Toward an Oppression-Free World

This morning's planned post has been delayed a bit, but luckily, there's some fantastic reading elsewhere today. I've written on several occasions on how animal rights issues connect with other issues of injustice, prejudice, and oppression, and I've pointed out on several occasions that none of the animal rights advocates I know are narrowly focused, single-issue advocates--they care about and advocate for nonhuman animals, but they care about and advocate for much else in this world as well. The blog and group L.O.V.E., which considers itself "neither an animal welfare group nor an animal rights group, but something new: an anti-oppression collective," works to make the connections between various forms of oppression and to encourage activism and ways of living that incorporate awareness of and concern for all such forms. L.O.V.E. is not alone in this effort or philosophy, but it's doing great work and presenting great writings in the area. Please see this morning's post, "Toward a Vegan World," at L.O.V.E. Here's my favorite part, the introduction:

I want oppression to be really gone, for good.  I don’t just want to get rid of the most “cruel” kinds of oppression in the short-term, leaving the bigger structure in tact, or leaving new forms of oppression free to arise in the future.  I want to get at the root of the problem.  I want to get at the root and dig out that root and do my best to make sure nothing ever grows there again.

I want a world where people see force and exploitation as wrong by principle; I want a world where, because of that, all forms of slavery are really gone—where the poor aren’t at the mercy of the rich, where women aren’t at the mercy of men, where people of color aren’t at the mercy of whites, where the “Third World” isn’t at the mercy of the “First World,” where other animals aren’t at the mercy of human animals.

In a true vegan world, ableism, ageism, classism, heterosexism, racism, sexism, speciesism, and all other forms of oppression—they’re gone.  Because if people reject force and exploitation by principle, and reject violence by principle, and affirm everyone’s equality by principle, then they reject all oppression by principle.  If people reject the use of other animals without consent, don’t you think we’d also reject the use of fellow human animals without consent?  Don’t you think sweatshops would finally be out of the question?  Don’t you think we’d collectively take poverty and inequality a lot more seriously?  This is the world I want.

Continue reading.