NONHUMAN ANIMAL RIGHTS

Speaking up for our fellow animals is at the core of who we are. The Raven Corps started as a high school animal rights club, and that ethos has remained foundational to the values we hold today.

First of all: why specify “nonhuman?” Because humans are animals. Period.

Why is it important for nonhuman animals to be included in the fight for total liberation? Because our liberation is their liberation. The same systems of harm that perpetuate human oppression - capitalism, colonization, imperialism, white supremacy, etc - directly fuel nonhuman animal exploitation. So it stands to reason that whether we are fighting for human rights or nonhuman animal rights, we have to care about both. As long as nonhuman animals are deemed as consumable and disposable, so too will marginalized humans who are labeled as animals. As long as there are slaughterhouses there will be battlefields, and as long as there are battlefields there will be slaughterhouses. We seek to connect nonhuman animal rights to human oppression, not compare it. There is no hierarchy of oppression when it all stems from the same rotten roots.

Whether nonhuman animals are at the forefront of your advocacy or not, it is in our collective best interest to extend our passion for justice towards our more-than-human kin.

“I usually don’t mention the fact that I’m vegan but I think it’s the right time to talk about it because it’s part of a revolutionary perspective … People don’t think about the horrendous suffering that those animals endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings. And I think that the lack of critical engagement with the food that we eat demonstrates the extent to which the commodity form has become the primary way in which we perceive the world … And so I think that would really be revolutionary: to develop a kind of repertoire, a habit, of imagining the relations, the human relations and the nonhuman relations behind all of the objects that constitute our environment.” - Angela Davis, Empowering Women of Color Conference 2014

For further learning on why nonhuman animal liberation is crucial in the fight for total liberation, here are some resources we know and love:

• Racism as Zoological Witchcraft by Aph Ko

• Total Liberation Podcast

• “Animal Liberation and Social Revolution,” by Brian Dominick and Joseph Smith

• “Our Animals, Ourselves: The Socialist Feminist Case for Animal Liberation,” by Astra Taylor and Sunaura Taylor

• “Veganism as Left Praxis,” CNS Journal