Roots & Rising: Connecting Grassroots Voices | OHH Panel

We're so excited about today's discussion. And just for those of you who are just joining us, as you know, maybe you don't know, we have been on the air every week for 15 years without ever missing a week, so feel free to start at the beginning and catch up.

I actually do hear sometimes from people who have heard all episodes, and I'm both flattered and concerned for them. But now we're on multiple times a week because we took our podcast and we divided it into three different episodes that go up in the same week.

So Rising Anxieties comes out Tuesday, the Hen Report on Thursdays, and the long form interviews on Fridays. So we're on YouTube now. Please subscribe and hit like we could not be more excited about today's guests, so I'm gonna just get started. James Hattersley is the founder and executive director of We The Free, which is based in the UK, but spreading veganism throughout the world.

James, I've been watching you, so it's like really cool that you're in this Zoom box with me. Welcome to Our Hen House, James. Thanks for being here.

[00:01:19] JamesHattersly: Thank you for having me. Yeah. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so honored to be invited.

[00:01:23] Jasmin Singer: Oh my gosh. We're honored to have you. Carrie LeBlanc is the founder and executive director of Compassion Works International, where her leadership has led to the demise of several circuses and exotic animal performances, and has helped to change hearts and minds with regard to many more types of animal abuse, including trophy hunting and rodeo.

Such important work you're doing. Carrie, thank you so much for being here and welcome to Our Hen House.

[00:01:49] CarrieLeblanc: Thank you. I am excited after almost 15 years of being in the movement, this is my first time on, and so I'm very excited. Thank you.

[00:01:55] Jasmin Singer: That's, well, that was clearly an error on our part, and so I'm hoping you can stay with us for like six or seven hours today to just catch up from the beginning. Cool. We figured as much. And Steven Rouk is the founder of Connect For Animals, a platform for anyone who wants to find their people and their passion and work together to help end factory farming. Welcome to Our Hen House, Steven, and thank you for being here too.

[00:02:20] Steven Rouk: Thank you. I'm delighted. Um, big fan, and yeah, it's just, I'm, I'm excited to be here with you all today.

[00:02:24] Jasmin Singer: You guys are spending a Sunday with us, which is not normally the day that we do our interviews. So this is our easy breezy, pumpkin, squeezy vibe, and we're super excited to be spending our Sunday with you. So let's start out by briefly introducing each of your work to our listeners for those who might not be familiar with it yet.

So, James, do you wanna start? I'd love to hear about We The Free.

[00:02:48] JamesHattersly: Sure. Yeah. We The Free, for anyone that doesn't know it, is a vegan advocacy organization, predominantly focused on grassroots street outreach, where we show people footage about what happens to animals. We normally do something called a three minute movie challenge. Imagine you're walking down the street and you see somebody holding up a sign and it says, "Movie challenge. Watch three minutes, win a prize," and you sit down, put headphones on and watch a grueling, horrible three minute documentary about what happens to animals. And then afterwards, a passionate vegan, talks to you and almost like a counselor or a coach might and helps guide you towards veganism.

We The Free has about, I think 160 teams right now in 40 countries around the world in our network. Probably around 8,000 vegans, it's hard to know the exact figure, but somewhere around there based on membership of all our volunteer groups. And then we also do some really cool online activism.

So just one of those that I'll talk about very briefly is the three Minute Movie Challenge, the online website at 3minutes.wtf, which is literally a website where people can watch the online three minute documentary. It's currently being viewed by more than 2 million people every month.

And we just recently started getting feedback from people that watch that, a survey that pops up at the end of it that says, how did that inspire you? And in the last 18 days since we've launched that, almost 1000 people every day are saying, this inspired me to want to go vegan, which is just

[00:04:12] Jasmin Singer: Oh my God.

[00:04:13] JamesHattersly: mindblowing to me.

[00:04:13] Mariann Sullivan: I feel like we should all just quit whatever we're doing and just do this. What the hell? Amazing. Amazing work.

[00:04:22] Jasmin Singer: Yeah. And also, I didn't know that .WTF was a possibility. And as soon as we're done with this interview, I'm gonna buy JasminSinger.Wtf.

Uh, because many people have said to me, Jasmin, wtf. And so it feels like it just goes with the truth. Okay. Lots of questions for you, but hang on.

Carrie, I need to tell you that you have the most amazing cheekbones and only our YouTube viewers are gonna have access to seeing what I mean, but in addition to lovely cheekbones, you have lovely advocacy, and I'm super excited about what you're doing. So can you give us a brief intro?

[00:05:01] CarrieLeblanc: Sure. Yeah. Compassion Works International has been around for about 11 years. I came actually out of farmed animal advocacy. I was one of the folks that helped bring Mercy for Animals to the place that it is now. But what I felt and saw in a lot of farmed animal advocacy was that it was leaving behind issues and people that were easily accessible.

So I sort of changed paths and CWI initially only focused on circuses, but we've since built out into a lot of other areas because I think we can probably all agree that any use of animals is essentially a use of animals for entertainment because there is no necessary use for animals.

So CWI really incorporates a lot of different issues, but we do on the ground types of advocacy, circus protests, protests against trophy hunting, that sort of thing. A lot of online activism. We also do some undercover investigations. And until this year we also had developed and ran Vegas VegFest, which was the biggest vegan advocacy event in Nevada.

But, something that we could all maybe talk about is sort of the decline in advocacy and the interest in attending vegan events and things like that, because it's, you know, it was going downhill a little bit before the pandemic, and then since the pandemic, it's been a little bit like this.

So, strategizing ways as a movement to counteract that and think how we can start to revitalize young people in the United States. Maybe James is seeing other things in other countries, but in the US there's been a, a definite decline. So, so anyway, we keep up our work. We're almost done with the circuses, but there's more work to be done and we need people to get out there, so.

[00:06:42] Jasmin Singer: I know that we're doing just intros right now, but I have to ask a really quick follow up question. You moved from farmed animal work to the circus animal and et cetera, animals for entertainment. I'm so curious what that was like for you and if you saw that there was more traction with the animals used for entertainment, like can you just give me like a thousand foot high view of what that was like for you?

[00:07:08] CarrieLeblanc: Yes, I work with a lot of non-vegans, so I view the types of issues that CWI works with as gateway issues, gateway animals. Everyone loves an elephant. Everyone loves a lion. So these are issues that people will come and will get involved in protesting, and it's an opportunity to then, you know, expand their circles of compassion out to other animals.

So I would say I work with completely different sectors of people. There's been a divide in the animal rights movement, which I think has been exacerbated by a lot of factors that maybe go beyond the scope of what we should talk about in this podcast.

But I would love to see more integration and more focus on animal rights as a whole over certain animal welfare types of approaches.

[00:07:54] Jasmin Singer: Yeah.

[00:07:54] Mariann Sullivan: And this is just the intro, but now I can't help but say something because I think you're so right. And so much of vegan advocacy while very powerful and not the kind of vegan advocacy that James is doing, but a lot of it is focused on health or focused on the environment. And these are very, very important things, but the animals can get left behind.

And the kind of advocacy you're doing, I mean, it's like everybody cares about the animals that you're talking about and broadening that. I think it's so important for us to always think, as you three all do, of the vegan movement as an animal rights movement, you know, it's, part of another movement that is bigger and that's why it's so great to have all three of you here today.

But Steven, we should get to you because you focus primarily on farmed animals, but you do something special and you bring together the work of other people, and I guess it also sometimes would encompass animals other than, well, why don't, why don't you tell me? Is it all farmed animal advocacy or does it encompass some other animals as well?

[00:08:51] Steven Rouk: That's a great question. So I'll, I'll give you, I guess just like the quick backstory of why I got here, which is Connect for Animals came from a place of me trying to find my way into the animal advocacy movement for quite a while. So I say that I've been doing animal advocacy work for about a decade now, but I think I've been saying that for two or three years. So I should probably bump up the number to like 12 or 13 or whatever. But, you know, I started out by volunteering with different organizations, trying to find my place in the space, I guess. You know, I was going vegetarian, then going vegan was handing out leaflets with Vegan Outreach.

I was tabling with Mercy for Animals. But I have a math background and I was getting into data analysis and it was just hard to find something that felt like my place. And then after being in the space in many different capacities over the last decade, give or take, I came to see that actually my journey seemed to be indicative of kind of a larger problem in the space, which is that we actually have quite a lot of people who care about animals.

And I, you know, I often frame it as factory farming, just since that is where animals raise for food is kinda that, just like the large slice of the pie as far as animals killed purposefully by humans globally. But obviously we care about the whole system here. There are a lot of folks who care about the issue and I was seeing in myself and then in again and again and again in many other people, they care deeply, they're already on our team, they don't know how to get involved.

They can't find that path into the space and the things that they see do not seem to be a good fit for them. And so a couple years ago, I mean several years ago, I guess now at this point, when I was sitting down and thinking, okay, what can I do that's really gonna make an impact that can really help move the needle on these issues?

I kept coming back to this question of if we can just find ways to get more of those people who are already on our team involved in anything kind of across all organizations in the movement, all different strategies in the campaigns, I think that we could release a lot more people power into the space.

And so that's the genesis of Connect for Animals. We provide a platform that pulls together campaigns and events and actions from lots of different nonprofits, lots of different local vegan groups, animal rights groups, put them all in the same place and just try to help people get connected to like whatever is gonna be that best fit for them.

We've been doing that for about three years, focused on factory farming, focused on animals raised for food or fur, but other things are on the platform as well, and it's constantly a question of where do we focus our energies. The ultimate goal here is just to help as many animals as possible over the coming years, the coming decades, and just create that world that we want to see.

So, trying to figure out how to do that.

[00:11:19] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, it's amazing and so important and I wish you had existed when I first started getting disturbed about the issue because your words just reminded me of how hard it was. I mean, and it was harder back then 'cause we're talking kind of pre-internet, so it was really hard, but how hard it was to find other people who cared about this issue and figure out what you were supposed to do.

We were just talking the other day, I was talking to Jasmin about my first trip to Farm Sanctuary, which is this huge farm sanctuary, obviously. A farm animal sanctuary, in upstate New York. And the first time I went there, it was just like this huge feeling of, oh my God, there are other people.

And it was, you had to travel to find them. So really, it's really, really powerful work. And one thing I really wanted to particularly add too about, I should have said this when I was responding to what you said, Carrie, but I've just always felt like most of the animals are farmed animals, are being eaten, but the people who care about animals are frequently really in the issues that you are focusing on, you are capturing those people who care.

You know, loads of people care about elephants who never think about a cow, and it's really drawing them in that is so important. So, yeah, I'm excited to have all three of you here. You bring three amazing perspectives, James. One of the things that you mentioned in what we asked what you wanted to talk about was theories of change, which is a subject I absolutely love to talk about.

I don't think anybody's actually come up with a really good one so far, but you have expressed some concern about the difficulties the movement has experienced I think you called it around tribalism, around theories of change. Can you talk a little bit about that?

'cause I think that's a hugely important topic.

[00:13:01] JamesHattersly: Yeah, sure. I mean, how much time do we have?

This honestly feels like something I could for the next four or five, I was gonna say hours, but maybe days. Um, honestly yeah, the movement has felt very tribal for a long time. And if I'm being truly honest in the past, I think I've contributed to it.

I think a lot of the activists that have most inspired me on my early activism journey may have contributed to it. And I think the reason is we all care so deeply about animals and honestly, what keeps me up at night is how can I make the biggest difference? How can I move the needle? How can I use the time, the resources I have in a way which most helps animals?

And that's a really big question. And quite often we don't agree on the strategies to do that. In the past I would see people maybe using their time in a way that I thought wasn't effective or maybe outright harmful if I saw them doing some, you know, some kind of campaign where they're throwing blood up walls and screaming at people with a megaphone, "meat is murder," while they're trying to eat a meal in a restaurant.

And I would think, ah, that's not going to make people like vegans. That's not going to make people care about animals. That's going to make us seem like weirdos. And it's like a fringe issue. And I would be quite verbal about my disdain for the tactics of other people.

And what I've realized as I've spent more and more years kind of dedicating my life to this is quite often, we can be very vocal about issues even if we aren't necessarily educated on why people are doing that. And kind of a turning point for me was having a conversation with various leaders of different organizations and saying, "So why do you do what you do?

Why do you focus your energy in this way? And their answers were just not what I expected. And it completely changed my mind on it. And what I realized is we don't necessarily all have to agree on the best way to shift the needle to help animals. We probably need a little bit of everything, right.

Some really good kind of education that I absorbed was from Layla Kassam, who, she's a previous founder of Animal Think Tank, I think now from Project Phoenix, talking about social movement ecology. Almost like an ecosystem within the social movement that we operate in. Talking about inside game, things like, uh, political lobbying, legal change, corporate outreach, things like that.

And then outside game, the kind of things that I do, that Carrie does, that Steven promotes on his platform, and how we actually need all of those and kind of working in harmony. No one tactic can work on its own.

I'm not sure if I answered the question there, Mariann.

[00:15:36] Mariann Sullivan: I don't know. And I'm not sure the question is exactly answerable. Everything you said was fascinating and I agree. This is something we could talk about for hours and hours, but I think you're so right. Like, what I have come to believe is that there's a place for almost everything.

I mean, you know, like maybe not actual violence or, you know, things that are outside, completely outside the pale. But, we don't know what's going to work. And it's entirely possible that we need many different strategies. A long time ago, I read a book right when I was starting, and I wish I could remember what the book was. It was about social change strategy, not about animals, but it said that the attitude that you wanna develop in the legislators who might be able to vote on your issue is you want them to fear and loathe you.

That was so interesting because I think so often we're trying to make friends, and that's a real inside game. But, there are many different attitudes to try to develop from the outside world. And different people working on different things, I think is everything.

[00:16:30] Jasmin Singer: That reminds me of, we have a friend, uh, I'll say her name because every other person is named Jane. Her name is Jane, and she says, better to be feared than loved.

[00:16:40] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, totally,

[00:16:41] Jasmin Singer: it sort of reminds me of that a little bit and it's definitely something I've struggled with, like as a woman in the animal protection movement because I have a lot of the people pleasing kind of instincts and that can sometimes be really hard when you're an activist.

But one of the reasons why Mariann and I and Vicki wanted to do this panel is because we all come from grassroots. Like I was the campaigns manager at Farm Sanctuary like 20 years ago. And one of the reasons we started Our Hen House is because we were both kind of tired of people waiting for top-down organizational campaigns to dictate how an individual can get involved with creating change.

And now we've interviewed thousands of people and I know so much less now than I did when we started because I don't know what works and I think there's a nugget of truth in everything and that we need everyone, and so that has been a really fascinating journey for me. And Carrie, you started to talk about this a little while ago when I asked you what the switch was from working in the farm to animal world to working in animals used for entertainment.

And I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more about how your decisions regarding what issues to focus on have evolved and how that plays into your current theory of change. And I'm not saying like for me, I think one's theory of change can change multiple times over one's lifetime. So whatever that means to you today, I'd love your insight on that.

[00:18:15] CarrieLeblanc: In terms of CWI, our theory of change has pretty much been the same. And it was our founding principle. And the reason I've probably never been on the show, and maybe no one knows about CWI is because I'm not big on flag waving. What I think a good theory of change is, is people talking to people, friends talking to friends, family talking to family, neighbors talking to neighbors.

So we came up as basically an alternative to PETA. Before I go any further, I work very collaboratively and have many, many, many very good friends at PETA. But as soon as you see a, a PETA poster, that triggers something in somebody's mind and they either have no opinion of it, or more often than not, they have a, "Oh, okay, we already know what this is about."

And so our goal was to provide people an opportunity to speak for themselves.

[00:19:03] Jasmin Singer: I hear you. And I just wanna add that we, for a very, very long time focused primarily to exclusively on farmed animal advocacy. Now we bring in more animal activism, usually from like a vegan perspective.

Though occasionally we will find someone who's like, their beat is one specific type of wildlife advocacy and they might not be vegan. It's always sort of annoying for us when that happens. But, uh, you know, I wanna know everything about beavers, for example. So we're gonna have a beaver person on, and if you are making jokes in your head, that's fine with me.

Alright, we'll get back to you, Carrie. Lots more questions.

[00:19:41] Mariann Sullivan: I can't believe you did that. Like every time we talk about beavers, she has to make the beaver joke.

[00:19:46] Jasmin Singer: It's Sunday. Come on. All right,

[00:19:48] Mariann Sullivan: God, it's so old.

[00:19:50] Jasmin Singer: Steven help.

[00:19:52] Steven Rouk: I can't follow that.

[00:19:52] Jasmin Singer: Okay. You can't help. All right. Steven, in your view, what is the current state of the grassroots animal rights movement and why, especially given the passion that people are bringing to this movement, why isn't it bigger?

[00:20:05] Steven Rouk: This is such an interesting question and the problem is as time goes on, right? I feel like I'm the same, I can't remember if it was you who said it earlier, Jasmin, that it's like the more time goes on, the less you feel like you know. I feel like I'm very much in the same boat. The more that I learn and the more that I see, the less certain I am.

So in my mind, I think that there is a bit of a question, it's like, do we have data that it's smaller? Like is it actually smaller? Because I know, you know, I mean, James, We The Free, doing great. There's a lot of really cool initiatives. I just moved outside the DC area about a year ago, and there's a great community here that's doing a bunch of campaigns.

I think they won something like 20 foie gras protests last year. I was hanging out with some of them recently and.

[00:20:44] Jasmin Singer: We just had the folks from like DC, uh, for Animals on, is that what it's called? DC for animals?

[00:20:50] Steven Rouk: I think that that's one of the groups here at DC Voters for Animals. I won't talk to the relation. I, you know, 'cause I'm not, I, we just moved here and still trying to feel things

out,

[00:20:57] Jasmin Singer: I'm just, I know that there's an amazing community there. I'm totally jelly. That's awesome. Sure. I'll visit you. Okay, continue.

[00:21:04] Steven Rouk: Yeah, no, please come. Yeah, the food's amazing. So, anyway, that's partially what informed when I started Connect for Animals as well is like the state of uncertainty here. I, I kind of just want more people doing more of everything across the whole space, you know?

And the thing is about theories of change... so back at the National Animal Rights Conference, I can't remember what year it was, I saw a talk where the presenter was making the case, essentially, that if you view the movement as like a dynamic marketplace, then the best thing to do at any given moment depends on what everybody else is doing in that moment as well.

And what type of progress has happened over the previous years. And the society that we live in is such a dynamic system, things changing so constantly. I mean, you know, in the US we, I mean, we just saw this huge administration turnover. Things look very differently now than they did 12 months ago. Right. And so, what does a sort of, a consistent theory of change look like in that space? Is very difficult to answer when things are shifting so constantly and we are responding to society, society is responding to us. I mean, I think honestly first things first is that, we need better data and research on this actually.

And this is something that I'm trying to talk to some people about right now is do we have good data? Do we have surveys? Do we have research on the people power of the movement? Because I think you have organizations all over the place doing great work, but the data is siloed there. About how many volunteers do we have?

How many activists do we have? How many people are actually hitting the streets, doing behind the scenes work? Like, what is our people power currently? And I, I honestly just don't know if we know. And I think, I wish that we had really good research on that 'cause then we could ask an answer some of these questions.

[00:22:41] Jasmin Singer: Does Faunalytics get into that kind of research in their work, or are they mostly focused on like outside the movement research?

[00:22:49] Steven Rouk: So I've chatted with some of them about this. I can't remember what... they do some of this, a little bit of this. There's also, there's an organization called Stray Dog Institute that, um, pulls together information on funding in the space. So they look at funding and where it's being allocated and across countries and all that kind of stuff.

But I have not seen anything that's quite as comprehensive about people power, and I would love to see that. It's also, I think, a bit more difficult to get, which is maybe why we haven't done it yet, but.

[00:23:15] Mariann Sullivan: All right. I'm gonna ask like, this wasn't on my list of ideas of what to ask about, but it's come up from my mind and it's probably going to lead us down a bad path, but I feel like one of the things that's going on with the grassroots, and I do feel like the grassroots has not grown as vibrantly as perhaps one would've expected it to, considering how many people do care very passionately about this issue.

And I think vis-a-vis James' work, I mean, I know you're all over the world, but you know, the UK I think the grassroots movement is much stronger than in the US. That's my impression anyway. And I wonder whether to some extent it's because so many of the bigger animal rights organizations, particularly the farm animal people have gone down a effective altruism route.

And this is not a criticism of that route. There are a lot of different routes, and I think like what they're... it's definitely not a criticism, but it's very hard to involve the grassroots because it's not what everyday people believe in. People don't believe in cage free eggs. You know? And I want the chickens outta those cages and, you know, if they get them outta those cages, more power to 'em.

But I do think the large animal groups used to, you know, work more closely with grassroots organizations. And that kind of ended and it left the grassroots a little bit without leadership, which I think that all of you are kind of stepping up and kind of filling in.

But it caused a gap for a while in providing that kind of activism that passionate vegans want to do. And that really represents their own values. It's hard to fight for something that you don't exactly believe in. That's just sort of a weak compromise between what you think is right. Anyway, that was my diatribe.

And I really wanted to ask you, James, because we touched on this at the beginning, but I want you to go into it in a little bit more detail because I am so excited about this new project of yours that you've been doing. What did you say? For 18 days? We are really here at the beginning of, 'cause this seems like the kind of thing that anybody can do.

And in the video that you made about it, you talked about some of the difficulties of street activism. I mean not, not criticisms of it, but just that it's difficult and how this can provide some of the powerful interactions of street activism without having some of the burdens. Can you just go into it in a little bit more detail than you touched on in the beginning?

Because I want everybody to know about this. 'cause I think a lot of people would wanna do this.

[00:25:32] JamesHattersly: Yeah, sure. Thanks. First of all, I'll just say I will forever be a huge fan of street outreach and I'm not ready to give up on it just yet.

I think, uh, I think Carrie touched on earlier, like, these kinds of, you know, grassroots activism is very much a gateway drug to every other form of activism.

When I see people doing, you know, undercover investigations or liberations or marches or corporate outreach or whatever it is, they probably got started in some kind of street outreach. There's probably more than a 50% chance that they did. Everybody I know did. So even if it's only for that purpose, street outreach needs to continue because it's so good.

It is an accessible entry point. It's great at recruiting people for the movement, whether they go onto to other things or continue doing street outreach. But to go back to your question, Mariann, so I guess we're talking about the three minute Movie Challenge online and something called My Chats that I think I mentioned in our emails.

So very, very quickly the Three Minute Movie Challenge. We've had that online at 3minutes.wtf since I think about November. And we didn't really promote it at all. It was just when we do street outreach using the three minute movie, we get so many photos of people, this is not gonna work for anyone listening to the podcast, but this kind of like, like shocked facial reaction of people that are like seeing the footage and it's just breaking their heart.

And when we post these photos online, we get messages from people saying, Hey, where can I watch what this person's seeing? And we didn't really anticipate the kind of viral element of that. So we built this website just as a place where we could send people to go and watch that. And then, without any promotion.

I guess a few like influencers on Instagram and social media recognize this as a really valuable resource to share with anybody as a result of their online activism. So if somebody's got an Instagram account where they talk about veganism or animal rights. They can do like a, you know, link in bio if you want to find out more, go and watch this three minute documentary. And predominantly through like one or two like mega influencer accounts, sharing that religiously, we're getting 2 million people every month at the minute going to watch that online movie challenge.

And just to put that into perspective, in May alone, that three minute documentary was viewed for nearly 11 years, which is just blowing my mind because it kind of happened almost accidentally for us.

The person who was doing such a good job of sharing this online, it's predominantly one person. His name's Julian. He's a 22-year-old activist from France. You know, we offered him him a job straight away because there's nobody in the movement that's doing this for us as well as he is.

And...

[00:28:12] Mariann Sullivan: So you're saying that if you put all of those three minutes together, it would equal 11 years.

[00:28:17] JamesHattersly: Yeah,

Yeah, I know, right? And that's really just exploded since January. Yeah. So probably, you know, way more impactful in, in his less than a year as an activist than me and many other people I know that have been in the movement for years. But there you go. Yeah, so that's great.

Obviously we've got like 2 million people every month watching the movie, and that's really great. But one of the issues is we know from showing this to people in the street, that some people do watch the video and say, well, I guess I'm vegan now. But most people don't. They want to talk to somebody about it.

It is broken their heart, they've got questions. They don't even know how to go vegan. They don't even know where to start. They need to talk to somebody. So we've built a platform called My Chats, where people can have these online vegan outreach conversations. So imagine you are on social media.

You see a video on Instagram, it takes you to the three minute Movie challenge website. You watch the video, and then at the end of the video there's a popup that says, "Talk to us. We know that was a difficult watch. Have a chat with one of our volunteer counselors today and be entered into a prize draw."

And you click on that and it takes you into an online vegan outreach conversation. And this is just so powerful for us because not only can people have those vegan outreach conversations, but it overcomes so many of the difficulties of traditional street outreach, of having to wait until three weeks on Saturday for the next event in my city, and then having to carry all this heavy equipment into the city center and having to like fight to gather 12 activists that they go, they're the same 12 people that go to every single thing in the area and get them in the city center and pay for taxi and buses and transport and whatever. It overcomes all of that.

It delivers warm leads to us using technology. And then these conversations happen on our platform where we can collect the transcriptions of tens of thousands of vegan outreach conversations and analyze them using AI to answer some of those questions about how should we advocate for veganism, what's most likely to lead to this person wanting to go vegan?

And then we can use that AI to give guidance to the activists. And it's like a spiral, an upward spiral of us getting better and more efficient as we go along. So yeah, it's probably the thing I'm most excited for in the movement right now. And I'm obviously biased because I'm doing it, but, yeah. I will just add one thing that I kind of forgot to mention is that this is something that's launching properly in the next couple of months.

We are just doing pilot testing at the minute. We want to launch this properly because basically, if you can imagine if you are responsible for tens of thousands of online video calls happening, you would want to make sure that the creeps don't misuse that for, you know, inappropriate purposes or grooming people or whatever. So we just, we are working on the moderation to make sure that that rolls out safely.

[00:31:02] Jasmin Singer: That's amazing. There's so much there. I added it to my link tree. Not that I'm one of those, you know, influencers, but I just love how contained the whole thing is. And back when I was doing more grassroots work, there was briefly a moment, Carrie, you probably remember this, when Viva USA existed and, I worked for Viva USA, my first job, I think in the movement was for Viva USA. It was still back in the day when you know, people would mail in their interest in learning more, and then you'd mail them back, like the little, like the packet and, and now it's like, boom. There's a counselor in front of you.

I mean, that's really, really cool and definitely something everyone can get behind. Carrie, I have a question for you, because whether grassroots activists are working online or they're out in the real world, they need to have effective communication strategies. I mean, certainly, I'm sure, well, both James and Steven, I'm sure you've both done your share of deep diving into this, especially in the training for the counselors.

But Carrie, as we all know, this can be really tough for people who are frustrated by the hypocrisy that so many people bring to the way they think about animals and you've been, you and me and Mariann, we've all been around this world for a long time. So what are your suggestions for handling those emotions and communicating effectively?

[00:32:35] CarrieLeblanc: You know, I guess because I'm not dealing with thousands of groups and people, I can take a very individualized approach when I'm working with someone who's going to lead an action somewhere. And so I spend a lot of time emphasizing to them the importance of communication and what that could and should look like.

Especially in situations like a circus protest, where there are gonna be children around, there are just ways to handle things and ways that are just gonna make parents feel defensive and afraid. Right? So I focus on giving clear instruction and providing a lot of facts, giving people talking points, making sure they feel very clear on all of that.

Because the dangers that we run into is not just in the demeanor of people putting people off, but also in them providing inaccurate information that then gets used against us as a movement. Uh, see those darn animal rights activists, they're just making up stuff on the street and they're telling people lies.

So, I really emphasize to people the importance of giving clear, calm information that stays factual and doesn't get overly emotional. So that's the approach that we're able to take in our work. I have to say that I might be my own worst example of that because when we do the rodeo protest, we have the biggest rodeo event in the country in Las Vegas here, and we run that protest, and I might be the first one like yelling at those rodeo people.

[00:34:02] Mariann Sullivan: Do what I say, not what I do. That's my advice.

[00:34:06] CarrieLeblanc: There's not a lot of children at those, so that can get a little heated. But generally I think, we tend to deal with older activists as well. People who are a little less dispassionate maybe than vegans, you know, they care about their one issue, and so they're able to kind of take it more on board to be factual. But when you've got an animal rights activist in a circus protest, that's where, oddly enough, that's where things can get a little crazy.

[00:34:33] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I totally know what you mean. I have to say a small little aside, Mariann is

[00:34:39] Mariann Sullivan: Oh, I knew you were gonna bring me up.

[00:34:41] Jasmin Singer: Would you rather I go back to the beavers or...?

[00:34:43] Mariann Sullivan: I very seldom lose my temper, but I, when I do, it's, it's not, it's not good.

[00:34:48] Jasmin Singer: We were in Puerto Rico once and there was a horse drawn carriage. And someone's like, ladies, ladies come over here.

And Mariann goes, fuck you. Like, it's just the best!

[00:34:57] Mariann Sullivan: I'm not sure I used profanity, but it's entirely possible. Horses and carriages. It's true having lived in New York City for a long time, and it's a very abusive industry, and it's like, I don't know, 30 people? And there's campaign after campaign, after campaign, and those horses, those horses live in horrible places and nothing happens.

So it is an issue that makes one particularly angry.

[00:35:23] Jasmin Singer: And same in Central Park. I mean, it's just, but yeah, I, I didn't mean to throw you under the bus Mariann. I really didn't.

[00:36:41] Mariann Sullivan: All right. Let's go back to the questions 'cause I wanna ask Steven a question. I wanna ask Steven a question, which is actually a very unemotional question, I guess some people get emotional about AI. You mentioned AI. James mentioned that they use AI, and in the notes that you sent us about things that you wanted to talk about, I think that you wanted to talk about how AI... I mean, we're told it's gonna change everything in the world. Is it gonna change animal activism and is it already doing that? And in what ways? Is it all good?

[00:37:13] Steven Rouk: Yeah. Is it, is it all good? That's a great question. No, you know, I think definitely not. I think the one thing that can maybe get lost in the AI discussion is people who feel like it's sort of all good or all bad. When in truth, at least from what I've seen, and I try to be, you know, fairly neutral, fairly unbiased as far as just like looking at the pros and the cons and the goods and the bads and the ethical issues and the opportunities, right?

Of which I think that when it comes to AI, there are buckets of all of them. There's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of questions, there's a lot of ethical dilemmas and things like that. We're just kind of entering this weird new space. But I, I do see that there seems to be a little bit of a separation between, and this is within society broadly, but also within the animal advocacy space between people who are really keeping up with the trends, staying up to date with the information and seeing what's happening.

And then people who are not engaged at all and don't know what's coming and really don't know, like about the power here as well. So, I mean, as an example, there's some email tool that I use that uses AI as part of it, and I went to one of their webinars where they were talking about AI across various business industries and whatnot, and they ran some survey and, and showed that it was like 70... it was some astronomical percentage of CEOs and businesses were either already deeply integrating AI into their operations, were planning on doing so in the future. It was changing how they were thinking about their operations. There are some animal advocacy individuals, and I think even some organizations that are taking really like this AI first approach. It's amplifying what they're doing.

I think some people are doing it better than others. And then I think some people are just like completely disengaged, either because it's a new technology that's deeply uncomfortable. I think it is deeply uncomfortable in many ways. Right? There's a lot of weird questions around it, or because they have concerns about it, whether due to the data that was used to train it or data privacy or environmental concerns or whatever concerns it might be, and so are not seeing what's happening across society. So I think taking all that, like holding that all in one space is really difficult. But I do think that it's one of those technologies that's here, it's growing, from what I've seen, it seems like it's gonna change a lot of how society operates.

The questions around what that's gonna look like are still very much here. But I think the animal advocates can start using it definitely to help us, with strategy to help us with data automation. You know, just this past week actually, there was some little data process that I used to go manually export something, categorize it, upload it to Google Sheets.

I just set up something that automates it for me and now I get back like, you know, an hour every month or something like that. And that's time that will build up over time. And there's lots of little things like that.

[00:39:56] Mariann Sullivan: Are there ways that it's used for animal advocacy other than the fact that, you know, it's useful for everybody. And I'll tell you, one area in which it's insane is, I just finished teaching a class. It's hell for teaching. I don't know what we're gonna do 'cause the only thing students are gonna learn is how to use AI. I mean, that's it.

Are there ways specific to animal advocacy that you think it's going to change the world for good or ill?

[00:40:21] Steven Rouk: I view this as kind of a spectrum from easy use cases that pretty much everybody can do. And I think that most of those involve like going to ChatGPT using it for various things. And then there's a more advanced... exactly. And it's, it's one of those, it's a weird thing, right? 'cause it's such a powerful fluid tool that you can use it for lots of things.

I use it for some basic data formatting, and then I also use it for doing a little bit of research for me, which I then go and fact check, right? Or for checking strategies, or for things like that. And then there's more advanced use cases, which I think, I mean, James, it sounds like what you're doing is definitely on the more advanced end, where you're integrating it with your systems, you're using it with your code or your applications or things like that.

So I think specific ways that it's changing animal advocacy, starting with the easier ways, right, is I think that people can use it in all those same ways that maybe we use it for doing basic research, basic double checking our strategy. I've heard of some people using it as like role playing.

So, you know, imagine that you're the CEO of this company. Here's a campaign we're gonna launch. What would you do in response? And it can help brainstorm some possible responses, and then you can think through your responses to the company's responses, things like that. The opportunity and the challenge here is that there's a million use cases.

I think starting with like the LLM chat GPT space is probably where a lot of the ones are going to be for like most animal advocates, but.

[00:41:41] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, I agree with all that there. We've had a, a couple episodes focusing on AI and I know there are some other

[00:41:48] Mariann Sullivan: With actually with folks from Stray Dog, which you had mentioned

[00:41:51] Jasmin Singer: Hmm, right.

[00:41:52] Mariann Sullivan: They're helping organizations incorporate AI into their advocacy.

[00:41:55] Jasmin Singer: James, can you tell us a little bit more about how you're using AI post counselor experience, because I think I saw on one of the YouTube videos of you that I was watching that it kind of offers suggestions to the counselor. Is that right? Can you tell us?

[00:42:13] JamesHattersly: Yeah. So, we actually provide training to volunteers on something we call Inspiring Behavior Change, which is the most evidence-based approach that we currently have, that there's not enough good research on this, but the most evidence-based approach that we have to those vegan outreach conversations.

And it's some of the stuff that Carrie was saying earlier about our approach and not getting too heated and adversarial, no conflict, no kind of, you know, fiery debate in the streets and things like that. And almost coaching people towards a vegan conclusion, asking the right questions, as well as kind of.

How do I phrase it? So imagine that you've just been on the three minutes movie challenge. You've watched the video, you're having a conversation with a vegan activist and AI transcribes that entire conversation and then afterwards analyzes it for certain data points. Like, did this person say they want to go vegan or they want to reduce their consumption of animal products?

Did they say that they want to do more research? Was it a heavily shame-based conversation or was it more of a coaching approach to that conversation? Was it a complete conversation or did did it end early because of some reason, technical issues or otherwise? We can capture probably about 15 or 20 different data points from that, and then we can basically map those data points to the, the survey that the non-vegan or prevegan completes at the end of the conversation. So at the end of the conversation it says, how did that conversation impact you? And if they say, I want to go vegan, then we can look at all the data points in that conversation and think, okay, so if they're saying this in the conversation, what's most likely to lead to them actually going vegan at the end of that conversation.

So we can map what they say through the transcription of that conversation to whether they want to go vegan. And then we get their email address because they sign up for a competition and we can follow up with them 12 weeks later and say, "Hey, you told us that you wanted to go vegan or you wanted to reduce your consumption of animal products.

How did that go?" You know, it's great to collect data from people that tell you in the street, oh yeah, I want to go vegan now. A lot of people are kind of people pleasers, right? They are conflict averse. They tell you whatever they think you want to hear right then and there, so they can walk away from this crazy militant vegan they've just met in the street. Um, but actually being able to follow up with them 12 weeks later and collect that data is going to be really exciting to me. So I wish I had more of that available to me right now to present. The only data I have right now is the initial kind of, we've been doing the survey at the end of the video, not the conversation, for the past 18 days.

And it's incredible. In fact, I have the statistics here.

let me

[00:44:57] Jasmin Singer: You can pull them up. When I was at the aforementioned Viva USA, we would like mail people a little thingy on the back of the brochure and say, have you made any changes? You know, like it was just so, and when people

[00:45:14] Mariann Sullivan: It's kind of the same thing.

[00:45:16] Jasmin Singer: they're not gonna mail it back. They're not gonna be like, no.

You know, like it's,

I also like, when Mariann was saying, how do people use ai? I was like, therapy. Like, I literally am like, I'm having a fight with my wife and, uh, can you, you know, be my, my relationship counselor for a second?

[00:45:33] Mariann Sullivan: Jasmin might overuse it a bit.

[00:45:34] Jasmin Singer: I'm joking, but I'm not joking that it has been unbelievably helpful.

And the reason I bring that up isn't just to have a tangent, but to say like, even Carrie, for the people who you're dealing with, you could have people say like, I'm gonna be a vegan activist, you be a hardheaded meat eater, who I run into on the street, argue with me. This is just a way that our listeners can engage with it when

[00:45:58] Mariann Sullivan: I think that's really helpful for the introverts too, and I think there are a lot, I personally think there are a lot of introverts in this movement and it makes it doubly hard to get out on the street and talk to people. You really feel, if you're an introvert, that you have to be over prepared for everything, whereas extroverts can just go out there and chat everybody up, and having that ability to prepare yourself for, you know, maybe the hard questions you're gonna get so you don't have so much anxiety around it, I think is hugely helpful.

[00:46:23] Jasmin Singer: Did you find the stat, James, did you

[00:46:26] JamesHattersly: Yes, but also I really just wanted to respond to what Mariann just said, that I've already developed two different chatbots that I'm happy to share, that anyone, anyone can use. Uh, the first one is for outreaching, a role play. Imagine you're talking to somebody that's like a non-vegan and they would say, "oh yeah, I want to go vegan, but I could never give up cheese."

And you can practice that role play if you're not quite ready to go onto the street yet. And the other one is on the other side. You can basically be the non-vegan and say, "oh, give me a steak recipe." And it will kind of try to outreach you, using all of the training materials that we put into it as a knowledge base.

[00:47:00] Jasmin Singer: How can people find that? Is it accessible yet?

[00:47:04] JamesHattersly: No, I will just have to like share the link. I don't know if you can put that anywhere where this podcast will be so people can access Yeah,

[00:47:11] Jasmin Singer: If it's available to the public, we can put it in the show notes.

[00:47:15] JamesHattersly: It is available to the public. I just don't have it like on our website anywhere right now, but I can make that available.

[00:47:21] Jasmin Singer: Yeah thanks.

[00:47:21] JamesHattersly: To go back to the statistics, so yeah, in 18 days, 38,860 people took the survey, 17,627 of them said it inspired them to only buy vegan products. A further 6,600 said they want to reduce their consumption, and 5,044 said that they want to do more research.

So, yeah, just mind blowing the amount of kind of data that we are getting now and, and as well as on a mailing list of like 50,000 people that we can reach out to.

[00:47:52] Jasmin Singer: How many use it for marriage counseling? Or did you not ask that?

[00:47:57] JamesHattersly: I've not asked that. No, but me, me, too.

[00:48:00] Jasmin Singer: Okay. Mariann, I feel like I've been asking a lot of questions, so why don't you

[00:48:05] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I want, there's something I wanted to get back to Carrie about because your kind of street outreach is actually different than vegan outreach. You're protesting something that's right there, and you have actually had some pretty significant victories. And I'm just wondering, I mean, I think this is always an issue with protests.

I think they're useful in and of themselves because they bring attention to the issue, but how do you translate them into actually a victory of like closing down a circus or whatever, or getting a performance canceled or whatever? I assume that piece is more on you than on the people who are out there on the street.

[00:48:40] CarrieLeblanc: I would say so. But kind of going back, I think to what James was talking about before, or Steven was it you that said? I'm sorry. It starts with those people who are out there doing something and it builds from there. Without those people who are doing those protests and without us being able to demonstrate that there's a passion and interest in this topic, you've got nothing going to a legislator and saying, "Hey, we should pass this circus bill in Colorado." So it really starts with the folks on the ground doing that kind of work.

[00:49:11] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. That if, if I can just interrupt you for a second, it brings back that quote that I said before, which I think is so true. What you want from a legislator is you want them to fear you and loathe you. Like, and that's what those protests out on the street yelling. That's what it, it gets, they don't want that.

They don't wanna be seen as hating animals.

[00:49:30] CarrieLeblanc: I think that's right. And I think, you know, yes, it does take somebody like a me sitting in an office somewhere to put stuff together and send it out. Yes. But all this work would be nonsense. It, it wouldn't happen if there weren't tens and hundreds of thousands of people who care about this issue.

For instance, in the state of Colorado, we did help pass a bill against the use of animals in traveling entertainment there. But there was a loophole put in the bill that said, oh yeah, you can still have elephants if it's an educational display. Well, we all know that's nonsense, right? There's no educational use for elephants to show up. But sure enough, the Renaissance Festival there, um, continued to host traveling elephants and

[00:50:12] Mariann Sullivan: That's going on right now, isn't it?

[00:50:13] CarrieLeblanc: It's happening right now, but what's what's happened is we've mobilized so many people. Well, so last year we found out about it. We submitted information to the government.

We looped in the governor's office, Colorado Parks and Wildlife went mental. We found out after we got the FOIA information afterwards, we were like, "oh, we better respond to this 'cause she copied everybody!" And so they got really upset about it. Well, I was able to contact Colorado this year and find out, sure enough, this group Trunks and Humps put in another application. And I found out almost as soon as they did it. As soon as they did it, I put out a petition. We got tens of thousands of people to sign it. I wrote another letter and said, here's what we submitted last year, remember how much you hated that?

Well, here's a few tens of thousands of people who also don't like it, and I'm copying everybody again. Now, the Colorado Renaissance Festival is within two weeks of starting, and they still have not approved the application. It's been sitting for two months. So it starts with the people on the ground.

And as much as I don't particularly love online petitions, sometimes they do demonstrate, they give people an opportunity to have a voice because yes, people are introverts, they don't always like to go out. It gives people opportunity to have a voice and we can then show a government agency or somebody that this many people care and yeah, maybe you should be a little concerned about that.

[00:51:34] Mariann Sullivan: Well, that's the really great use of online petitions. I mean, if people just put petitions out there and get a lot of names and then don't do anything with it, yeah, that can be frustrating. But when you're doing what you did and gather those names and then go and do something with them and show legislators how much people care about this issue, then I think petitions can be extremely valuable.

[00:51:55] CarrieLeblanc: Honestly, I've been the first person to speak out against petitions in the animal rights movement because the dirty little secret that a lot of people don't realize is large groups use petitions to gather email addresses, which email addresses gather donations. That's the path. So I've been very reluctant to hit people with too many petitions 'cause I feel very strongly that they always need to be part of a campaign effort. So we've been stepping up our online petition activity, but in very specific instances. But for me, I don't feel right about not having it be part of a bigger campaign.

[00:52:30] Mariann Sullivan: A campaign. Yeah, I hear you.

[00:52:33] Jasmin Singer: I totally agree. I think that the kind of empty, or fully empty petition moment was maybe like 10, 15 years ago when like change.org kind of got big and there was just like a lot of sign this! Yay I did something! And, you know, I, I don't wanna say that in a condescending way 'cause I think people really,

really meant well.

[00:52:58] Mariann Sullivan: Well, that's the problem though. People are being deceived that their signature is gonna mean something when nobody's actually doing anything with it.

[00:53:04] CarrieLeblanc: Mm-hmm.

[00:53:05] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, when I worked at an organization and people were constantly just waiting to, you know, sponsor a turkey, which I think is very important to do, there could be and also while you're doing that, do this. And then we're really changing the world in like a kind of hands-on way.

But ag i, I sound like I'm being critical. I don't mean to, I just, the reason I love the three of you is because you're like. Do this and how can we then kind of create a bigger shift? And that's what I really appreciate.

[00:53:39] Mariann Sullivan: turn. Turn it

[00:53:40] Jasmin Singer: And you know, I know that we've kept you for a really long time and I still wanna do a little bonus interview for our flock, but just, maybe a couple more questions if that's okay. James, one of the things that you work on and you work toward, and I think you pride yourself on, is avoiding infighting. So that's actually been really core to Our Hen House since we started.

We've actually had to, you know, not have people on when all they've wanted to do is talk shit about another organization. Like, I'm not saying we shouldn't be critical. There are times to be critical. We don't wanna be the platform for that. How do you do it? Like how do you avoid infighting?

[00:54:19] JamesHattersly: Oh wow. So that's a really big question. And first of all, I just want to go back to what Carrie said earlier about achieving wins. Like actually achieving wins in the movement is something that we really need. So every time a circus gets shut down or a fur ban gets enacted or foie gras gets removed from 20 menus across the city, or something, that's so much momentum that just like empowers the grassroots and gets people out there and gets people excited about the work we're doing again.

So first of all, I just really want to recognize how important that is. Secondly, I think culture and community is the answer to that. If I had to just put it in one sentence. And I think culture and community is like, it's not just one thing, right? It's hundreds of small things done well. And part of it is the narrative that like leaders put out there into the movement about not talking crap about all the other organizations and their efforts, but also about like community building.

So I didn't really talk much about We The Free's theory of change earlier, but actually most people think that it's just about outreaching enough people that we vegan outreach our way to a vegan future. And yeah, obviously that's part of it. We want people to vote for a vegan future, with their consumer choices, as citizens, as members of institutions. So we want people to vote for a vegan future. But also like movement building. Probably most important thing that we focus on is movement building. So part of that is through like community health trainings and teaching people to be more sustainable and teaching people how to have more impactful conversations, but actually mobility between different organizations and different theories of change and collaborating with lots of different organizations and showing that we're all in this together and these are our colleagues and peers working in different spaces.

And actually this is going to sound really weird, but not only doing activism, we also need to be community building sometimes in terms of, I'm almost afraid to say this for being labeled as like a cupcake vegan or something. But in the past, in the past, I was one of those people saying, oh, those, you know, we can only get 12 people out to this like animal rights demonstration in my city.

But you go to the vegan festival where everybody's eating cupcakes and donuts and there's like hundreds of people there, and I'd be very critical of that. But what I was missing is that these kind of social and community building events are really key to just give ourself one weekend away from fighting for animals to recharge our batteries, remember what we're fighting for. Go and volunteer to sanctuary and spend some time with animals, recharge our batteries. And it's a really great tool for like recruiting new people into the movement and revitalizing ourselves and replenishing our ranks.

So giving ourself permission to take like one day, one day away from like an animal rights event, to just go and be in a social or community like building event around other passionate vegans. And instead of viewing it as being a cupcake vegan, or not caring about animals, it's, I care about animals so much that I'm investing in my long-term sustainability and I'm investing in my community.

I could speak about this for hours and maybe I'm talking too much now, so I'll, I'll pass it back to you.

[00:57:29] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, I actually couldn't agree more like we just need that kind of community and, like it's easy to forget that what we know is just really hard to carry sometimes, and especially for activists who have to think about it all the time and have to watch your damn movie because they're actually telling people about it.

So they actually have to watch it. And then like we're so used to knowing this that we're kind of used to it, but it's a lot for people to carry. And so, yeah, anything that, and I, I've always thought the food activism was kind of this nice break that we could all take, from time to time.

Just, you know, making the vegan cupcakes, it's kind of a positive thing that we get to do because so much of what we do is just really is hard.

[00:58:14] Jasmin Singer: When I was in New York City, a lot of what I did Mariann, you did it too, despite you know, your introvert ways. We would leaflet in Union Square and for a long time I was doing like, say no to. Like, say no to veal. Say no to foie gras, say no to this, say no to that. And then one day I was like, we had all the brochures we kept on our shelf and like, in our 400 square foot apartment.

And I would grab the, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna take the vegan recipe guide today. And I started leafleting with the, and vegan recipe guide. Free, free recipes, free recipes. Every single person took them despite the fact that you could Google recipes. I don't really get it, but, okay. And you know, like on the back there was like, here's what's happening to animals.

And it was a lot more satisfying for me, to just do like a yes and type of activism. So.

[00:59:05] Mariann Sullivan: All right, Steven, I I did have one more question for you because I think we talked about what you do in generalities, but can you get specific? What will people find when they visit your site, and how do you decide what to feature, and how do you know, make sure that everything's legit and whatever your standards are?

Because a lot of your work sort of has to do with building community as well, and that's one of the things that your site does. So just rather than me talking about it, you talk about it.

[00:59:32] Steven Rouk: Of course. I have a math background, you know, I studied math in high school and in college. I think about things often in sort of like big theoretical, general, whatever

[00:59:39] Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. We'll get specific.

[00:59:41] Steven Rouk: specifics are great. I love specifics. So, when you go to Connect for Animals, you sign up, you can create an account.

I think one of the best things that we do, that people love right now is actually our weekly newsletter of upcoming events. And we feature an action from a different organization and we feature a different group as well. So basically, you know, you can think about us pulling together events from different vegan meetup groups, animal rights meetup groups, different nonprofit organizations, different universities that have talks.

We put them all on the website. People can go, you create an account, your homepage is gonna have some of the upcoming virtual events. If there are local events in your area, it'll show you local events that are happening in your place. It'll show you some actions that you can take that are based on campaigns the different organizations are running.

So, we're subscribed. You know, we as Connect for Animals are subscribed to every organizational newsletter we can think of, and we keep an eye out for what are the asks that organizations are making? Like if they have a campaign running. And it says, Hey, can you tweet at whoever? Can you write an email to your representative?

Can you do X, y, z? We try to capture that, send it out to our list as well. Those are the big things that we focused on. And people can also create profiles and see who lives nearby. You know, other pro-animal people. One thing that we are working on doing a better job of as time goes on is helping people connect with each other, either locally or nationally, internationally based on shared interests, shared projects that people want to do.

So that's a work in progress, but that's some of the specifics. And I guess some things that people say after they sign up. Because what we try to do is just really promote what's happening in the space, right? And so people will sign up and then send me an email saying like, Hey, I just signed up. I found this event, this event, and this group. I had no idea any of this was happening. Thank you so much for pointing me in this direction.

And that's exactly what we wanna do, is just be a pointer to all of the amazing work that is happening and help people find it, help people find their niche. Um, right Fit activism is kind of what I talk about a lot of the time.

So,

[01:01:49] Jasmin Singer: I love that. And how can people learn more about your work and support your efforts?

[01:01:54] Steven Rouk: Connect for Animals. Uh, just if you Google Connect for Animals and sign up, that's the best way.

[01:01:59] Jasmin Singer: Just one more question, Steven, and I'm gonna ask this to both of you, Carrie and James as well. If someone listening to this is maybe sort of new to animal advocacy or veganism and haven't really considered themself an activist before, what is one tip you have for them or one effort that they can get involved in?

[01:02:19] Steven Rouk: I mean, I think one way other than signing up for Connect for Animals, which I think is great, is I would encourage people to just explore what's available, to try to find something that feels good and to stick with it.

'cause it can take a while and just, just poke around, explore. See what feels good. See what you're drawn to. See what matches your skills and your interests and your location. Just, you know, go online, do some, do some googly searching, you know?

[01:02:44] Jasmin Singer: So it's basically like trying vegan cheese is what you're saying. Like you're not gonna like all of them, but there are so many. So if you don't like that one,

[01:02:53] Mariann Sullivan: I, I kind of like all of them.

I'm a big fan. I don't know. They're all good. Maybe it's 'cause I've been vegan for a long time, but, you know, there were those years, remember those years of like like that hideous, horrible, vegan cheese that cost a lot of money, but it

[01:03:06] Jasmin Singer: I remember. Carrie remembers too. Carrie, what do you think, what's your favorite vegan cheese and what advice do you have for people who might wanna get involved with activism or one effort they could get involved with?

[01:03:19] CarrieLeblanc: I get people who say they wanna be involved a lot. And my advice back to them always is, it's a little like Steven's, but it takes a reverse approach. I say, what are your strong suits? What is it that you really like to do? What are you good at?

We need everybody's talent. Any talent that you have, you can apply it to the movement. So what are you good at? And let's start there. And then I can tell you where a good place for you might be in the movement, and you can try that. And then if you don't like that, you could try something else. But, I like people to bring to the table something that they are strong in. So I'm a big fan of everybody doing what they can to raise the bar for this movement, including something I've always wanted to see funded is sort of like an animal rights nonprofit support center, because so many of us are small.

Wouldn't it be amazing if there was a resource that people could go to if they are a small organization, to get advice about fundraising, to get advice about how do you even start your nonprofit? Those sorts of things.. Once when we can lift everybody up, we're gonna attract more people.

The bigger we are, the better.

[01:04:25] Jasmin Singer: Are you familiar with Scarlet Spark?

Yeah, I think it's like a relatively new organization and I think that they are checking some of those boxes about helping nonprofits to get involved. So it's scarletspark.org. I love that you're saying like, let's support each other and let's support the other nonprofits around us and bring what you're good at.

I mean, that's excellent advice. And how can people find you online and support your efforts?

[01:04:56] CarrieLeblanc: Compassion Works International, cwint.org. Like every organization, we need a million more people to be involved. So again, if someone has something they think that they can apply to Compassion Works, we're a small organization.

We rely on volunteers, skilled volunteers, and whatever you can bring to the table, contact me and I'd be glad to have you.

[01:05:18] Jasmin Singer: How can people contact you?

[01:05:20] CarrieLeblanc: info@cwint.org.

[01:05:23] Jasmin Singer: Wonderful. And James, it's on you now, buddy. Bring us home. Tell us what your piece of advice would be and tell us your favorite vegan cheese.

[01:05:34] JamesHattersly: I'll start with the cheese. That's an easy one. I've recently just started making my own, like liquid mozzarella.

Blending, like tapioca flour and miso paste and nutritional yeast and things. All, all that good stuff in there. And just love it. Yeah, really

[01:05:47] Jasmin Singer: Wait, wait. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's unbelievably important. Miso paste and nutritional yeast are two of the main ingredients that were in many of the recipes in this cookbook that came out a really long time ago called Blissful Bites, and it was miso paste, nutritional yeast and maple syrup.

They were like the three kind of core ingredients. And I like, I'm a terrible cook and I hate cooking, and I made like everything in it and I loved it. And, I just am telling you that because it sounds like you would really like that cookbook. Okay. Tell me, tell us now your advice.

[01:06:27] JamesHattersly: Okay. Yeah. So I was gonna say exactly what Carrie said about whatever your talent is, whatever you are passionate about, or especially if you can find a gap in the movement and do that. Uh, but seeing as that's already been said, I'll say something different. I speak to a lot of vegans and ask them why, you know, why did you take so long to get involved in activism? Or what stopped you getting involved in activism sooner? And one thing that I hear very, very frequently is a fear that they can't do it as good as Earthing Ed or Joey Carbstrong, that they won't know the right thing to say. If they're speaking to people even at work or on the street or in the elevator, anywhere about veganism, and it comes up, they're terrified.

Like, oh my God, what if they ask me a question I don't know the answer to? What if somebody says like, oh, what about I don't know, the carbon sequestration of free range cattle, or something like that, and you don't know the answer, then their response will be, "aha! I've got you vegan."

And that gives them permission to not be vegan and you know, you've, you've failed the animals, you've let them down. And I would just say. Don't let perfection get in the way of progress. The best way you can learn to do that is to just get out there and have conversations, make mistakes, and you'll realize that actually it's okay to say, I don't know that, but let me find the answer for you and I'll come back to you. If you really want to brush up on your how to have conversations about veganism, then go to www.activism.wtf. That's our website. Sign up to our newsletter, check out the training section on our website. We do a free training on Zoom twice a month, every month, specifically on this with different time zones.

So no matter where you are in the world, you can join that training before you go and have those conversations. I would also just say. Don't feel like you have to only do one thing. Like go and do some pressure campaigns. Go and shut down your local circus. Join We The Free, join National Animal Rights Day.

Join one of the, what do they call it? Convergence for Animal Activism Coalition in New York or whatever. Get involved in everything. Find out what you are passionate about, find out what you're best at, and just give it a go.

[01:08:34] Mariann Sullivan: That is great advice and I I think that's so true that we are so prone to not feeling like we have experts, because of course, we're not in the business of raising animals for food. There's lots of stuff we don't know, and the industry likes to use that against us. Because they keep everything secret.

And so of course there's stuff we don't know. And I, because I'm a lawyer and because everybody always expects all lawyers to know all the laws, which they don't, I have found in life that it's actually very empowering to say to people, I actually don't know. I'll have to look that up. It makes people actually trust you.

But you know, how could we possibly know everything about animal agriculture? It's something we hate. It's not something we do.

[01:09:11] Jasmin Singer: Yeah, that's good. I'm reminded of when someone knew you were a lawyer and was like, Mariann, you're a lawyer. Can I park in that spot? I just, I

[01:09:21] Mariann Sullivan: It is, it is true that people do think you know all the laws off the top of your head.

[01:09:26] CarrieLeblanc: Can I say something a little bit random, but on topic?

[01:09:28] Mariann Sullivan: Please do.

[01:09:30] CarrieLeblanc: I think that everybody should get involved with We The Free, having talked to James. And I think we should have a massive We The Free office in the United States, and I'll tell you why. And it goes back to things that we've all talked about pointedly and not is that the large organizations, you know, 12, 15 years ago when some of us started being involved in this, they were smaller and they were advocacy organizations. They've almost all completely obliterated advocacy. And it's because effective altruism does not value vegan activism at all.

It places no value on it. So we don't have any money being funneled into doing the type of incredibly important work that James is doing. And so if this organization could be brought to the US and expanded, hopefully at that point we can fill some of these gaps that have been left, the enormous holes that have been left from, you know, all of the big organizations dropping their advocacy programs.

And um, I don't know, just my 2 cents.

[01:10:30] Mariann Sullivan: I'm so with you, and you do have a number of chapters in the US right, james? Where can people find out where there are chapters? And if there isn't a chapter in their city, how can they find out how to start one?

[01:10:41] JamesHattersly: Yeah. Thank you so much, Carrie. I'm really blown away. I don't know how to respond to that, but um, yeah, if

you go to our website, yes.

If you go to our website at www.Activism.wtf and go to get involved, there's a map of all of our teams. And I'm looking right now, there's I think 38 teams in the US.

Maybe that's wrong. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong list. We definitely found the USA little bit harder to crack than other areas, but we are putting a huge focus there right now. We've recently hired somebody who he's traveling around and helping us to start lots of new teams there and, yeah, things are looking good.

[01:11:19] Mariann Sullivan: We're preoccupied right now, James. Sorry,

[01:11:23] JamesHattersly: Yeah, there's a lot of

[01:11:24] Mariann Sullivan: We've got a lot. We got a going on.

[01:11:25] CarrieLeblanc: that is problematic.

[01:11:26] Jasmin Singer: Wait, are you, are you saying we should all go to your house and live there and you could employ us and somehow make it legal that we're the Okay. Yeah. Thanks James. I'm so glad we had you on. Uh, okay.

Well, thank you all so much for all that you're doing to change the world for animals. This was such an inspiring emboldening time and it's just so affirming. Mariann and I and Vicki we're all just big grassroots fans. And knowing that you're all out there, you bring something so different, but so needed to this world.

And we're just very, very grateful for each of you for joining us today on Our Hen House.

[01:12:08] Steven Rouk: This was wonderful. Thank you so much everybody.

[01:12:10] Mariann Sullivan: Thanks everybody for tuning in and you can find out more about our guests and their organizations in the show notes. And I highly recommend that you do, and please remember to subscribe and like on your favorite podcaster and or on YouTube. And as always, that advice is like, even if you hate YouTube, go on and subscribe because we need you to, and if you'd like to become a flock member or donate any amount, you can do so at OurHenHouse.org/support.

And thanks so much for being here.