|
Get Active for Animals
Interested in becoming active in the Perth animal rights community?
Animal Rights Advocates Inc. (ARA) is running a series of three workshops for abolitionist animal rights activists from 2-5pm on the following dates:
- Workshop 1 - Sunday, 8 February
- Workshop 2 - Sunday, 22 February
- Workshop 3 - Sunday, 22 March
The workshops will be held at Earthwise Centre at 315 Bagot Road, Subiaco.
These workshops will provide the knowledge and begin to build the skills necessary to get active with ARA.
As an abolitionist organisation, ARA will be running the workshops based on this perspective under the assumption that participants are aligned to an abolitionist approach. Therefore we will not be discussing welfare/reform strategies. For more information on this see ARA's guiding principles and Gary L. Francione's blog at http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/
Workshop 1
An overview of the content of the first workshop:
Participants received the first three issues of ARA's activist reader series containing a selection of articles exploring the workshop topics in more detail:
View the Workshop Overview / Introduction to ARA / Activities presentation which covered an introduction to ARA and the broader animal activist movement in WA and Australia:
View the Abolitionist Theory of Animal Rights presentation which provided an overview of the main aspects of abolitionist animal rights philosophy:
Two activists also shared their experience in nonviolent direct action, affinity groups, prefigurative politics and cultural change.
The group brainstormed a long list of possible actions and then formed affinity groups to work on a common action in the future.
Workshop 2
An overview of the content of the second workshop:
Participants received the fourth issue in our activist reader series which covers communication and planning animal rights actions in more detail:
The workshop began with a discussion of consensus decisionmaking, organising without leaders and power within affinity groups. For more detail check out our Affinity Groups Reader and On Conflict and Consensus: A Handbook on Formal Consensus Decisionmaking.
There was then a session on communication. View the Delivering Your Message presentation:
Participants practiced responding to various FAQs in small groups.
Dave Cutbush from RTRfm gave some tips for working with the media.
The rest of the session involved participants working in their affinity groups on planning their actions using a worksheet which can be found near the end of the Animal Rights Activism Reader.
Workshop 3
An overview of the content of the third workshop:
Participants received the fifth activist reader which covers strategies for building alliances with other social justice movements as well as challenging oppression within the animal rights movement such as sexism, racism and heterosexism:
The third and final session involved a debrief and reflection on group actions, as well as planning further ARA activites.
To obtain more information or to RSVP send an email to info@ara.org.au
|
