Gary Yourofsky Ranks Human Rights as the Number One Blocker to the Animal Rights Movement - But Is It?
The legendary activist Gary Yourofsky has returned after a decade-long break from activism, doing a slew of interviews. In them, he said the biggest impediment to animal rights is human rights. In particular, he claims that animal rights activists who speak up about human rights are allowing human-related issues to take precedence, which harms the animal rights movement.
Bringing up human-related issues in animal rights spaces can cause fractures. Some animal rights activists have left the movement to join human-related social justice movements. However, I don’t think human rights activism is the main blocker to our progress; based on my observations and experience, I think it is at most third place. Two other issues impede our progress far more.
Note that when I refer to activism, I am specifically focusing on grassroots activism.
Second Place - Activists Leaving the Movement
People leave the movement for a variety of reasons: burnout (which caused the decade-long break for Gary), cancel culture that seeks to remove allies in our space for saying or supporting the “wrong” side in a human-related issue (this has happened multiple times in my circle alone), having a child, dating issues with other activists, felonies, lack of community, focusing on one’s self, seeking spirituality and enlightenment, the feeling of not making a difference, and more.
I recently read Your Neighbor Kills Puppies by Tom Harris, which is about Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC). SHAC embarked on a pressure campaign to stop Huntingdon Life Science (HLS) from experimenting on animals from 1999-2015, with most of the actions taking place in the first half of that time period. This inspiring book details numerous examples of amazing activism. But, as wonderful as all the activism was that happened against HLS, all I could think while reading was "Where are these people now?"
Activists across the world took bold actions constantly for SHAC: scaling buildings and refusing to come down, blocking traffic, and repeatedly disrupting investors of HLS wherever they went. Today's more intense and daring actions rarely compare in both risk and frequency. Why?
I daydream of what our movement would look like, the power we would wield, if these activists stayed active. I want to be clear that I am not blaming them for leaving, but I want to understand why they left so that the current movement can work to retain our current members. If there is a common reason activists leave the movement, we need to understand why so we do not repeat the same mistakes. We need a thriving community so we can continue making wins for the animals.
First Place - The People Who Support Our Cause But Are Not Involved
The number one blocker that impedes progress for animals is the people who are not involved with the animal rights movements in any capacity.
At a Right to Rescue summit in DC earlier this year, Wayne Hsiung shared a video of an open rescue on an egg farm north of San Francisco (I cannot find the original video, but here is a longer VICE report.) The video is beautiful, courageous, and inspiring. We got chills, and at the end, some of us had tears in our eyes. After the video, Wayne said something to the effect of "we had well over 100 people on this extremely successful action. That is less than 1% of vegans in San Francisco, and far less than in the greater Bay Area." So, thousands of vegans in the area understand what is happening to animals to the extent that they change their lives to stop using and abusing animals, but they cannot take part in an effective action to shut down animal farms an hour north of their home. Why are these other vegans not attending this action? Why did the 49% of the population that opposed factory farms not come to support?
Lately, I have been working against puppy mill stores in North Carolina with my group NC Animal Advocates United (NCAAU). While I care far more about farmed animals, I decided to work on this issue due to the large number of outraged dog lovers on social media. Everyone was talking about Petopia, a new puppy mill store opening up in Raleigh at the beginning of 2025, but I noticed no one was doing anything about it—they were all bark and no bite. Since NCAAU knows how to run protests, we started a campaign against Petopia, and we won—the store closed after being open only a week.
In an attempt to snowball our momentum, we switched to protesting another established puppy store also in Raleigh, Superstar Puppies. However, attendance at our in-person actions tapered off. Our first action against Petopia was huge, with at least 50 people attending. Months later, only eight people attended our last protest at Superstar Puppies. Our actions have included multiple protests outside the stores, marches, disruptions, multiple digital actions, and a series of speakers at the Raleigh City Council.
To keep people engaged and inspired, I realized we would need to get more creative than the standard protest. I came up with a unique event that might attract more people: a memorial service for dogs euthanized in shelters. NC animal shelters have one of the highest kill rates in the US.
For the memorial, we taped photos of dogs on the windows of a third new puppy mill store that was yet to open, Waggles. Each photo represented dogs killed in shelters. Then we gave speeches about rescue dogs, what dogs and workers face in shelters, and how we feel about puppy mill stores (Spoiler: we hate them).
We gained many new followers and supporters on social media after we started our anti-puppy mill store campaign. NCAAU’s top three most viewed, liked, and shared posts are about our actions against puppy stores. Our video of the memorial was by far NCAAU’s most viral post on social media.
How many people came to the memorial? Eleven. How many new people came who had not already attended previous puppy mill or animal rights-related events? Zero. How much impact did the No Kings protest, which happened on the same day, have on our attendance? Hard to tell, but I'd bet at least ten more people might have come to our event. Instead, they chose to go to a massive, nationwide protest involving thousands of people that accomplished almost nothing, instead of coming to our event to help us shut down a new puppy mill store, after we had successfully shut a store down before.
Even if 20 more people came to the memorial service, where were the hundreds of other dog lovers and puppy mill haters who supported us on social media?
Most Frustrating Part: We Are Powerful with so Few - Imagine Having More
I know it is easy to get caught up in the passion of the current issue that is making waves on social media. Most people don’t create spreadsheets to analyze which actions will have the most impact, but because there are so few of us, animal advocates are chronically forced to consider the impact our actions have. Activists should know that their marginal addition to the No Kings protest will have a negligible impact, while attending a smaller demo with a proven strategy for creating change will have a far greater impact.
One of the most rewarding aspects of advocating for animals is how easy it is to create positive change, such as rescuing animals at a sanctuary, creating new vegans through outreach, raiding fur farms, and pressure campaigns that force companies to change their practices. So many animals have been helped, freed, and spared a life of brutal suffering over the decades, despite how few animal rights activists there are. If the animal rights movement doubled or tripled, we would be a force to be reckoned with.
What Can We Do?
I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have one perfect, easy solution that will address these problems. As I have previously written, the animal rights movement is different from any other social justice movement. Achieving animal liberation and world veganism requires us to continue what we are doing, along with evolving into new strategies. I’ll list a few practices that will help:
Always be recruiting. If you are an activist and someone is supportive of your work, ask them to join you. If they say no, ask them to follow you on social media. They might change their mind later. Recruiting is the job of every activist, not just the lead organizers.
Practice real inclusion. Just because someone disagrees with you on a subject (animal rights-related or not), that is no reason to exclude them from a movement that needs every person it can get. You don’t have to be friends with every activist—I’m not—but we can band together during actions to increase our impact. When was the last time you reached out to an activist you haven’t seen at an action in a while?
Mingle with new people every chance you get. Humans are social creatures. We need constant support and community. Making connections with new activists helps build the supportive community foundation we all need.
Be curious, be learning, be experimenting. Since past and current leaders don’t have all the answers, learn about new strategies and tactics, and experiment with new approaches in your activism. Make this curiosity contagious.
Join other groups’ actions. NCAAU was built as an independent umbrella group. We take part in many actions and campaigns that support other organizations. This not only builds our network but also allows our members to take part in every style of action.
Remember why you are doing this. We are fighting multibillion-dollar industries that have considerable influence on the government, with a public that largely takes part in supporting animal cruelty. We are trying to save the lives of trillions of animals and spare many more a life of suffering and exploitation. We should not shy away from the enormity of the problem, for we are a fierce and formidable force. However, we need everyone we can get on our side, and for people to take as much action as possible for the animals.
If all animal rights activists put these into practice, we can grow our numbers, build a larger, thriving community, and increase support systems within our community. As we win more, we will galvanize the movement and normalize our work, which will inspire even more people to join. The animals need more activists who are in it for the long haul, even if they occasionally speak up for humans, too.
I’ve been pretty focused on this issue for at least a year now. I welcome all thoughts on this. How can we make a more inclusive community? Anything you would add to the list of what we can do?
love this post, thank you.
There are indeed so many people who COULD be active while they're not. If only we could press upon them how their help can help, whether it be their time, their money, their network...