Two more Effective Advocacy tips

[Guest guest]

Tammy and Chris, thank you for organizing and hosting

last Sunday’s event, and thanks so much to Suzanne, Thea, and Nora (and

Tammy again) for your great talks! I felt re-inspired.

I want to share two resources that help me a lot in my

attempts to speak up for animals.

“Effective Advocacy” is a talk by Bruce

Friedrich of PETA. He gives this talk at every conference we have, and

it has a very profound effect on the audience. It really changed my

mindset the first time I heard it, in fact, this is what first started me thinking about going to work for

PETA. I still go back and read it every once in a while, to remind me of

important tips when reaching out to new (non animal rights) people and to get

myself fired up again. It’s a great substitute for those times we

don’t have BAV speakers to get us going! The talk is available

online in a very easy to read format:

http://www.goveg.com/effectiveAdvocacy.asp

And next, to add to Suzanne’s great list of

Frequently Asked Questions that she handed out (examples of what people might

say to you when you’re leafleting, and what your response could be), I

would like to share the website for Animal Rights FAQ’s:

http://www.peta.org/about/faq.asp

That is the “general animal rights” page.

You’ll find links to more specific questions like fur, vivisection,

animals in entertainment if you want them.

I never go to a dinner with meat-eaters, or to a

protest, or to an interview, without first spending a few minutes browsing this

webpage, to refresh my memory re: Snappy Comebacks to Super Annoying

Questions. That way I go into a situation feeling confident and secure

that I can speak up for the animals in the best way possible. I

think the questions and comments we all hear can be very detrimental to animal

rights activists, especially new folks. You try to talk to your co-worker

and he asks you about broccoli screaming in pain. You’re at a KFC

protest and someone mentions your leather shoes or abortion. Your

brother-in-law stumps you at the family dinner by telling you it’s OK for

YOU to care about animals, but you can’t force your opinion on him.

There’s really not that many questions or

comments that people make. Once we get comfortable with the most often

heard questions—whether they be sincere or mean-spirited—it makes

any sort of activism so much easier, because that fear of being put on the spot

without a good answer is gone. There is a good answer to ALL those

questions.

And if I’m protesting or interviewing about a

specific animal rights topic, I also spend 5 minutes checking out the Factsheet

for that topic:

http://www.peta.org/mc/facts.asp

I know it seems like I’m really plugging PETA

here. And I can’t actually argue against that charge. What

can I say? I love PETA. J

Hope some of this helps you, or perhaps a new activist

you know.

Alex