Join activist-artists for a visual presentation confronting corporate power and the exploitation of animals and workers in the global food system.

Moderator:

Ruth Santana

Presenters:

Louie Gedo, a NYC artist and activist, will focus on creative, artistic ways that aspiring activists can get a message across by displaying some of his multimedia and artwork.

Sue Coe, creator of art books including Dead Meat, will address how Animal Rights is on the last frontier of social justice. Will illustrate the connections between labor, and the meat industrial complex, and the consumer, examine conservatism in animal ‘protection’ organizations that reflects the structure of corporate america, address legislation that helps animals, vs. legislation that perpetuates the meat industries. Take a look at the global movement of animal rights, which does not deny class struggle. The goal, is to end animal exploitation completely, by the means of abolition not reform, and understand that the economic system of capitalism in its end stage, is at its most lethal, and expands human tyranny and cruelty over other species, as well as our own, like no other time in history.

Tools, Skills and Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Louie: My hope is that participants who are activists or aspiring activists will benefit because they will see that there are ways for them to increase their effectiveness as campaigners simply by using their creative talents.

Sue: I can explain to you how to draw! (its easy, its the thinking part that is hard) A pencil is always good to have around, and a bit of paper, you can travel with it anywhere in the world, its cheap and non threatening. We all ‘see’ the world in different ways, and your vision is unique, it can be explored and shared. How to document the secret lives of animals, to refute and dispute, the depictions of animals in our culture, either regarded as property, or who have gone willingly to their deaths, sacrificed for human power and control. What we all can do now? Become vegan today, then help a friend become vegan, who promises to make one more. You may become a reportage artist who is a vegan after this panel too, but that is not a guarantee.

About the Moderator:

Ruth Santana is an activist in the animal rights, Latin America solidarity, and trade justice movements.  She works as an occupational therapist and teaches metalwork / jewelry making at the School of Visual Arts.

About the Presenters: 

Louie Gedo: A part-time activist for human and animal rights for more than ten years in NYC, Louie asks himself daily, “What can I do today to best improve the lives of those being systematically victimized?”

Sue Coe: Artist, double parked on the highway of life.  My work is in books, museums, pamphlets, those images have their own life, and find their own way through the world.

What are the reasons behind factory farming? What are “humane,” local and organic animal products, and what are their costs and benefits? Are they the solution to factory farming? Is there an alternative to supporting agribusiness altogether? 

Presenters:

Zaac Chaves, farmer, forager with CT/Westchester Mycological Association, author: Less Harmful Sustenance: How to Avoid Killing Animals in Hungry Times

Calla Wright, Working Families Party

What They’ll  Be Discussing:

Calla: I will explore what the feel-good labels (i.e. free-range, grass-fed, etc.) used to market animal products to caring consumers really mean.

Zaac: I will be sharing information and resources regarding an abundance of invasive edible plant and fungus options which can provide viable options for human caloric fulfillment, while benefiting the environment.

Tools, Skills, and Messages Participants Will Take Home

Calla: Participants will walk away with a better understanding of what all the labels they read on animal products actually mean. After the presentation, they will be more equipped to eat according to their own ethics as opposed to eating based on a marketing strategy.

Zaac: The “No Farms, No Food” slogan forces a dichotomy.  I will be stressed to participants the acknowledgement real and existing alternatives to acquiring food that do require farming or other disruption to habitats.  To the contrary I will be urging people to feed themselves elsewhere, such as through foraging exotic and prevalent species of plants which are disruptive to native environments.

Bios:

Calla Wright is particularly interested in the intersectionalities of social injustices. She holds a BA & MS from The New School. During her studies, she explored the connections between animal agriculture and other forms of institutionalized oppression.

Zaac Chaves coordinates mushroom tours at schools, farms, and animal sanctuary’s.  He authored and will have copies of the pamphlet Least Harmful Sustenance aimed at helping others learn about the edibility of common and invasive plants and fungus.

Description: 

Learn how the Obama administration and Congress are helping corporate agribusiness use NAFTA-style free trade agreements to create markets worldwide for genetically modified crops and factory farmed animal products at the expense of consumers, farmers, workers, animals, and the environment.  Find out what we can do to stop it.

Presenters:

John Maher, Touro Law,  will discuss globalization of GMOs – Do such technologies cause an unacceptable economic and political imbalance between supplier, grower and consumer  in terms of  environmental safety, labeling and consumer choice and environmental conservation. Is there any choice at all to avoid use of or exposure to GMOs under the political economy and legal system?

Adam Weissman, Global Justice for Animals and the Environment, will explore:

- How agribusiness is creating global markets for factory farmed animal products by  pushing for agricultural tariff elimination and sanitary standards harmonization

- the use of World Trade Organization challenges to attack import bans on foods produced by methods that compromise food safety, endanger wildlife, and cause animal suffering and to prohibit product labeling that helps consumers avoid unsustainable, inhumane, and dangerous foods.

-  how first world factory farm exports are driving agriculture in the rest of the world in the direction of factory farming to remain competitive

- why this threatens farming communities, the environment, animal welfare, and global health.

Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will Take Home:

John: The method, globalization, by which the neo-liberal pan-nation states have eliminated “choice” while propounding that humans live in an era of expanding freedoms will be explained.”

Adam: Participants will learn how, by driving the factory farm globalization, free trade agreements threatens animal welfare, public health, family farms, and the environment and learn how they can take action at a grassroots level to advocate for fairer international trade policies.

About the Presenters

John Maher is an animal lawyer and adjunct professor of Animal Law at Touro Law Center. He represents Best Friends Animal Society and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and NYLS.

Adam Weissman works with Global Justice for Animals and the Environment, opposing trade agreements that endanger animals, ecology, food safety, and human rights, and TradeJustice NY Metro, a coalition fighting NAFTA-style trade agreements.

Do animals have a right to not be eaten? What are the ethical implications of tanimal agriculture’s contribution to environmental destruction and food scarcity?   Join a panel of distinguished ethicists and legal scholars to discuss the ethical issues surrounding the use of animals for food.

Moderator:

Marianne Sullivan,  Program Director, Our Hen House

Presenters:

Julian Franklin, author, Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy, will offer a very brief prospect on the history of animal rights thought.  He will crtically explain the positions of Peter Singer and Thomas Regan and will conclude very briefly with some suggestions of my own.

John Maher, Adjunct Professor of Law, Touro College will present, a discussion of the possibility of rejection of Speciesism as the only possible prototype for animaljustice.

Gary Francione,  author, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or Your Dog?,  will challenge the idea that although animals matter morally, we can still use and eat them because animals don’t have an interest in continued existence and explain how modern theorists (Regan, Singer) don’t address the problem.

Lori Gruen,  author, Ethics and Animals:  An Introduction, will discuss the ethical implications of food choices including, but moving beyond eating animals and animal products (including impact on climate change, environmental destruction, food insecurity, and endangering wildlife).

Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Gary: Participants will be exposed to the idea that “happy” meat makes no more sense than “happy” human exploitation.

John: Participants will learn that in the neo-liberal consumer state all ethics are situational and morals are a luxury good which are both dispensed with through the paradigm of ‘convenience.’

Participants will be encouraged to challenge their assumptions and think critically about their government and whether “choice” continues to exist in the neoliberal state in terms of food or political dissent as concerns animal interests.”

Lori: Expanded sense of the ethical complexity of our food choices.

About the Moderator:

Mariann Sullivan  is the program director and co-founder of Our Hen House, a multimedia hive of opportunities to change the world for animals. She also teaches animal law at Brooklyn, Cardozo and Columbia Law Schools.

About the Presenters: 

Gary Francione, Distinguished Professor Law and Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy, Rutgers Law School, authors books and articles on animal ethics and law, including Animals as Persons and The Animal Rights Debate,

John Maher is an animal lawyer and adjunct professor of Animal Law at Touro Law Center. He represents Best Friends Animal Society and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) and NYLS.

Julian Franklin is a professor emeritus in the  Columbia University Department of Political Science. After he retired, he became deeply interested in animal issues and taught an undergraduate course in animal rights as an adjunct.

Lori Gruen is the author of Ethics and Animals:  An Introduction (Cambridge:  2011).  She is Professor of Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality  Studies at Wesleyan University.

Join a panel of experts in law and public policy to discuss efforts to use civil and criminal law to silence activists working to expose unsafe and inhumane farm conditions and the use of free trade agreements to attack Country of Origin Labeling on meat and the Dolphin-Safe Tuna label.

Presenters:

Rachel Meeropol, Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights, will discuss the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act’s impact on the ability of animal rights advocates to investigate and educate the public on factory farming and food safety and her work to declare that law unconstitutional

Tools, Skills, and Messages Participants will Take Home:

Rachel: Participants will gain an understanding of current criminal provisions punishing lawful activism and peaceful civil disobedience across social movements as acts of terrorism.

About the Presenters:

Bina Ahmad is an animal rights activist, a member of the Muslim Defense committee, and an Executive Committee member of the NYC National Lawyers Guild, focusing on Occupy Wall Street criminal and civil cases.

Rachel Meeropol, Center for Constitutional Rights staff attorney on First Amendment and prisoners’ rights, is co-editor and author, “Jailhouse Lawyers Handbook”, and contributing editor, “America’s Disappeared: Secret Imprisonment, Detainees, and the War on Terror.”

Time: 11:00am-12:15pm

Location: Room 5W24

Description:

The panel offers a critique of animal exploitation in the food industry. Veteran social justice activists and writers discuss why food activists and consumers should care about the consumed in a system that reduces everything – workers, animals, the environment, consumers – to units of profit.

Moderator:

Rachel Kay

Panelists:

Brian Dominick, author of Animal Liberation and Social Revolution and blogger for FuturEconomy,  will discuss how human-animal relations would be different in a sustainable economy, as well as the lifestyle implications on present-day activists who aspire to achieve such a society.

Norman Markowitz,  Professor of Political History, Rutgers University and  Contributing Editor to Political Affairs, will address the relationship between Animal Rights/Animal Welfare, Vegetarianism, and Socialism both historically and as ideology and policy today, advocating a global food policy free of both animal slaughter and mass malnutrition.

Sachio Ko-yin of Philly War Resisters League and Occupy Philly will address food, class systems and anarchism: how food is part of class culture, how market culture makes injustice socially acceptable/invisible.  Animal exploitation in traditional culture and market culture. Lifestyle choice and middle class subculture vs revolutionary example.

Katie Pryor, NYC Regional Coordinator for Vegan Outreach,  will address research illustrating that food production is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than food transportation. Eating a plant based diet has an even greater impact on reducing your carbon footprint than eating local.

Tools, Skills or Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Brian: Participants will leave this session with a contextualized understanding of how human activity impacts the nonhuman world, as well as a functional understanding of how capitalism and the food industry in particular pit the interests of workers, consumers, animals, and the environment against each other in order to exploit, as well as the social and psychic implications of mass exploitation on a society that believes it thrives on such exploitation.

Sachio: Participants will be challenged to think in terms of outreach taking into account social and cultural capital of activists, and thinking about organizing outside of activist subculture.

Katie:

Participants will learn how a plant-based diet can effectively reduce GHG emissions.

About the Panelists

Brian Dominick is the author of Animal Liberation and Social Revolution and an activist, and writer on a range of social issues, including visionary economics.

Norman  Markowitz, BA, CCNY, 1966; Ph.D. University of Michigan, 1970; Department of History/Rutgers University-1971-present; currently Vice President of AAUP-AFT, Rutgers.New Brunswick chapter, publications can be found on Google.

Sachio Ko-yin is a vegan and veteran organizer in radical pacifist and anarchist movements interested in how radical movements can escape middle class subcultures and speak to the working class. Served 2.5 year prison sentence for Ploughshares disarmament action.

Katie Pryor is NYC Regional Coordinator for Vegan Outreach. A statistician with a B.S. in Mathematics and M.S. in Environmental Sciences (May 2012), Katie works to end suffering and environmental degradation caused by factory farming.

Description

With the world increasingly adopting a diet heavy in animal products, animal agriculture is driving climate change, forest loss, air and water pollution, and the spread of pandemic diseases. Learn about the latest research on animal agriculture’s devastating impact on the environment and discuss what we can do about it.

Presenters:

Mike Hudak,  Director, Vibrant Public Lands, will address how hundreds of wildlife species populations (fish, birds, amphibians, mammals, reptiles, insects) are declining because of subsidized ranching. Learn how we can prevent species extinction, reverse environmental damage, AND help ranchers stop ranching without facing economic hardship.

David Kirby, author of Animal Factory, will address manure mountains, noxious gases, odors, waste lagoons, sprayfields, algae blooms, fish kills, polluted lakes, rivers and aquifers, MRSA, mad-cow, salmonella: these are just some of the “hidden” costs of factory farming to humans and the environment.

Tools, Skills, and Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Mike:

Participants will realize how politics results in methods of food production that have unnecessary environmental impacts. (And the politics can be local if we make the effort.)

David:  Participants will learn how CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) foul the air, water and land around them and introduce multi-drug resistant pathogens and other hazards to human and wildlife well-being into the environment.

About the Presenters:

Mike Hudak is an environmental advocacy journalist, organizer, and author, Sierra Club activist, radio broadcaster, and public speaker concerned with damage to wildlife and the environment inflicted by ranching primarily on western US public land.

David Kirby, a contributor to the Huffington Post since 2005 and journalist for 20 years, wrote for The New York Times for five years and was a correspondent in Latin America from 1986-1990. He has authored three books: Evidence of Harm, Animal Factory and Death at SeaWorld.

Time:  12:30PM-1:45PM

Location: Room 5W22

Description:

Learn how corporate agribusiness’ efforts to influence public opinion and policy have influenced a shift in US and global diets towards increased consumption of animal products – particularly those produced by industrial agriculture – with disastrous implications for workers, farmed animals, the environment, human health, and food availability.

Moderator: 

Nicholas Laccetti

Presenters:

Dr. Milton Mills,  Associate Director of Preventive Medicine with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

David Kirby, author, Animal Factory, will discuss corporate agribusiness welfare – how farm subsidies keep us fat, and why Washington won’t stop the factory farm gravy train.

Caryn Hartglass, Founder,  Responsible Eating And Living (REAL), will discuss how government subsidies make it more affordable to eat unhealthy foods than nutritious ones.  Marketing campaigns brainwash us into consuming foods that make us sick.  Agribusiness and government policy influence our consumer choices, impacting our health, the environment, work conditions, animals and food availability.

VIctoria Moran, author, Main Street Vegan, will discuss how hen we eat the food Big Agra wants us to eat, we come to need the drugs Big Pharma wants us to buy. Moran will weigh in on self-care and dynamic nutrition as political acts of great importance.

Tools, Skills, and Messages Participants Will Take Home:

Caryn:

* Participants will learn how agribusiness lobbyists have:
- influenced USDA nutrition information to reflect their economic interests rather than science
- maintained implicit subsidies to factory farms
- mandated animal products in school lunches
- pushed for international agreements to eliminate agricultural tariffs.

*Participants will be familiarized with how massive advertising campaigns and deceptive packaging have distorted consumer awareness of what foods they need to be healthy and where their food comes from.

* Participants will discuss how we can fight corporations like Smithfield and Tyson and take action for sustainable and just food policy.

David:

Participants will learn what types of farm subsidies are going to millionaire factory farmers and corporate grain, meat and dairy producers and how our taxpayer dollars support a food and nutritional system that is the opposite of what we should be eating. The USDA’s own “Food Pyramid” is entirely inverted when it comes to USDA subsidies: meat and dairy benefit the most, fruits and vegetables receive virtually nothing. Meanwhile, President Obama pays little more than lip service to farm subsidy reforms while supposed deficit hawks like the Tea Party Caucus in Congress almost unanimously oppose any reforms to farm subsidies.

About the Moderator:

Nicholas Laccetti is a writer and activist living in New York City. He is interested in food justice, gender/sexuality issues, the history of Christianity, and progressive religious practice.

 About the Presenters:

Caryn Hartglass is the founder of Responsible Eating And Living (REAL), a nonprofit that promotes plant-based foods and planet-friendly products. She currently hosts the weekly It’s All About Food show on the Progressive Radio Network.

David Kirby, a contributor to the Huffington Post since 2005 and journalist for 20 years, wrote for The New York Times for five years and was a correspondent in Latin America from 1986-1990. He has authored three books: Evidence of Harm, Animal Factory and Death at SeaWorld.

Victoria Moran, CHHC, the Oprah-featured author of The Love-Powered Diet and Main Street Vegan, is among VegNews’ “Top 10 Vegetarian Authors.” Moran directs Main Street Vegan Academy, training Vegan Lifestyle Coaches in NYC.

Dr. Milton Mills is the Associate Director of Preventive Medicine with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and co-author of PCRM’s report on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Whether internist Dr. Mills is practicing at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia or at free clinics in Washington, D.C, his prescription for patients is likely to include some dietary advice: go vegetarian. Mills doesn’t limit his message to his patients. He takes it to audiences around the country as well.