Animal Justice Academy with Kimberly Carroll

[00:00:06] Mariann Sullivan: I am thrilled to have you here, because what you do is what we all want to get better at, that what we at Our Hen House would like to encourage people to do. I mean, you are teaching people how to be better activists, in a number of different aspects, but the thing I heard about you first was about Animal Justice Academy, but you also work as an activism coach and I want to get into both of those. I think they're probably connected, but not really exactly the same thing. And so we have a lot to talk about.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, can you describe what Animal Justice Academy is and what it does? Just the elevator speech?

[00:00:38] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, absolutely. Well, so Animal Justice Academy is a free training course, a community, and an action collective for those who care about animals. We currently have 10, 000 people enrolled in the course, which includes a couple of hundred teachers and speakers.

[00:00:56] Mariann Sullivan: Oh my god, 10,000 people? Are you joking!?!

[00:00:59] Kimberly Carroll: I'm not! You know what, Mariann? When we went to launch this in 2021, I was like, I said to my executive director at Animal Justice, I said, I'm going to get us a thousand people.

And she's like, no way. And by the time we started the program, we had 5, 000 people enrolled, like within two weeks. And it's just kept growing from there.

[00:01:17] Mariann Sullivan: I'm sorry I interrupted you, but I, I am shocked and overwhelmed. I want to hear so much more.

[00:01:23] Kimberly Carroll: And that's the thing. I think it was just so needed.

So let me tell you a little bit more about it. So, we have the base course, now we have a continuing education program where we do a lot of live online events. We have a couple of hundred teachers and speakers involved in this, names that you would know of and names that you haven't had the pleasure of knowing yet.

This is all part of my organization, Animal Justices, it's a little outreach of Animal Justice. So, Animal Justice is a leading national animal rights organization in Canada. And as a lawyer, you would know a little bit about this, but we lead the legal fight for animals in court, and in the political arena.

And a huge part of who we are as Animal Justice is educating public on animal issues through investigations, through campaigns, through media. And, Animal Justice Academy, we were born out of a problem, Mariann, that a lot of animal advocacy groups have, and that's like, We inspire people to care through whatever we do, through our podcasts, through our investigations, through our court cases. And then they're really hungry to do something, okay? Everybody wants to help. Everybody wants to volunteer. But most of us are organizations that are like bare bones, right? And we don't have the capacity to put thousands of people to work in any substantial way.

I mean, we can get them to do an action here or there, but in a substantial way. And I kept thinking, you know, what a shame this is. You know, every investigation we put out, we get so many requests from people. What can I do?

[00:02:48] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I totally hear you.

[00:02:50] Kimberly Carroll: You probably hear this all the time, right, at Our Hen House.

And so, I thought, what a shame not to tap into this valuable resource. So, the idea with Animal Justice Academy is to basically train animal lovers to become animal rights super soldiers, advocating for animals in their unique communities and in ways that like suit their personality and their skills and their resources and their experience. And then being able to really create this mass in the movement that this collective that can do more advanced advocacy.

We've got animal, AJ-ers, I call them, doing diplomacy to deal with lawmakers, you know, meeting with their reps, folks that have general social justice awareness that can help build a very inclusive movement. So I like to think of our AJ-ers and people who've done the program and do continue the work with us, that these are the people we call on when there's a more advanced action to be taken.

Both by Animal Justice and the movement at large. So we have lots of groups coming to us and saying, Hey, we could use a little bit of arm power on this, or we could use a little bit of help from people that can write a brief, or we need letters to the editor written for this. And that's when I'm like, Da da da da!

You know, Animal Justice Academy to the rescue! So I'm really proud of them.

[00:04:10] Mariann Sullivan: This is, totally brilliant. Totally brilliant. So the campaigns that you come up with, you're not the one necessarily who comes up with the campaigns. Of course, your relationship with Animal Justice, they are a campaign organization and you are part of that. So some of it comes from that.

And then other groups will just tell you about campaigns that your folks might want to get involved in, and then you will spread the word about that, but they'll use the tools that they learned from Animal Justice in order to be more effective? Is that right?

[00:04:38] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, that's all right. For example, you had John Lewis on your show a while ago and, They're Trying to Kill Us. We've done a couple of actions with John and the movie and trying to push that out a little bit more. Or, Mercy for Animals, we just did a little collaboration with them last week around one of the biggest chicken operations in Canada.

We're all, as organizations and groups in this movement, we might have different strategies, different approaches, different styles, but we're trying to help animals. And we just thought, like, it's really great to be able to do more collabs between organizations.

And I think that's happening more and more, but if we can really instill that into our grassroots activists and our beginning advocates and everything, I think that's, you know, super important.

So, the center point of the course, Mariann, is a six week self-paced core.

[00:05:26] Mariann Sullivan: Right. I really want to go into all of the different, because you have so many different topics, I don't even know how people cover all of this.

It's amazing. So I don't want to spend the whole interview on it, but I do want to go into some detail. Before I do that, I just want to ask you one question that I think is probably on a lot of people's minds who are listening.

How much of this is just for Canada?

[00:05:46] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, Well, about 60 percent of the AJ-ers, I'd say, are Canadian and the rest are international. So we try to keep everything, pretty general. Some of the campaigns, because they're Animal Justice campaigns, tend to be Canadian based, but a lot of the education, a lot of the live events, which we have three a month, they're basically pretty general. So, for example, our AJ Lunchtime Live that we have every second week, we'll do everything from talking about animal advocacy careers to plant based by default strategies, to meeting with your political reps. So that can apply to everybody.

[00:06:22] Mariann Sullivan: But what about the campaigns, like when organizations come to you, would most of that be necessarily Canada based? I can't see how it wouldn't be.

[00:06:29] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, we are also open, basically, we try to do many actions through AJA, like, we try to put out collective actions all the time, so we will do them from a variety of places that basically really fit into what we do well. So, for example, we were helping with social media, taking campaigns that abuse animals off of social media on an international stage.

We have worked around getting rid of prison farms, things like that. So, these can be more widespread campaigns.

[00:06:58] Mariann Sullivan: But I think my real point here is I think you need to have a chapter in every single country in the world. This has to happen so you would be able to allow people from other countries to join in these more general things and also have those terrific specific campaigns that you can kind of bring this army to bear for an organization that has a great campaign going and needs to get the activists and there you are sitting there. It's just very exciting work.

[00:07:23] Kimberly Carroll: We kind of have informal chapters because we have AJers from all over the world, so they'll bring a campaign from New Zealand and say, hey, folks, can everybody do a piece of this? Or, we have something, you know, that'll come from South America that they'll, you know, same thing.

So, but you're right. I mean, Mariann, I would love to see something...

[00:07:39] Mariann Sullivan: You need to take over the world. I'm sorry.

[00:07:43] Kimberly Carroll: I'm not sure if I'm the one, but this idea does.

[00:07:46] Mariann Sullivan: You seem like pretty energetic, Kimberly. I think that you're the person. All right. I interrupted you, actually. We were going to go into actually a little bit more of a description of what the six week course is about. Can you get back to that question now?

[00:08:00] Kimberly Carroll: Absolutely. Sure. So, the center point of Animal Justice Academy is both the six week self paced course, which has 80 modules in it, and then our continuing education events, which we have, like I said, about three a month, and it's topics from political engagement to building media skills, giving inside knowledge on animal use practices and industries. Like for example, I've had a lot of veteran animal advocates come and do the first week of the program, which is all about this, and go, I had no idea about all of these different facets and just to be able to give people the confidence to know what they're talking about whenever they advocate. Whether you're advocating at work, whether you're advocating at city council, or whether you're advocating with your brother, it's important that you have the confidence to know what you're saying is true, right?

[00:08:47] Mariann Sullivan: Because they will totally call you on it. I mean, especially the industry. Well, you know, you don't know anything about, as if the only people who can advocate for animal rights are people who work in the industry? That makes sense.

[00:08:57] Kimberly Carroll: And they just assume because you're an animal advocate that you couldn't possibly have been to a farm ever in your life.

[00:09:03] Mariann Sullivan: Right.

[00:09:04] Kimberly Carroll: So, yeah. We all know that when you're an animal advocate, you are putting yourself in front of the firing squad and you need to be ready. You need to be able to deflect, deflect, deflect, and you also need to be able to fire some, some really powerful volleys back, in a loving way.

I will, I will, I will caveat that...

[00:09:19] Mariann Sullivan: I'm I'm not gonna promise the loving part. I'm sorry.

[00:09:23] Kimberly Carroll: We aspire to that.

[00:09:24] Mariann Sullivan: Polite, maybe.

[00:09:26] Kimberly Carroll: That's right, Polite, courteous, and respectful.

[00:09:28] Mariann Sullivan: Well, you're in Canada too.

[00:09:29] Kimberly Carroll: Well, we're not exactly the shining examples of courteousness.

[00:09:34] Mariann Sullivan: I have met rude Canadians, I'm going to admit it.

They're few and far between, but they definitely exist.

[00:09:38] Kimberly Carroll: They do, they do.

We also do, you know, vegan education. Like, a lot of folks that come into AJA, they're not veg at all. They're coming in because they're dog rescuers or they work on horse issues, things like that. And so just being immersed in the sort of energy of this group that, again, is positive. And I'd like to talk a little bit more about how we've kept it positive, but we talk a lot about vegan education. We just talk about veganism as the thing we all aspire to. We talk about pressure campaigns. We teach about effective communications. We do a lot of work around intersectionality. We are very much based on, you know, this idea of overlapping oppressions and the way that we need to open up the umbrella of this movement is to make this movement a kinder, better place for people from diverse backgrounds.

One of my favorite things is, we teach resilience building. So we teach all of those things that I do in my work as a coach for change makers, all the things to keep activists effective and enduring. Okay? To avoid burnout because that's, you know, that's a huge thing.

And, we can talk about that in a second, but...

[00:10:43] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, no, I definitely want to talk about that. But, but I do want to get a, I'm just going to list the, I guess these are the modules, the six modules, just so people know. Animal advocacy the foundations, advocacy in our communities, engaging in the political system, exposing animal exploitation, expanding your influence and engaging media, empowering yourself as an advocate.

I mean, it's such a really important and capacious list of skills that we all need. And, is it primarily skill building? Do you do examples of various campaigns? Is it all over the lot? Like, let's say I sat down and decided to take the first module. What would I expect to see?

[00:11:24] Kimberly Carroll: Each week is quite different. And so the first module that you're going to see is probably going to be around farm animal industry and really the low down on all aspects taught by an undercover investigator.

Then, you know, the second week where we're talking about being in communities, very different modules. We have Melanie Joy talking about how do you speak and navigate your relationships with your close ones when you're an animal advocate. And then other modules around how do you weave your activism or your animal advocacy into the communities that you're already engaged in, your church groups, your school, your workplace, your sports clubs, you know, sort of new ways of thinking about advocacy.

Because frankly, I think this is a big problem, Mariann, is a lot of people think of the movement as, I, Oh, I have to go and hold a sign and yell at people. And even though protests can be incredibly powerful, it's one tiny little piece of the advocacy puzzle.

[00:12:18] Mariann Sullivan: And not always the best one in a certain situation.

[00:12:21] Kimberly Carroll: I mean, I've been a part of a lot of protests...

[00:12:23] Mariann Sullivan: Me too, I'm all for them I'm not against them, but you know you want to use your time most wisely and if you don't have a large group, you're not gonna have a big impact and it's gonna be painful. There might be better ways to spend your time.

[00:12:34] Kimberly Carroll: Right, that's right, exactly. So, we really try to teach, how do you start thinking more about who you are, what your skills and talents are, what your passions are, what your resources are, how you like to work, and use that to start framing how you become an animal advocate. So like, for example, I say, if somebody is out there doing outreach at a university and I know that they're a great graphic designer, I am going to take those cards and I'm going to hit them with them! You know, like there are a lot of skills that people don't think of that we need in this movement.

[00:13:09] Mariann Sullivan: But also people need that structure, you know, people might have skills, and know that they have those skills, but they don't know how to put them to work because as you mentioned in the beginning, the organizations don't have sufficient structure for taking the grassroots and educating them and getting them on board.

So even though they have those skills, they know they could use those skills, the structure for putting them to use doesn't exist. And I think that's what you are creating.

[00:13:33] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, and also trying to create some organizers, right? We have a lot of followers. We don't have enough organizers in this movement. So that's why a lot of our events do, like you said, feature a lot of campaigns that are working, a lot of organizations that are working, a lot of strategies that are working, some gaps in the movement that desperately need somebody to step up in.

So we're always kind of looking at that and going, what do you think of this? Could this work for you? Can you jump in? Who's interested? And so, it's creating a lot of organizers, which I love, and that's a piece that I'm wanting to build on even more. So, I mean, each of our live sort of Zoom events attract like a hundred to 400 people.

So like live, that's pretty darn good in this movement. And, so we have people really engaged, really hungry to do effective work.

[00:14:18] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. So, what we've been talking about so far is the six week course and that's free right? Everybody can just get on and take that course. And it's incredibly elaborate. And as you said, there will be many people you will have heard of.

[00:14:31] Kimberly Carroll: Mm hmm.

[00:14:32] Mariann Sullivan: And, but then after that, as you were just referencing, you have these live online programs, kind of like a continuing education, that would be the way of thinking about it.

So tell us a little bit about those.

[00:14:42] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, so, those are the, we have a bi weekly Animal Justice Academy Lunchtime Live. So those happen on Thursdays at noon Eastern Time. We have just really, like I said, interesting campaigns. People who are doing interesting things. Some are pretty famous. Some are very new.

When Apex first came out, we were right all over that. We talk about strategies around food procurement. We have had panel sessions around how to decolonize the animal rights movement, you know, things like that. So we work on a lot of different aspects, strategy, habits, and also with our lunchtime lives, I do a lot of coaching sessions. So I will do workshops around how to deal with pain as an animal advocate or, how to get your productivity up, things like that.

So, you basically just go to our YouTube channel, and you can take part in a lot of different sessions that have happened. It's actually quite a goldmine of a resource, the Animal Justice Academy YouTube. And the other thing that we do to keep this community thriving is, we obviously regularly communicate by email, but we also have a private Facebook group that I think is one of the sweetest places for animal advocacy online right now, because we've tried really hard to make it so.

So, Mariann, that was one of my personal projects with Animal Justice Academy. I wanted to see if we could build a supportive and respectful online community, because as we know, online animal advocacy forums don't have a particularly good reputation, right?

[00:16:15] Mariann Sullivan: No, I mean, online, everything is problematic. But you know, animal rights advocates tend to be passionate. And infighting is is a problem in any movement. And, and Definitely in this movement. And I took this quote, you talk about creating a supportive and respectful AR community that welcomes debate, but within the spirit of bridge building.

Now that sounds great, but unpack it a little bit. What exactly do you mean by that? And how do you make that happen? Because people, oh, what's the expression? The small differences, the narcissism of small differences. Like people get so focused on how they differ from each other rather than seeing that we actually agree on a lot of the big things.

How do you make that happen?

[00:16:55] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, this sort of for me comes from this idea of wanting a vegan world as opposed to a vegan club. Yeah, so, you know, the sniping, the black and white thinking, the blaming and the shaming and the name calling, it just causes so much alienation. I've heard of so many people just leave the movement just because of online stuff that they're encountering.

So this idea of, you know, us community bridge building, when we started, as I mentioned, we had 5, 000 people signed up, and I knew by looking at the list, we had a long time hardcore animal activist, we had complete newbies that were meat eating newbies from around the world, and I knew that there was just potential for all sorts of roiling conflict.

And so I was like, okay, we're going to do this. It's not going to be easy task, but let's make it a simple one. So how we set it up is, we made the ground rules, and we put those front and center. The very first module you'll see in the Academy is me talking about the spirit of this program.

And the ground rules were everywhere. Expectations were front and center. And it was just a decision that in the beginning we would put time towards mediating, which again, we don't have the resources in this movement to do a lot of mediating. But when you mediate Oh, it is magical. I've been in the middle of a lot of mediating situations, and I've done a lot of mediating and I tell you it doesn't take a lot to make a huge difference.

So my moderators, myself, we were very fast to nip things in the bud, which really wasn't about slapping people's hands, but it was about demonstrating how one goes about having respectful discourse. So you know, making both sides feel understood in order to keep the shame wall down.

You know, that shame wall, as soon as somebody's told you're doing something wrong or you shouldn't be doing that, that shame wall goes up.

[00:18:41] Mariann Sullivan: The difference between the way people communicate online, and what they're willing to say to people. And what happens to all of us when we go online, we turn into like different people and not better ones, that's for sure. Like you bring people together, like, they're just a lot nicer.

[00:18:58] Kimberly Carroll: Yes, absolutely.

[00:18:59] Mariann Sullivan: 9 times out of 10.

[00:19:00] Kimberly Carroll: That's an important piece to remember, you know, I talk a lot about how to keep your sanity on social media and, and one of the things is imagine that person every time you say a comment, that person's in front of you, that person is flesh and blood, they have a universe of wants and likes, and pains and joys inside of them, and let's conduct ourselves accordingly.

So, you know, really getting in there and, demonstrating in our own reactions what bridge building looks like, lots of team language, lots of sort of love and understanding. I remember sort of in the height of this, I'd been working on it and there was one particular fella in there who'd been a long time activist. He did a lot, some investigative work, I think he was a fox hunt saboteur, and he just kept on going after the people that were new that said, I'm not vegan yet, but you know, blah, blah, blah.

And he's like, why aren't you? What's wrong with you? Why would, can you, you know, how? And just attacking them, and so every time I'd have to go and I'd have to mediate. And so finally, one time, he went after somebody after we just had a sort of side conversation and I direct messaged him and I said, what's going on?

I know you care for animals. I know you're smart. I know you know this isn't the way to do it. What's going on? And he wrote me back and he said, I had an investigation today and it devastated me and I'm I'm just, not, you know, I just couldn't, You know, and I said, so say that.

Share that. Share from your experience. Share why you are the way you are, okay? And lo and behold, he got back on there and he said to this person, You know what, I understand that it's hard, you know, going vegan. Because she was complaining that she was having trouble going vegan, it was hard. And he says, I understand, and you know what, I'll just say from my place that it was one of the best things I could have ever done.

It made me able to, look at animals and not feel guilt and, feel more clear to do this work. And he says, and if you need anything, I'm here. And oh my God, I just like, I was crying. I'm like, okay, they get, they're getting it. They're getting it. And, and then that person had such a great reaction.

And within the next week she was vegan.

[00:21:05] Mariann Sullivan: You know, that really shows, like, how deeply the trauma had affected him, that it you know, it was overwhelming him. But we're all dealing with that a little bit. I mean, we're not undercover investigators. I'm not pretending I've gone through anything like that. But every animal advocate does deal with trauma.

And, you know, I'm sure that has something to do with why we get so impatient with people who are just like, you know, Oh, it just doesn't taste exactly like milk. It's frustrating.

Tell us a little bit, and maybe this is going to overlap a little bit because, you know, I said we were going to start off talking about the Animal Justice Academy, but you also do coaching, individual coaching activists.

And I am sure that Grief has a lot to do with people being effective activists. So tell us a bit about that coaching and also about how you deal with people's grief.

[00:21:58] Kimberly Carroll: Mm, yeah, for sure. Well, I work part time in the movement, I do a lot of pro bono work, I do some contract work, but my bread and vegan butter is as a coach for changemakers because, Mariann, I just knew, even every time, I was like okay well, I should take this campaign's job, or I should lead this organization or whatever.

But I have always felt this incredible pull around helping the activists because there is an epidemic of burnout and compassion, fatigue and grief that is felling our movement, not just our movement, social justice movements in general. Actually, this is new to me, so it's still staggering for me, but 50% of activists burn out and quit the movement, okay? Because of mental and physical drain, 50%. Now, that is a huge turnover. If this was a corporation, that would be considered a massive emergency. And in our movement, it's just considered par for the course. And we can't be thinking that way anymore.

[00:22:57] Mariann Sullivan: Well, also, you know, I think a little piece of it too, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but a piece of it, particularly in our movement, is that we're all allies. So for everybody who's in this movement, they've decided to be in, they don't have to be in the movement.

[00:23:12] Kimberly Carroll: No it's not their life and death.

[00:23:14] Mariann Sullivan: It's not.

So they've made a decision. So undoing that decision, for some people it's easier than in other movements, where you're actually the victim of the oppression.

[00:23:23] Kimberly Carroll: Well, and, there are so many pieces that make being an advocate in movements where you are the victim so much harder, but then there are also...

[00:23:31] Mariann Sullivan: Of course! I'm not suggesting it would be good to be the victim.

I'm just saying from a coaching point of view, it's different.

[00:23:38] Kimberly Carroll: And also there are a lot of pieces of being an animal advocate that aren't in other social justice movements, like, first of all, the sheer scale of what we're dealing with in animal advocacy. The, the numbers that are unfathomable, the degree of suffering that is just horrific.

[00:23:56] Mariann Sullivan: And the power. The power of these industries.

[00:23:59] Kimberly Carroll: Absolutely. I do think that people that are in, in animal activism have a particularly high empathy level, to again, be able to sacrifice a lot of their life and their normalcy to help someone outside of themselves, and one of a different species, that most of the population cannot relate to in the same way.

And so I think we're drawn to this movement because we are sensitive and attuned to the most powerless of the world. And then what happens? We're exposed 24 7 to the extreme suffering. It's kind of a cruel joke, right? Then there is the whole idea of there's so few of us working in animal rights compared to other social justice movements.

So the responsibility feels much heavier and that results in much higher rates of sacrifice and sort of martyr complex. We're also going against the status quo at every turn. We get pushback from more than 90 percent of the population who aren't veg or veg friendly. Including our inner circles, right?

Then again, this isn't any different than other social justice movements, but there's the infighting and marginalization within our own movement. So that's why I decided I had to dedicate a huge part of my life to helping activists with the inner healing and the resilience building habits, and also just really smart strategies, to make them more powerful and more long lasting.

[00:25:18] Mariann Sullivan: This is individual coaching, right? That people can actually hire you to do.

[00:25:22] Kimberly Carroll: Yes, I do individual coaching, but I also do a lot of group coaching. So I have free resources. Every second week I do something I call the Changemaker Sessions. So it's a free workshop every two weeks. We get together as a community and we concentrate on, like I said, all of those pieces that are going to make us feel more empowered to be more effective and enduring as advocates.

[00:25:41] Mariann Sullivan: And just to make sure that people understand, this is different from the Animal Justice Academy. And this might be for advocates in other movements as well. It's on how to be an activist.

[00:25:52] Kimberly Carroll: It's on how to not lose your shit being an activist is basically the shorthand, right? It's not necessarily about the nuts and bolts of theory of change and everything. It's about how do you best survive this and thrive in order for you to be more effective.

And so, we talk about everything from boundaries, how to process pain properly, what kind of daily practices you need, how to navigate conflict, how to find courage. I do the sort of building up and then organizations like Animal Justice Academy or other organizations out there that do campaigns, they're the ones who can give you the campaigns to do. I make you strong for the campaigns. I make you strong for the work. That's what I do.

[00:26:35] Mariann Sullivan: You mentioned burnout before, I've never liked the term burnout because it just sounds so final Like once you've burned out you're gone and I don't like that way of looking at it, but we all know it's something. Sometimes it's just too much and how do you suggest people avoid just stopping when it becomes too much?

What are the steps you can take when you feel like you just want to escape?

[00:26:54] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, it's such a natural feeling, I mean a lot of people who sign up to be animal advocates, they don't know what they're signing up for, it can be really, a really hard slog, and, you know, just to think about 92 billion land animals alone being killed every year. You know, and then trillions of marine life. I mean, even just that thoughtm, there's so many reasons that we burn out, but, I mean, the very first thing that I always recommend is we need to have boundaries, we need to create space for something else in our life. And that's really hard for animal advocates to hear, because there's a lot of guilt tied up in this.

You know, as I mentioned, we have this sort of staggering sense of responsibility, and this has bred a culture of sacrifice in the animal rights movement. There's a lot of guilt if you're not sacrificing everything, but that's a fatal flaw. I mean, if we were to sacrifice everything, we don't survive.

And then what good are we to anybody? Right? So, it's about putting boundaries around your activism, whether that is putting a cap on the number of hours you work each week, whether it's getting really deliberate about the campaign or the issue that you're working on, and then being able to say no to the other things, so that you can do what you're deliberate about well. It's about working according to some of your strongest skills, like doing your most impactful work instead of scattering your attentions into all these little places where you don't really have much to bring. It's about learning to put boundaries around graphic materials.

[00:28:27] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:28:29] Kimberly Carroll: I mean, if you're on social media, they're coming at you all the time. And what do people do if they watch them in the middle of their day with no grounding, with no space to process, they're watching some of the most horrific video that any humans have experienced.

[00:28:42] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, there are very few people who once they get started, feel like their commitment is slipping because they don't think it's bad enough. If you think it's not bad enough for you to bother, then watch those videos. But chances are, that's not what the issue is. We all, once you've seen them once, you know.

[00:28:57] Kimberly Carroll: Yeah, sometimes when I get a little complacent, Mariann, it's important for me to watch things because yeah, I can get a little complacent, and I also help produce undercover videos. So I am exposed to it on a regular basis. But what I've learned about this is if you are going to watch just for education's sake, or because it's part of your work, you need to create a space to do that.

Like, if you need to collect links, like you see, okay, I need to watch that. Don't do it now. Collect the links, put them in a list, and once a week, or if you have to do a lot, once a day, watch when you have a chance, when there's not a bunch of things coming at you, when you can take some deep breaths, you can ground, and afterwards you can have a good cry, or you can write it out, you know, and just have a way to process it. That's a really important piece.

[00:29:43] Mariann Sullivan: In addition to dealing with grief, though, I assume a lot of what you do in the coaching is on a more positive level. Ways that people can, because people, as we were talking about before, people just, you know, are spinning. They're so upset. They want to do stuff. They don't know what it is.

So what are some suggestions for how to get involved and how to be effective?

[00:30:02] Kimberly Carroll: Well, I would say one of the things that is important to do is a little audit of a few different factors. There's five different factors that I like to look at. And this is just really to be able to determine where you are gonna be able to make the most impact and probably have the most longevity.

So you wanna look at your passion, okay? What parts of the movement, what parts of animal practices, what animals, whatever, what really like call to you. Okay, that's something to consider. You also need to consider your assets. Okay, what can you bring to the table? Do you have accounting skills?

Are you a good speaker? Are you really great with details? Do you like to be behind the scenes and organized? Are you really great with charming people? Like, do you have an education degree? All these things, figuring out, and also, do you come from a place and experiences that are fairly unique to the movement, that we need to hear more of?

Making a little bit of an audit of everything that you can bring to the table is another thing for you to do. Another piece would be then to look at the ways that you like to work? Do you like to work in collaboration? Do you like to work on your own? Do you like to take directions?

Do you like to start something? Anyway, there's a lot of different pieces, and I actually, if you go onto one of my Changemaker sessions recently, you can do a process that's around that, a longer process. And what you do is, you kind of whittle it down and you figure out, okay, this is my best use of my time.

Is there a campaign that I can apply this to? Is there an idea that I can start? Or is there anybody that I can collaborate with this? Is there an organization that I can go to and offer this very particular service to? If you want to work with an organization, I always recommend that you figure out what you can do for them.

We don't have time to figure out how to use you, right? So I love it when people come to me and they say, Hey, I'm so and so, I have this education, I've had this experience, I see this gap and I would love to do this for you. You know, that's something I'm going to have time to look at and maybe could happen, right?

So that's what needs to happen if you want to work with an organization, but there's so many solo ways to work as well. It's just about having consistency. For example, if you're, if your thing is writing, write yourself a letter to the editor every week. If you get a letter published every month, that's huge.

That reaches a huge amount of people. So that's sort of in tactical forms, the way to do it, but in my line of work also, what I really try to put forward is, you need to have practices in your life that allow you to process all of the shit that you have to go through in order to be able to have space to grow yourself into that bright light that is going to inspire other people to listen, to trust you, to follow, to be influenced by you.

We need every activist to have the power to be able to influence, whether it's in a tiny one on one conversation or whether it's through your Instagram account. So in order to be able to be that light, you need to take care of yourself, you need to sort out your pain and your grief, and you need to build the pieces in your life that bring you safety and joy.

[00:33:17] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that's for sure. Too many people in this movement have forgotten about joy because it's kind of hard to find it. But you know, it's absolutely crucial Well, all of these are unbelievably good pieces of advice.

Before I let you go, I want to go back over the resources that are available, because I want to make sure everybody understands there are all of the Animal Justice Academy resources are free.

Then you yourself in your coaching, business offer some resources for free, and then other resources for which people can hire you. I just want you to sort that all out, so the people who do want to pursue finding out more, doing more, will know where to go.

[00:33:56] Kimberly Carroll: So, if you're interested in being a part of Animal Justice Academy, you go to AnimalJusticeAcademy. com and all you do is you sign up and we will give you instant access to the course, you'll get first notice of events, you'll get notice of the collective actions, easy, easy, easy. If you want to be part of the Changemaker Sessions, you can find that on my website, I'm sure we can have a link right Mariann?

So, but everything can be found on my website, KimberlyCarroll. com and that's completely free and it's a really beautiful community that we're building and I love having a community of mixed social justice people, especially us as animal advocates. I am involved in lots of social justice movements.

Animal advocacy is the one that is dearest to my heart. But I think it's so important that we, start building more bridges between social justice movements.

[00:34:47] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, that is a great way to people who are open to arguments about fairness and caring.

[00:34:52] Kimberly Carroll: Who are already compassionate!

[00:34:54] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah.

[00:34:54] Kimberly Carroll: And then I also have a free course. It's a five part video course called Power Tools for Changemakers.

And so a lot of the things we just started to touch on, like boundaries, like pain processing techniques, like having a daily habit to keep you resilient, productivity tips, that's all in that course. And again, that's on my website. It's totally free and it'll just give you a good taste.

I think it's a really nice little way to get that kicked off in your life.

[00:35:20] Mariann Sullivan: So many resources. And it's not just for Canadians!

[00:35:23] Kimberly Carroll: No, no, my Changemaker stuff, people from all over the world take part in that. There's nothing geographically specific about that. And Animal justice Academy too. We, again, people from all over the world.

[00:35:32] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, there's some things that are Canadian specific, but plenty that aren't in the Animal Justice Academy as well.

[00:35:36] Kimberly Carroll: That's right. And when it comes to my work with Changemakers, with the Changemaker sessions, I'm all about sort of that deep inner work, but I'm also about how do we tangibly do things? Like, I'm all about tools and techniques, not just this sort of ambiguous, like, love yourself or make sure you're doing self care.

Like, I'm like, what does loving yourself mean? What does, how do you do self care? This is all about the journey I've been on, Mariann, myself over the last like 25 years and like things that I wish at the beginning of my activism journey, I had known and I was steeped in. And so I'm really just trying to bring it all out, and do my part.

[00:36:14] Mariann Sullivan: Well, that is great, Kimberly. You're doing amazing amazing work. And thanks so much for sharing it with us today.

[00:36:20] Kimberly Carroll: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you, everybody that's here. Thank you for the work that you do in this world. It's so important and I so appreciate you.

[00:36:27] Mariann Sullivan: Boy, ain't that the truth.