Schedule
Below you will find the current schedule for our first annual Vegan World 2056 summit, including the names of each gifted speaker’s galvanizing speech and a brief synopsis thereof.
7-7:20 p.m. CST
Project Animal Freedom: A Primer | Kyle Luzynski (he/him)
Join Kyle Luzynski, the Executive Director of Project Animal Freedom, for a brief introduction to our organization while we wait for everyone to join us before delving into our main speaker series for the evening. Kyle will provide a high-level overview of our organization, including a discussion of our Movement Builder May activities. He will then outline our event structure for the evening.
7:20-7:40 p.m. CST
The Moral Urgency of Effective Animal Activism | Howard Nye (he/him)
While most of us would agree that our activism should aim to actually help animals, there are tendencies within the animal movement to engage in certain forms of activism without a careful evaluation of whether they are likely to be among the most effective things we can do. In this talk I argue that we should avoid these tendencies, because it is morally urgent for us to draw upon the best available evidence to determine what forms of activism are most likely to help animals as much as possible, and to engage in these forms of activism. Drawing on the work of authors like Peter Singer, Derek Parfit, and Peter Unger, I defend the ethical principles that:
(EA1) If we can prevent great harm to other animals at relatively trivial cost to ourselves, then it is morally urgent for us to do so, and
(EA2) All else held equal, if the expected consequences of one course of action are vastly less good for other animals than those of another, then it is morally urgent to avoid performing the action with the vastly inferior expected consequences.
These principles form the core ethical ideas of what has come to be known as the effective altruism movement, which seeks to apply evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to improve the world. Many of those associated with the effective altruism movement are notorious for subscribing to further, highly dubious ethical ideas, and for engaging in pseudo-scientific rationalizations of extremely myopic and dubious empirical assumptions. But the core ethical ideas of (EA1) and (EA2) are distinct from these dubious ideas and shoddy methods of empirical reasoning, and in this talk I argue that (EA1) and (EA2) are defensible and should inform our animal activism.
7:40-8 p.m. CST
How Vegan Activists Inspire Us Every Day | Leslie Barcus (she/her)
VegFund has had the privilege and honor to support thousands of vegan outreach events around the world since 2009. The energy and compassion of the global activist community manifests in many forms, from street vigils to VegFests to community film screenings and food samplings, online campaigns, nutrition and humane education, and student initiatives. Leslie Barcus, VegFund Executive Director will discuss how vegans from many walks of life are interacting with their communities to spread the word about the benefits of vegan living for people, the planet, and all animals and how you, too, may take action with VegFund's support.
8-8:20 p.m. CST
Building a Sustainable Activism Practice and Movement | Lorrin Maughan (she/her)
There are many contributing factors to vegan activist burnout, including stress, trauma, overwhelm, anti-vegan prejudice, and other activists. This talk covers some of the reasons activists burnout and shares suggestions and resources for building a more sustainable activism practice and movement. Caring for ourselves and each other is critical to ensuring our movement’s health and long term viability, so how do we create a “culture of care” within ourselves, our movement, and our world?
8:20-8:40 p.m. CST
Honoring Your Daring Thought: A Legacy of Support for Activists | Dona Sauerburger (she/her)
This session will share a tool for supporting you as an activist, brought to you through extreme dedication and sacrifice by animal rights activists whose stories are inspiring. Participants can engage in a sample activity from that tool, designed to strengthen and support you.
8:40-9 p.m. CST
Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders | Prof. Maneesha Deckha (she/her)
In Animals as Legal Beings, Maneesha Deckha critically examines how Canadian law and, by extension, other legal orders around the world, participate in the social construction of the human-animal divide and the abject rendering of animals as property. Through a rigorous but cogent analysis, Deckha calls for replacing the exploitative property classification for animals with a new transformative legal status or subjectivity called "beingness."
9-9:20 p.m. CST
The Political Animal | Christopher Sebastian (he/him)
People who declare animal rights apolitical are shockingly prevalent in the community. His presentation, titled “The Political Animal,” provides a brief education about the historical roots of animal rights as a political movement and explains the urgent need for political mobilization in our movement today with several pressing examples of how anti-animal entities promote their agenda by manipulating the levers of government..
9:20-9:40 p.m. CST
Good Power: Helping Animals by Acquiring and Applying Power | Stephen Best (he/him)
Good Power explores the realpolitik that the fate and treatment of animals are largely in the hands of politicians and major economic actors. Rarely do they make choices that protect animals or end their suffering and killing unless they are forced to by determined advocates. Rarely are animal suffering and killing successfully and enduringly addressed by protest, bearing witness, raising non-directed public opinion, public education, sound arguments, science, or ethical appeals to doing the “right” thing. All such activities are crucial and necessary, but they are rarely sufficient on their own. If they were, animal suffering and killing would be on the decline, but they are not. Actors who control the fate and exploitation of animals, however, do respond well for animals to well-considered and well-targeted applications of sufficient, enduring power. What is power? Power is the capacity to inflict harm or provide benefits. Power is necessary to negotiate successfully with powerful actors who harm or kill animals for pleasure, profit, personal benefit, or just to rid themselves of “vermin” in the easiest way possible. Good Power introduces a number of principles, concepts, notions, and grand strategies animal advocates might consider or find helpful as they develop their animal-saving actions, particularly in regards to acquiring power in its many forms, sustaining and building it, and applying it effectively to help animals.
9:40-10 p.m. CST
The Future of the Midwestern Animal Rights Movement | Kyle Luzynski (he/him)
Join us for the closing ceremony of the evening as we discuss not only what is next for our organization, but also what we can do to build an unstoppable animal rights movement across the Midwest and around the world.
Register today!
Growing the animal rights movement, waging successful pressure campaigns against mega-corporations, and passing historic legislation to benefit animals will take millions of animal rights activists fighting in unison. What are you waiting for? Register for this summit and join our team at Project Animal Freedom today!