Animal Policy Alliance with Gabriel Wildgen

[00:00:10] Mariann Sullivan: I love interviewing people who are listeners. So that really thrills me, really thrills me. Partially because, you know, in looking into the work that you're doing and it's really just starting out,. so I was not familiar with it before. I'm super, super excited about it. And I'm sure everybody listening will be too.

Can you just tell us a bit about what the Animal Policy Alliance is and basically how it came into being or how it's coming into being?

[00:00:35] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, and thank you. Thanks so much. I'm really excited about it as well. So the Animal Policy Alliance is a project at the Humane League, where I'm the Director of Public Policy, and it's an alliance of organizations working across the United States, mostly at the local and state level, to change policy for animals.

And the criteria for membership is that they be working for animals as one of their core missions, and that they be willing to work on farmed animal issues as part of that. And that they have a growth and learning mindset so that they can learn from one another. So, we're bringing these organizations together so they can build community with one another, learn from what each other are doing, also, they can benefit from expert staff here at the Humane League's public policy team who can help them to analyze legislation and draft legislation. And we also, when funding is available, we provide funds to these organizations when they apply for grants, to help them to mount campaigns that they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to mount, to help animals raised for food or fur.

We also help them grow capacity in that manner as well, and help them to just share different advice for how best to grow a small organization at the local and state level. This came to being partly through learning from the Humane League's success with the Open Wing Alliance, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with, but just to briefly mention, it's been this fantastic alliance that The Humane League started in 2015. That's a global alliance, now it's up to 100 organizations in 74 countries across six continents.

And they are working to improve the lives of hens, mainly through corporate pressure campaigns. So, through their efforts, we've gotten up to 2, 500 or so companies that have committed to going cage free with their eggs in their supply chains and bringing together organizations at the global level in that way has been so successful.

And so taking a lesson from that, that's partly what informed the formulation of the Animal Policy Alliance. But we also took a different spin on it and we're not necessarily having everyone working on the same campaigns and more focused on helping the organizations grow and work on whatever campaigns are going to be most effective within their own communities and states because it's such a big diverse country with so many different things being possible and not possible depending on where you're working.

[00:02:52] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, it's so interesting. And I want to dig in a little further into virtually everything you said, because this seems like really crucial work. I feel like there's always been something of a disconnect between small grassroots work and major organizations. I mean, not anybody's fault.

I'm perfectly willing to attribute fault where I feel it is, but they just sort of have been always working at a different levels and not working together. And is that one of your thoughts, that you want to improve that kind of synergy?

[00:03:22] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, I think that's right. That's right. We've seen a lot of coordination among the larger national level groups, and that's getting better and better, I would say, every day these days. And it has been, depending on which state, which city you're talking about, what period of time, there has often been some good coordination with the more local grassroots organizations.

But a lot of the time that communication and coordination hasn't been nearly as strong as it could be, or sometimes there's been a total communication breakdown or just lack of communication. And also a lack of paying attention to the fact, like, from the national organization's perspective sometimes, that these local groups that are really entrenched in their communities, that have the relationships in their communities, both with the grassroots supporters and with the legislators that they're trying to influence.

They often have their ear to the ground in a way that national organizations can't always on their own. So at the Animal Policy Alliance, and at the Open Wing Alliance, same thing, we're really trying to value that there's this local expertise, and we can trust the local organizations, the grassroots organizations, to often have some of the best important information, and often we can help them by helping them lead from behind.

[00:04:28] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And not only do the smaller, more local groups have that information, perhaps, and their ear to the ground, but they have more of an opportunity to gather, I mean, they're there. So, if there is that ability, and if they are supported in that, they can get even better at doing that kind of work that really only local groups can do. Of really, you know, getting to know the legislators and all of that.

So it just seems to be really powerful. There's only so much a major organization can do, even if they have some local chapters. All right. There's still so many things I want to talk about, and I really want to talk about, like, some similarities and differences between the Open Wing Alliance and this. There's a lot to talk about, because I think another thing, I'm just warning you, that I want to talk about is like, the fundamental issue that has always been so difficult in grassroots advocacy for farmed animals, and that's like, is this welfare, is this vegan? And how do we negotiate that and all get together to work on the same positive thing, in a way that works for all of us?

And I think that you seem to be trying to thread that needle and I find that extremely exciting. But before we get to like, those more you should excuse the expression, meaty topics, just tell us what kind of groups are eligible to be members? Give us an idea of the range of local groups still in existence, and that might come into existence because this exists, that you would want as your members.

[00:05:48] Gabriel Wildgen: Sure, yeah, thanks for bringing that up. And soon, more organizations are going to be able to apply for membership once we have our website launch, which should be around the same time this podcast is coming out. So, AnimalPolicyAlliance. org The criteria for membership, is mainly, we're looking for a few things, that the groups be working at the local and state level, for the most part, or at least they be a smaller grassroots organization. So we do have one member organization, or two, like, Vegan Activist Alliance and Chili's on Wheels, who do operate in more than one part of the country.

But they're still a smaller and in growth phase, and do also work at the state level and local level on policy work. But generally, we're looking for smaller organizations that really need help with growth. And there's often only a few staff members, sometimes they're only volunteer, that could benefit from having that community with other people that are in similar situations, trying to make things happen in their communities.

So larger organizations, like the Humane Society and Mercy for Animals, wouldn't qualify as membership, although we do work closely with them in partnership in other ways. And also that the groups have animals be part of their core focus. Some of these groups might also have food policy change as part of their core focus.

We want them to be motivated to be helping animals at the end of the day as part of their core mission and that they be willing to work on animals raised for food. we want to make sure that farmed animals are part of their objectives when they're coming on board with us.

[00:07:11] Mariann Sullivan: They don't have to be just for farmed animals. It can be like a companion animal group that also does some vegan advocacy or something like that.

[00:07:17] Gabriel Wildgen: Exactly. And a lot of our members fit that bill, that work on all kinds of animal issues. And I think it's really smart to be working on lots of animal issues, even if the number one thing you care about, like me, and I think like you, is farmed animals. You can build a lot of momentum by getting wins for animals, for companion animals, for wildlife. You can bring more people into your organization, into your movement, and legislators can get to know you through some of those lower hanging fruit type issues, which of course are valuable to get wins on their own, because that's still going to be helping animals, even if it's not at the same scale as farmed animals.

But really just thinking about it as a way to build momentum by going after those lower hanging fruit issues can be helpful, but it's important to not lose sight of the importance of focusing on farmed animals too. And that's what we're trying to do is help organizations focus more on farmed animals while also doing those other issues, if they're working on those other issues.

We've got a wide range of groups in a wide range of jurisdictions, states, and cities around the country, and they're facing very different challenges. So we've got some groups, you know, in Texas, in Missouri, for instance, that the best they can do right now for farmed animals is mainly to fight back and push back some of the worst bills that are being introduced in those legislatures.

And then there's other groups, like in Pittsburgh, Humane Action Pittsburgh, who just passed the foie gras ban in their city, following on what voters for animal rights did in New York City with the foie gras ban, and the foie gras bans we've seen in California. So we've got groups that some of them look like they're more of a companion animal group if you go to their website, but still work on farmed animals as well.

And we've got other groups, for instance, called the Vegan Activist Alliance, who are very obviously focused on farmed animals and plant based issues.

[00:08:55] Mariann Sullivan: And the kind of work that you're mostly looking for is policy work? Is that like specifically legislative work? Lobbying? You know, lobbying in the broad sense, whatever it takes to get legislation passed, education and all of that. Is that the kind of work that you're looking at for people to be doing that you're interested in supporting or is it a wider range than that?

[00:09:14] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, exactly. I mean, a lot of our member groups do work on a wide array of interventions, just like we do at the Humane League. But to be part of the Animal Policy Alliance, we are focused on policy. So we're looking for groups that are working on policy solutions, like you're talking about, getting laws passed for farmed animals, as well as defending against bad laws that are being introduced that can make things worse for farmed animals.

So that's where we're focused, in terms of the member groups working on policy, but they need not be only working on policy. They can also be working on corporate campaigns and public education. And to the extent that those things tie in with policy goals, we can help them with those strategies as well.

[00:09:50] Mariann Sullivan: Okay. Okay. So, you're looking for groups already in existence or for startups? It doesn't matter, right?

[00:09:56] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, exactly. Some of the organizations that are members have been around for 30, 40 years. Some of them just got started a couple of years ago. As we grow, right now we've got 15 member organizations in 11 states, but our goal is to have at least one member organization in every state in the country, in the United States, and ideally by 2030 is our target.

And to get there, we're going to want to recruit more organizations that fit the criteria I mentioned, but we're also going to be looking for new leaders in their communities who want to start organizations and helping them to get those organizations off the ground, both with the help of expertise we have in house at The Humane League and from learning from the other members that are more well established within the Alliance.

So a lot of this is really about providing the connections, mentorship, resources, not just provided by our team, but from our members as well.

[00:10:45] Mariann Sullivan: And money as well, too. You're going to be able to provide funding, and I think it said somewhere, perhaps connecting groups to other funding opportunities. Is that right?

[00:10:54] Gabriel Wildgen: That's right. So we already have gone through two rounds of grant funding. We've been operating somewhat in stealth mode for the past two years, and we've done two rounds of grants.

[00:11:04] Mariann Sullivan: I certainly never heard of you. So

[00:11:06] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, this is kind of a part of our public coming out into the world is through this podcast, I think. It happily coincides around the same time our website is going to be launched.

And yes, we've done two rounds of granting and we talk with a lot of donors in our movement. And when we do, we talk to them about opportunities to fund these local groups directly, if they prefer. And also on our website, we're going to have resources just for member organizations, which include all kinds of links to external funding sources, as well as we do sometimes provide advice on how best to apply for certain grants.

If we happen to know about the granting organization doing it, we can provide some advice on how best to make that application. And we've had some success doing that as well so far.

[00:11:45] Mariann Sullivan: That's great. That's really great. Because money is better than anything. Well, you know what I mean. It's extremely, extremely useful in accomplishing your goals.

[00:11:53] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, we do hope the other resources and expertise and all this community building is equally, if not more impactful in the long run. But of course, funding is so, so crucial to get this work done in the long term.

[00:12:03] Mariann Sullivan: So, one of the things that your Theory of Change, you shared a document with me that laid out a pretty elaborate theory of change, and one of the things that it mentions as something that you provide to your member groups is training on how to conduct public policy advocacy. So, can you just tell us, how do you conduct public policy advocacy?

What does that training teach people?

[00:12:25] Gabriel Wildgen: So part of that theory of change are things we're going to be doing and not everything we've started doing already. So we haven't started doing trainings. I mean, a lot of the member groups have like deep expertise within them. So depending on the subject matter, our members could be the trainers, not the trainees.

So when we talk about training, it's going to be more for groups and individuals that are newer to public policy advocacy. Some of that could just be really thinking through and talking about the basics of what it means to get legislation passed. Thinking about like what are the stages of drafting a bill?

Who are the different stakeholders you need to think about getting involved when drafting a bill? What is the process for moving that bill through the legislature? How is legislation even structured like; where do all the different clauses go? And how might this legislation you're drafting plug into existing legislation?

Even basics of how do you think about building relationships with your legislators and legislative staff? How do you show up for a lobbying meeting prepared? In terms of making sure that you've got your talking points ready, you've done your research, you're keeping to one succinct ask in your meetings.

So really a wide range of trainings. And also some things that I'm not even an expert on that we're going to be bringing in outside experts, including from our members, that can teach newer groups about thinking about how do you do this as a small organization with lean resources?

How do you bring together grassroots supporters? How do you build up coalitions across other issue areas in your communities so that you can build enough power to really convince legislators to pass legislation that you want passed?

All of these things may sometimes feel easy to do once you've been doing it for years, but as we develop trainings, we're thinking about people that are new to the movement, people that are brand new leaders of brand new organizations, what would they need to know, what would you have wanted to know when you were first getting started.

So there's going to be a wide range of trainings, including also other things like how do you fundraise for your small organization? How do you do social media effectively? There's so many different moving parts around a policy campaign, and we're hoping to develop trainings that will be effective on all those fronts.

[00:14:23] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, that sounds amazing. What do you think are like, the major obstacles in people who care about animals getting involved in lobbying, you know, lobbying, as I said, in the broad sense of doing all of these things. Do you think it's primarily that it's just so intimidating?

[00:14:38] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, as soon as you're asking that, that's exactly what I was thinking. I get the sense that a lot of people feel like the barrier to entry is really high and that these legislators are kind of walled off and inaccessible, and not responsive. And people don't really understand their world and understand the language that they speak, or maybe they assume that they don't understand the language that they speak.

But having done a lot of lobbying and policy work myself for many years and kind of getting thrown into the deep end of it when I first started early on in my career in animal advocacy, I quickly grew to understand that legislators and legislative staff are really just people like anybody else who speak plain English just like anybody else.

And, there are some nuts and bolts to learn in terms of how policy gets crafted exactly. But when it comes to just getting the conversation started, politicians and legislators, they are people people.. They get into that position because they like talking to people. They like asking questions.

They want to hear from their constituents. So they're actually some of the most approachable people out there because they're expert on being friendly. And so, I think that's one thing that a lot of people just don't understand. And the other is this sense of being intimidated by that.

But I just recommend that folks just start looking for resources, a lot of which will be available on our website, but there's also other good resources out there about how to talk to your legislator, and just start having those conversations. And I think that the anxiety about that would go down quickly once you realize how human they really are and you can just have a regular conversation.

[00:16:07] Mariann Sullivan: I can imagine. I mean, not that I've ever done this kind of work or not very much anyway, but I can imagine that that's like, really true. I mean, it's kind of their business to have you like them. You know, that's, that's their whole shtick. So, uh, it might be like some of the more, you know, attractive opportunities for human interaction that you have, because there aren't that many interactions you have where people are actually relying, for their job, on people like you liking them.

But it, yeah, just the whole deal is intimidating, but I think it could probably end up being really gratifying for people. Before we get it, there are other kind of theory issues that I want to get into, but all of this conversation has been a kind of abstract. You mentioned one recent victory by one of your members, the foie gras ban in Pittsburgh.

Is that now a ban on sale and in restaurants? I assume.

[00:16:59] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, that's right. That's a ban on sale of foie gras in restaurants in Pittsburgh. And we were so excited to see that, and that was a great example of our team at the Humane League, our public policy team, being able to work closely with Humane Action Pittsburgh, one of our member organizations, in crafting the legislation.

We provided them a grant to help them do the work, and hats off to them. They did a fantastic job building relationships within Pittsburgh City Council, and we helped them. We did an action alert to help boost support for their work in Pittsburgh but, really, they did a tremendous job at convincing city council to pass the ban and they were able also able to benefit from learning from another organization in our Alliance that I mentioned earlier, Voters for Animal Rights in New York City who had already successfully passed the ban.

[00:17:46] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, they do great work. I'm familiar with them. Yeah, they do great work. Yeah. And so how, I mean, they've been doing that kind of work for a long time. How has being a member of the Animal Policy Alliance enhanced their ability to do that work?

[00:18:00] Gabriel Wildgen: So the Foie Gras ban is a great example where Voters for Animal Rights being a well established group who had had that success, they were able to share all of their lobbying materials, the PowerPoint presentations, et cetera. The fact sheets that they had used to lobby for this in New York City and share that with their fellow member group in the Animal Policy Alliance, Humane Action Pittsburgh.

And they were able to talk with one another, and we helped to provide that connection. A lot of these groups, they have a lot of expertise, they don't have a lot of time necessarily. And so our team, because it's easier often to get wins for companion animals or for wildlife, if our team is offering additional time and expertise to be able to help draft legislation, analyze legislation, they can just do more than they would otherwise be able to, without the help. That was the case here where we we were able to help provide assistance in advising on how to draft the legislation. As well as funding for staff for them to literally have more staff time to focus on the issue, over the last year, before they passed the ban. So, definitely don't want to be taking too much of the credit because again, a huge amount of the credit goes to the leaders of Humane Action Pittsburgh.

I'm just proud to say that we played a supporting role, and that they may not have been able to have the bandwidth to take on that initiative, if it wasn't for the help from our staff, as well as from their fellow PPA member.

[00:19:16] Mariann Sullivan: I can imagine that in all of this work, no matter how great your support is, you would always want to be taking the position of the supporter, and letting the local organization take the probably very well deserved credit for, for actually getting it done.

[00:19:31] Gabriel Wildgen: Yes, yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, we're always trying to, like, look to them and say, what do you think is feasible? You're the one having conversations with your grassroots supporters, seeing what's exciting them. You're the ones having conversations directly with your legislators. Sometimes they're asking us for advice on what might be possible, and you know, we're starting to ideate some different creative things we can do that I won't spill the beans on yet. But with even some of these more experienced groups, again, because bandwidth is so tight and they'd love a fresh look at it, they're looking to us in some ways to provide some ideas.

But always at the end of the day, we're providing a supporting role.

[00:20:04] Mariann Sullivan: What other campaigns have you supported? And actually that brings up a question kind of, well, tell me what other campaigns you've supported and then I'll ask you this more general question of like, do you support everything they're doing? Do you support specific campaigns or whatever?

But tell us more specifics of some of the things your groups have worked on.

[00:20:21] Gabriel Wildgen: Sure, so another big victory I think you've probably already heard about is the octopus farming ban in Washington State that was just announced. And that was a big coalition effort in Washington State and two of our Animal Policy Alliance members were a part of that victory. So Pasado's Safe Haven, which is an animal sanctuary, but they have a policy team, they played a key role in that coalition as well as the Northwestern Animal Rights Network, NARN.

They were another coalition member there. And, a lot of that work was done frankly without APA needing to help out much.

[00:20:57] Mariann Sullivan: Those are both very experienced, long term experienced organizations.

[00:21:01] Gabriel Wildgen: They are very experienced organizations. And now like another one of our member groups, Social Compassion in Legislation, is working with ALDF in California on a octopus farming bin in California. And they're able to learn in part from the experience in Washington State.

But to the extent that we were able to help in Washington State, this is another benefit of Animal Policy Alliance being connected to the Humane League, who has tens of thousands of supporters across the country, we're able to amplify their campaigns in whatever state or city they're working in.

So we're able to do action alerts around the octopus farming ban at a key time as well. So, that's as another example. We also have groups that are working in states like Missouri that were able to defeat a bill that would have banned the use of drones for filming factory farms.

So often there's defensive campaigns that we need to assist with as well. And again, in these cases, some of the help is providing the funding needed to pay for extra lobbying time. Sometimes it's providing some guidance as well as amplifying efforts when needed. Another great defensive win was in Connecticut.

Connecticut Votes for Animals is another member organization last year, and there was a bill introduced in the Connecticut legislature that would have greatly increased farming of rabbits for food. And so we were able to work with their leadership to develop a strategy including op eds against this bill, activate our support base from the Humane League against it, and by very, very narrow, the skin of our teeth, we were able to defeat that bill last year. Unfortunately, we're having to fight it again, but again, it's defense and offense all the time in this movement, as you know, where you're going to be getting wins where you can get them and defending other wins when you need to, and just pushing back against bad bills like that as well.

[00:22:43] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, I can see from that octopus situation how, even if, as you say, you know, those groups really knew what they were doing and you were able to add some kind of support, but you didn't feel that responsible. The fact that you are now involved with another group that is fighting the same sort of thing in California allows, I mean, they may have contacted the Washington people and said, can you tell us, but that would be hard to coordinate different groups from different states and learn from each other without this kind of system that you're presenting so that everything that was learned in Washington can now be brought to bear in California.

Is that one of your basic goals?

[00:23:20] Gabriel Wildgen: Exactly. We want groups to be really comfortable learning from one another, be extra aware of what each other are doing. So we have monthly calls, for instance, where leaders of these organizations or leaders of their policy departments get together and share what they've been working on and lessons they've learned.

And we have an annual summit where we bring everyone together. It's a hybrid event, a lot in person, some online, where we can share these learnings. And we're always, we're in regular touch with these teams as well, so that if we know that another organization has already worked on one, we can help provide that connection.

And yeah, sometimes they might have already heard about one another, or have that connection, but we're helping to really deepen those ties, facilitate a lot of connections. And we're also, to take it even further with the octopus farming ban example, we're not stopping there. What we've actually started doing in house is developing evergreen toolkits for how to build out these campaigns based on the learnings of our member organizations.

So we're developing model legislation for an octopus farming ban. We've actually already developed it, and it's going to be accessible through the members only part of our Animal Policy Alliance website for future groups who might be willing or interested in taking on an octopus farming ban campaign in their state, or potentially city. And they'll have a ready made toolkit with everything you need right there from the model legislation to the fact sheets to lobbying advice on that specific issue.

[00:24:38] Mariann Sullivan: If they have background questions, because a lot of times, you know, you can get a tool sheet, but then you need more, they could actually go to you instead of having to call people in Washington, perhaps, and bother that, you know, when they don't have time and whatever, you can be a kind of central clearinghouse for that kind of information.

Is that right?

[00:24:54] Gabriel Wildgen: That's exactly right. Yeah, totally. And I forgot to mention, like, when it came to the idea for this Animal Policy Alliance in the first place, part of it was also informed by just having one on one interviews with some of the leaders of these local organizations. And some of them were telling us that they really saw a need for an alliance like this.

And there actually had been a few attempts over the years, to organize an alliance like this, but because the individual leaders of the organizations bandwidth, as I was mentioning, is already so constrained working on running these small organizations, it was really hard to kind of keep it going doing this extra work of having an alliance.

So what was really needed was a third party to step in with the resources to be able to, yeah, provide that centralized clearinghouse of information and connection points, as well as more access to funding. So that, that was a really a big driver for, for why we did this in the first place too.

[00:25:46] Mariann Sullivan: The other question that I had was all right, so you have an organization and they've signed on and you support them. What if the particular thing that they want to do is not something that you're that into, or you don't think it's a good idea? Are you supporting organizations in all of their farmed animal work or do you sign on to particular campaigns and then not sign on to others?

Did that make sense?

[00:26:11] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, yeah, certainly we want to make sure that campaigns that we're supporting are aligned with what we think is going to be effective. We want to make sure it's not something that we think is going to be counterproductive. So it does have to be aligned when it comes to supporting individual campaigns.

But when you talk about supporting organizations broadly, we do also want to, and are supporting our member organizations in generally growing, and we want them to grow significantly in size and power and influence within their jurisdictions, so some of our funding support is just for broader capacity building. And we don't expect that every single campaign that our member organizations run are going to be ones that we feel aligned with, but as long as we trust that we're aligned generally on what the end goals are, we can be open about it if we respectfully disagree about a certain strategy or certain campaign. And our own resources and time are really constrained, so we're not going to put resources and time into a campaign that we don't think is effective or potentially counterproductive.

And we have a policy rubric that helps us to look through all the different considerations in terms of impact on the communities involved, potential backlash, potential for near term impact for animals, and even most importantly, potential for building momentum towards bigger gains for animals in the long run.

We want to be as supportive as possible for our member groups, but we always have to be keeping our goals in mind and our objectives in mind and making sure that whatever we are putting our time and resources into feel really aligned with those goals.

[00:27:39] Mariann Sullivan: So you wouldn't necessarily say to an organization, we're done; you're not a member anymore. You would just say you're on your own on this one, but we're still supporting you generally.

[00:27:49] Gabriel Wildgen: Exactly, exactly. I guess it depends if it's something particularly egregious, if it was potentially, you know, a racist campaign, or something, you know, a campaign that was like truly offensive, or harmful, maybe we'd have to have that discussion. But in general, yeah, we can just agree to disagree.

[00:28:03] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, if you just think it's not the best way forward, but you know within the law.

[00:28:06] Gabriel Wildgen: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[00:28:10] Mariann Sullivan: All right, so that that does bring us to the kind of the theory of change issue that I wanted to talk about. As you mentioned, or I'm not sure you did mention, but, you know, as the campaigns you've talked about kind of make clear as a short term goal, the document that you sent, in which you set forth your theory of change kind of proposes, you know starting out supporting campaigns that represent the low hanging fruit. I feel like I've been involved in this movement for so long and all we ever seem to be able to aim for is the damn low hanging fruit, but it's still hanging out there. Fur farms are still out there in business. Foie gras is still being sold.

Octopus farming bans are actually kind of a new one because nobody was even trying octopus farming until very recently. So that's good to get on top of before it takes hold. But you know, some of these things have been the subject of animal rights legal efforts for a long time. Why do you think the time has come for thinking that the low hanging fruit, we're now going to be able to pick it.

Like, do you think it's just because the technique, we've gotten better and you intend to get us even better at doing this? Or do you think times have shifted? Do you think this is a particularly good moment to be going after the low hanging fruit and then perhaps moving on?

[00:29:23] Gabriel Wildgen: I think, you know, in some ways our movement has already been doing it. We've seen successes, you know, we've seen foie gras bans and fur bans, even all the way up to the state level here in California, where I am. You've seen other successful foie gras bans more recently, and like you mentioned the octopus farming bans.

Some of these things, I think maybe it's already been time for a while to be trying them, but there just hasn't been enough capacity, especially for animal organizations, again, that aren't just working on animals raised for food and also working on companion animal issues, because then the lower hanging fruit is even lower, right?

When you're talking about issues that are just helping dogs and cats that everyone can empathize with. So in a way, we're talking about kind of changing the bar.

[00:30:02] Mariann Sullivan: They're still pretty hard to get done though.

[00:30:04] Gabriel Wildgen: Even those are hard to get done. Exactly. Because, when it comes down to it, I, I think the animal protection movement, even though we've been around for quite a while, if you look at us compared to, say, the environmental movement, I wouldn't say we're in our infancy, but maybe still in early adolescence and have a long ways to grow before we reach our true potential.

And I think we need to be getting wins where we can get them. And we do, I think, have a lot of latent capacity to achieve more low hanging fruit wins, and we have some wins already under our belt now as a movement that we can build upon. So given that we have some of those wins and a road map to how to achieve those wins, I do think that there's kind of like this bonfire that's ready to be lit.

We just need to like light the spark, and just start amplifying these wins and repeating them across the country. And we have a lot of great people that have been leaders on these issues. And most folks across the country that even care about working on these things just haven't had the chance to learn from these leaders yet.

And that's what we're hoping to help provide is these learning opportunities within the Animal Policy Alliance. So we can share a lot of this with the general public, with advocates across the countries, and with, especially, organizations that are trying to dedicate time and resources to really focus on repeating those victories and crafting brand new victories that haven't happened yet.

But I think there's just so much latent potential that's just on the cusp of being realized. And a lot of these organizations and individuals just needed this little bit of extra help that we're planning to build, and we are building right now with Animal Policy Alliance.

[00:31:29] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. I think that the octopus win in Washington is just, like I said, that's kind of a new issue and an animal who, if it wasn't for that movie, I mean, the movie made a big difference, but you know, not an animal that people are passionate about, generally. And that win in Washington, it's going to make such a difference.

I mean, once you win in one place... and the fact that you're trying to coordinate things, I think, once you win in one place on an issue like that, especially, it's so much easier to win in other places. But I guess this is really the guts of the question too, like, why are these kinds of campaigns about weird things like octopus or luxury things like foie gras or whatever?

How do you get from there to more impactful campaigns on the big issues? Like is there a clear road?

[00:32:18] Gabriel Wildgen: The road I wouldn't say is entirely clear, but you know, we've got our headlights on trying to make our way through the fog. And to me, it makes sense. We have to start somewhere. And I think the more we can move in the direction we want to move in, which is banning more and more terrible practices and terrible products from the marketplace. If you think about it, an octopus farming ban is pretty groundbreaking.

You're banning an entire category of animal farming. And if we can get these kind of bans passed and start, like, warming the public up to the idea that some products are so cruel and inexcusable that you just shouldn't even allow them to be farmed at all, or that you shouldn't allow the sale of that product at all.

That starts to, I think, change minds over the long term. You start thinking about, ok well, if we're banning this product because it's so cruel, why are we still allowing this other product to be sold or produced? I'm hoping that this is kind of the beginning of that thought press changing, the zeitgeist changing, and that legislators can start to learn, Oh, I can actually put my name on a bill.

I could put my name on a press release supporting a bill that is banning an entire type of animal farming or that is banning entire category of animal products and not only not suffer politically, but actually get rewarded politically for doing that. And so I'm hoping that as that happens, there'll be more and more political courage to keep moving the needle forward towards banning more and more categories of animal products.

And I'm hoping that the public imagination is going to change in terms of what is possible and that maybe most importantly, that, you know, the advocates that are listening to this podcast right now are going to start seeing what's possible and start pushing the envelope more and more and getting more engaged in policy work where the lever for change is so hard to pull, but is so incredibly impactful when you do successfully pull it.

[00:34:00] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. But, you know, of course there's the other problem that when you start moving from banning an entire, I mean, it would be nice if we could then have a bill to completely ban chicken farming. Chances are that would be hard to pass. You have to start moving into much more minor reforms within the bigger industries and, you know, you're probably not there yet, but you must be anticipating dealing with the reluctance of a lot of grassroots activists to work for welfare improvements, such as, you know, the open cages policy.

I mean, it's like the oldest thing in the animal rights movement that, you know, I don't think we have quite the same level of animosity between, uh, I've always said that you know, we're all abolitionists. It's just how you get there is what we differ on.

But, you know, this is a long term policy and a lot of the things that are even remotely feasible about passing using public policy or using legislation to pass in farmed animal issues. If you're dealing with the treatment of the animals, they are going to be welfare improvements.

So, do you anticipate having different groups being willing to work on different types of things and being able to accommodate that?

[00:35:06] Gabriel Wildgen: Yes, absolutely. You know, again, one of our groups is called Vegan Activist Alliance, and they're very focused on, overall, more plant based options in government run institutions, like schools especially. That's one category of group. But then there's other groups that are willing to work on incremental welfare improvements, like we focus on at the Humane League.

We do believe, of course, we want a world of animal freedom, but we do believe that it's going to be a long road and that these incremental changes will lead us towards animal freedom and in the meantime are making substantial difference in the lives of billions of birds, billions of animals around the world.

And we do see people getting excited about these welfare campaigns as well. If somebody identifies as an abolitionist only advocate, I totally respect that, and they may not get excited about a welfare campaign. But we also need to think about all of the people that don't even consider themselves animal advocates, that an abolitionist campaign might feel like a step too far for them for now, but a welfare campaign might be exactly the right thing that they can see as being winnable and that it can see as being worthwhile for animals.

So that might be a great way to bring a lot more people into the movement. And, and we saw that with proposition 12 in California, in question three in Massachusetts, where we needed an army of really active, motivated volunteers to collect signatures to even get the issue onto the ballot to ban caged eggs and pork and veal from farms that keep animals and crates. And those are welfare campaigns. But we got, again, armies of volunteers out there working on that in a very excited way. And then in the ongoing fight to defend that legislation, we've seen like those have been our biggest performing, email action alerts have been around defending those welfare laws.

So there really is a wide range of advocates and potential advocates out there and a wide range of issues that they would get excited about. And similarly to your question, there's a wide range of groups that are willing to, or interested in working on this, this range of issues. And we want to support all of them again, to the extent that we feel like the particular objectives align with our objectives and make sense strategically.

[00:37:09] Mariann Sullivan: As I said, I feel like the word abolition, you know, there are plenty of people who are abolitionists who believe in welfare campaigns. It's just that they think that there is a road, I mean, I would say, from what you're saying, the Humane League is exactly that. Like, the long term goal may be to end animal agriculture, but that you get there through welfare campaigns.

And those are steps forward and other people feel they're not steps forward, that they are window dressing that just hides the problem. I just wonder whether, not to get too deep into this question, but, is it important? With all of the work that's been done in this area to distinguish between promoting humanely raised beef, or whatever the hell it is that, which I really don't see many groups in the animal protection world doing, and being for bans. You know, banning this practice, banning that practice, even though it may not be the whole ballgame it's saying, well, we can't agree on what we should do to animals, but we can at least agree we shouldn't do this. We're banning that.

Do you think that is a way for people who think of abolition as a long term goal, perhaps, but would like to make some improvements now, to feel that certain welfare improvements are not steps backwards, they're steps forwards?

I feel like I just gave a speech instead of asked a question, but answer it anyway.

[00:38:27] Gabriel Wildgen: I'll do my best to reflect on that!

[00:38:28] Mariann Sullivan: If you can figure out what it was!

[00:38:30] Gabriel Wildgen: No! ThesE are a lot of big, big questions. Important, and I, the stuff I think about a lot.

[00:38:33] Mariann Sullivan: But your campaigns just made me, it runs right up against all of these huge issues which have stymied the animal protection movements for so long.

[00:38:42] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, I do want to say I've been really heartened to see that there has been a big sea change among the leaders of organizations, ranging from Direct Action Everywhere to Humane Society of the United States. Like, groups that identify really abolitionists and ones that have been more focused on welfare reforms. And there's been the kind of this agreement among leaders that we don't need to be opposing one another's strategies, and it's kind of a recognition from kind of the more traditional abolitionist side that welfare campaigns don't hinder the path towards abolition and that the evidence just doesn't bear it out. You know, if you look at, you know, countries in Europe where, you know, cage free has become the norm or is increasingly moving towards the norm, those are also the countries and jurisdictions where you have the highest rates of veganism, for instance.

And I think Aiden Kankyoku, I think you've had on the podcast, from PAX Fauna has a great blog post where he talks about his change of mind when it comes to welfare campaigns from the perspective as an abolitionist, seeing that they really aren't harmful towards those goals.

So that's something I really agree, agree on as well. So it's all to the good. This is all helping animals in different ways. And I think we need to be taking different types of shots on goal and different types of strategies because it's not a clear path to what's going to work. And we need to be trying all of these different approaches. But I do think, yeah, some of the campaigns that we're working on do speak to both sides.

Like a foie gras ban, that's not a welfare improvement, that's a full on ban of a product, right? So that's something everyone can get on board with.

[00:40:10] Mariann Sullivan: I mean, I assume you would also support, you know, getting more vegan food in schools kind of campaigns, which have, you know, that's always the place where we can all agree on.

[00:40:20] Gabriel Wildgen: That's a big area of focus. We're developing a whole suite of resources on getting governments to procure more plant based foods, do plant based by default, the way New York City is doing, and one of our member organizations is working in a coalition, again, Vegan Activist Alliance, working in a coalition with Friends of the Earth and others to update the USDA guidelines for school foods, to get more plant based foods in there, more focused on that.

So that's, again, something we can all agree on. We also where possible, we're also going to try to get more of these caged egg bans, as we do think those are tremendously impactful in terms of short term welfare improvements, and also just helps to build momentum for our movement towards the result that we all want to see.

[00:40:59] Mariann Sullivan: But do you, I mean, not to put you on the spot, but do you agree with me that there's a difference between banning battery cages and telling people to buy cage free eggs?

[00:41:07] Gabriel Wildgen: Oh, sorry. Yeah.

[00:41:08] Mariann Sullivan: To me, that's where the line gets drawn.

[00:41:10] Gabriel Wildgen: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah, I agree with you. We should never be promoting animal products of any kind, and we don't do that at the Humane League.

[00:41:17] Mariann Sullivan: Which can be hard sometimes. I imagine with lobbying, whatever, you want to promote the thing that you're supporting, but you have to draw that line.

[00:41:24] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, totally. And, you know, I, I always stay away from describing any animal product as humane. I would describe them as less inhumane. And we were always careful to do that in all of our campaigning, all of our public messaging, never to be promoting a product. Just saying that things have gotten less bad and that we've scored a victory as a movement.

And whenever we do get a company to go cage free or whenever we get a state to ban caged eggs, for instance, those are always celebrations as victories for the movement, but never an endorsement of eating the animal products or purchasing animal products. Yeah.

[00:41:57] Mariann Sullivan: We draw the line in the same place, I think. All right, I have a lot more questions to ask you, and I hope you'll join me for the Flock Bonus segment and I can ask a few more of them there. But before I let you off the podcast itself, I just want to talk about long term goals and your long term goal, I think, I'm not sure this is a quote, but it's basically what you said, I think, in your document is to counter and exceed animal agriculture's lobbying power. I mean, not to be blunt, but what?

Like, how are you going to pull that off? And is this ultimately all about subsidies? Like, they have so much money. They have so much of our money. They're taking so much money. How do you possibly turn that around?

[00:42:39] Gabriel Wildgen: It's a long term goal, but hey, if we're talking about a long term goal of animal liberation, we need to be thinking incredibly ambitiously if we really want to get to the goals that we're talking about, if we're going to be serious about them. So we need to start laying out roadmaps to get there, and it might be not in our lifetime that we get there, but, we got to start moving in that direction.

And yes, right now the animal agriculture lobby is incredibly powerful and we know that. They have way more money than us and they're just much more entrenched in the current system. But we have working on our side is millions of people that agree with us that these practices are inhumane and unaccepatable.

And that number, I think, is growing. But we just haven't activated most of those people at all on the policy level. Or very, very little, and so there's so much latent potential. And if we start mobilizing people and start putting pressure, real pressure, on our elected officials over the long term, I think that we can start seeing changes that don't seem possible right now.

But again, we're kind of in our maybe early adolescence as a movement and haven't figured out all the best ways to do that. So, given we've got the number of people on our side that is growing, that's where I think we have hope to counter. And those people have money too, right? So, you know, if you look at the Bernie Sanders campaign that was able to take on, Democratic establishment candidates that only relied on big donors.

I could see us doing that essentially as a movement, where if everybody is donating in small amounts towards policy campaigns, and getting involved in policy spheres, there's again, so much latent energy and power that we just haven't tapped into yet. And that's why I think that there's a real hope, but we got to start taking the policy world seriously in our movement, and putting serious resources into unlocking that power.

[00:44:17] Mariann Sullivan: Well, that's a very inspiring response. And I totally agree with you. Like, they have all the power of the money, well, everybody agrees with us. That's our superpower. Well, not everybody, but hell of a lot of people agree with us about the way the world should work vis a vis animals.

So let's hope we're going to get a little closer. I'm very inspired by the kind of work you're doing. Thanks for joining us today to tell us about it.

[00:44:38] Gabriel Wildgen: Yeah, thank you so much. And if anyone wants to get involved with doing online advocacy through the Humane League, you can go to fastactionnetwork. com. We're also have a big fight around the farm bill right now. So if you go to thl.link/farmbill, you'll have great ways to get involved in that.

And again, keep an eye out for our upcoming website very soon, animalpolicyalliance. org. So thank you so much, Mariann. It's really been a pleasure to be here speaking with you. And again, huge fan of the podcast.