of food justice has as much to do with issues of equitable supply and distribution as workers’ rights and animal rights should not be a revolutionary one.

Dale Classen is a Brooklyn-based musician and sound designer. Dale performs with the band Grim All Day and lives with two cats, Sonny and Toad. He graduated from Stony Brook University with a B.A. in psychology.

Renouncing Vegan Birthright

Posted on by

By Julia Tanenbaum

The new Vegan Birthright program sponsored by Jewish Veg and Mayanot Birthright exemplifies how Zionists so often exploit the struggle for animal rights in the service of colonialism. Since 1999 Birthright Israel has handed 500,000 young Jews worldwide a free trip to Israel at the hidden cost of the dispossession of millions of Palestinians. As both Vegans and Jews we have a moral duty to renounce this program that supports Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestine and apartheid policies. Over 5 million Palestinian refugees are to this day excluded from their own land while any Jew born and raised in the U.S is encouraged to claim their “birthright” to it. Jewish Veg’s rhetoric of compassion and repairing the world cloaks deep hypocrisy. Vegan birthright advertises a chance to meet “world leaders” in the Jewish vegan community in a “world leading vegan city”, but in reality this narrative is part of an Israeli propaganda strategy to use Israel’s supposed status as a liberal home for first queers, now vegans, to obscure the brutal violence of the occupation. Endorsing Birthright means supporting Israeli apartheid, denying millions of innocent Palestinians access to basic human rights like clean water, electricity, education, freedom of movement, and medical care. This immeasurable violence is fundamentally incompatible with the nonviolent ethos of veganism. Jewish Veg must show us which side they are on; do they support ethnic cleansing and colonialism or will they stand in solidarity with all sentient beings, Palestinians included? We call on Jewish Veg to stop the vegan Birthright program and renounce the racist ideology of Zionism if they share our values as Jewish vegans.

The Israeli animal rights movement vegan Birthright venerates is not only complicit in but directly encourages the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine through “vegan-washing” the occupation. Every year or so another article circulates about how the Israeli Armed Forces provides vegan food and boots to soldiers, upholding the absurd myth of the IDF as the “most moral army in the world”. Palestinian animal rights organizers have termed this narrative of Israeli vegan exceptionalism “vegan washing”. Vegan washing works by falsely juxtaposing “enlightened Israeli vegans” with “backwards” Palestinians, and by creating a form of militarized veganism which bears little resemblance to the radical nonviolent vision of animal liberation.

Mainstream Israeli veganism falls in line with this strategy. Israel’s leading animal rights group 269 Life attracts significant attention for its violent demonstrations, which perpetuate racism and sexism, but less for its pernicious “non-humans first” stance which unequivocally defines human oppressions, such as racism, sexism, capitalism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., as irrelevant to fighting for animal rights. Leaders of the group like Santiago Gomez support the occupation using the logic of vegan washing, because of “how the ‘Arabs’ treat animals”. Gomez goes to the lengths of supporting Israeli massacres of Palestinian fishermen, whose lives he clearly values far less than those of the fish. Vegan Jewish “messiah” Gary Yourofsky is blatantly racist against Palestinians, calling them “the most insane people on the planet”. He even spoke at the Ariel Settlement, where illegal settlers were caught torturing Palestinian children, sparking a boycott.

At its best, animal liberation organizing shakes the foundations of our social order by rejecting human domination over nature and all of it’s inhabitants. The entrenched racism of our movement obscures how the simple idea that all sentient beings hold innate rights to life and liberty and exist for their own sake is fundamentally revolutionary.  If we reject the idea that humans have the “right” to animal bodies and lives we must also reject the much larger colonial project which relies on the same ideology.

We must reject the vegan washing model and instead follow the example of anti-Zionist vegans like the members of the Palestinian Animal League or Anarchists Against the Wall, which began as the pro-intersectional human and animal rights organisation ‘One Struggle’. We must follow the example of vegans like Haggai Matar, who spent two years in prison for refusing the draft in 2002. Organizations from 269 Life to PETA think they will attract people to veganism through racism and sexism, but there are no shortcuts to liberation, especially when they harm other oppressed communities. Decolonizing Veganism is the only way for non-human animals to become free because history teaches us that solidarity is the strongest weapon in the face of injustice. Vegans must choose whether to continue our community’s endorsement of colonial violence and white supremacy or stand for the lives and liberty of all sentient beings.

 

Julia Tanenbaum is a member of the Philadelphia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now. She has organized as a student and in local environmental and racial justice movements. She previously published her research on the history of anarcha-feminism in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory. She deeply believes that animal liberation must be conceptualized as a part of a larger struggle for social revolution.