Annie Lowrey, "Radical Vegans are Trying to Change Your Diet," September 20, 2023, The Atlantic.
- From the opening paragraph: "Everything, everywhere in this farm for 'free-range' chickens was covered in excrement."
- Calling a factory farm a farm is to employ a misnomer.
- DxE supports a Constitutional amendment to grant nonhuman animals legal personhood.
- Lowrey is a vegan: "I believed in DxE’s mission. About its tactics, I wasn’t so sure." She details the personal and social depredations of being a vegan, which is "exhausting, abstemious, weird."
- The blossoming of animal rights activism post-Animal Liberation was curtailed in the 21st century by legal suppression and limited success. Incrementalism, such as promoting cage-free eggs or gestation crate bans, did make some progress. But animal exploitation continued and the amount of such exploitation globally expanded.
- Wayne Hsiung, a co-founder of DxE, along with others, looked into the theory, practice, and history of social change. Non-violent direct action like boycotts and sit-ins seems to be a key component in a winning reform movement.
- DxE hopes to turn vegans into activists, in an effort to meet the critical mass that makes social change likely. Their goal is to end animal exploitation quickly, within a generation: here's their roadmap. Their tactics include low-risk activities like protests, to higher-risk strategies like open rescues and working undercover.
- Lowrey describes the DxE 2021 protest at a slaughterhouse and factory chicken farming operation, operated by Foster Farms -- she was there, covering the event as a journalist.
- The critical mass of activists isn't enough, Lowrey argues. In addition to the committed vanguard, you need tons of tacit supporters. You start with the tacit group to recruit the activists. The opposite approach -- have a vanguard but little support beyond it -- will not work in achieving reform goals.
- DxE remains small, however; PETA is much larger. DxE's tactics seem to be a turn off even for many vegans, and some people consider it to be a cult.
- Will DxE tactics help to bring the median voter, an omnivore, to their side? "There’s a big gap still between your average animal-loving American, who wants the government to ensure the welfare of the cow in her burger, and your average animal-rights protester, who wants to grant that cow constitutional rights."
- Maybe the animal activists will win due to causes related to, but not directly concerning, animal welfare, such as climate change or cultivated meat.
- Radical vegans often are annoying and have little prospect of achieving their goals -- they are also right, that the horrors of factory farming are unspeakable.
