ANIMAL RIGHTS THROUGH ANARCHY
By Adam Kochanowicz, November 9, 2008

Adam Kochanowicz is the founder of VegPage.com, an online non-profit, non-donation animal rights community focusing on theory, direct-action, and personal discipline over donations.  As a freelance animal rights writer, Kochanowicz anthropologically studies and supports animal rights groups worldwide with a focus on an abolitionist approach.

"But what do we do with all the animals when everyone goes vegan?" is one of those questions I somehow end up raising when I explain the abolitionist approach. It's a bit like asking "What do we do with all the bread if people stop buying it?" This misunderstanding spawns from the "overnight veganism" misnomer which suggests the abolitionist approach is so strict, we actually are shooting for every consumer in the world to ditch animal products overnight leaving farmers with millions of animals left behind.

This conclusion is likely drawn from abolitionist rejections of welfarist reforms which seek to lessen the suffering caused by slavery while making the establishment of slavery appear more ethical to consumers.  When a welfarist acknowledges that propositions and regulations to reduce suffering actually strengthen the property status of animals, I'm often told that the measure is a "gradual step" and that the abolitionist's goal of a vegan world is unrealistic.  However, an absolute great vegan takeover of the world is not, in fact, the abolitionist's objective.  The abolitionist campaign doesn't find a 100% vegan world any more realistic than a women's shelter would see a world 100% free of domestic abuse, yet they still battle cases of battered women just as we still fight for a shift to vegan education.  There is a world for which we're striving and it doesn't have to be ideal to be worthwhile.

This logic personally encourages me to treat the abolitionist approach as an objective critical to efficiently establishing rights for animals.  So with a drive to change the world, I find myself wondering how a vegan world might actually appear.  For my own understanding, I thought the best way to see would be to visit existing animal rights groups as a sympathetic neutral party to see how they designed communities supporting veganism. 

Is there something animal rights groups are doing that exemplifies the best way to educate?  Does another country's activist scene hold the secret to the most efficient way to liberate animals?  And could there be a secret out there to just how close we can come to a vegan world?

Last summer, I visited four countries in Europe to work alongside animal rights activists to answer those burning questions and to find out how their vegan worlds are developing.  While we may scoff at the thought of an entirely vegan world, the success of some communities who created their own is compelling to say the least.

First, I needed something to work from.  Perhaps there was something here in North America I could take with me; some good work or idea with which I had fallen in love.  Living in a city known for its "Omaha Steaks", I wasn't sure if I was the first expert in line for being a vegan ambassador but the role is assumed as a foreigner.  There was one function called Food Not Bombs of which I was confident enough to recommend to anyone anywhere in the world.  Food Not Bombs, a worldwide grassroots community movement to make food "a right, not a privilege" may be one of the best forms of direct action for the rights of animals both human and non-human.  While the co-founder, Keith McHenry doesn't explicitly express FNB as an animal rights campaign, the actions greatly coincide with the interests of an abolitionist animal rights campaign.  The Food Not Bombs community gave me confidence I never lost but I did find that some European communities were way ahead of me.

I came to Berlin, Germany ready to meet with animal rights advocates and vegans and possibly to strengthen or setup a Food Not Bombs group.  I was lucky enough to "couchsurf" at a squat where I would stay in a large room with two mattresses, a dripping ceiling, and a balcony overlooking the forest of graffiti and blue-haired anarchists around the neighbourhood.

"Squatting" is the act of occupying a house usually without legal ownership.  Squats are typically downtrodden abandoned buildings needing repair and living in a squat is treated differently in each country.  Some squats in Germany manage to keep neighbourhoods clean and productive so they may sign into a contract with the government to remain there legally under certain conditions.  In Berlin, anarchists aren't some marginalized group that meets at a coffee shop on Saturdays.  Squats and independent movements are common, widespread and well-supported by the neighbourhoods.  In Berlin, anarchists live like kings, if there were such a distinction in their society.  I was invited to stay in such a neighbourhood named Rigaerstrasse, after a street where multiple buildings with 5-6 floors of squatted rooms were decorated with graffiti and statements of protest.

At the door of the lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, female-only squat was a large iron door and three dilapidated doorbells.  I was told one of them worked.  When I got the attention of a girl on the third floor, she threw the keys down to me in a paper sack.  Inside the building, the many members of the squat were partying and socializing around of a long table with rice, beans, lentils, tomatoes, and cooked vegetarian and vegan food.  Squatted buildings in Berlin are all unique but operate similarly and will likely host their fair share of "Voküs" short for "Volxküchen" meaning "People's Kitchen." For a vokü, squats will prepare donated or dumpster-dived food into entire meals to be served with a suggested donation of €1-2 (USD $1.25-2.50) a plate. The donations go to the inevitable costs of maintaining a squat; repairs, paint, cooking utensils, etc. With the meal, pleasant atmospheres of discussion or movies will often accompany.  Voküs are easy to find in Berlin and seven to eight may be individually hosted on any given day. I found these events to be useful, being a vegan jobless traveller impoverished by the euro conversion rate.  As for the content of the meals, I assumed the fact that voküs were vegan or vegetarian was because most of the people running them had animal rights or health concerns.  That assumption may have been inaccurate.

While animal rights literature and propaganda has its fair share of circulation in the community, animal-free dishes were a sort of logical outcome of the way their society was modelled.  I put this together after what may seem like a meaningless exchange with one of the tenants of my squat.

One morning, I was in the kitchen boiling some noodles. Around the squat were boxes, bowls, and bags full of vegan produce. The sinks were filthy with pots once filled with steamed lentils and fruit salads. The woman  sharing the kitchen with me was having a dinner of quinoa, bread, and eggplant pasta.  I asked if she was vegan and she thought about my question as if she had never seriously considered it herself before.  She gave me a longer answer than I expected, "I don't really consider myself a vegan, but I pretty much eat vegan food. It's just easy to get. There's lots of it around the house and at the voküs." Her nonchalant response impressed me.

Vegan food is "just so easy to get"?  Living in an environment abundant with so much plant food made me realise why that was true but I wasn't sure why was this house full of vegan food when German grocery stores are just as full of animal products, if not more, as in any other developed nation.  It would have to be because the tenants insist on vegan food, but this is not necessarily the case.  The reason for an abundance of vegan food in the community if not for animal rights lies in the anarchistic method of consumption.

First of all, grocery shopping was a sort of "if we have to" activity in the squat. Most of the food is brought in from the tons of perfectly consumable food thrown out by grocery stores every day.  I was no stranger to this phenomenon with my participation in my local  Food Not Bombs back in the US.

Every Friday, participants like my friend Christina would volunteer to clear out her car just to fill it right back up with boxes upon boxes of fresh organic produce from our local grocer.  While grocery stores would rather sell an item than give it away; they also have standards of having the "freshest" produce and have to get rid of expiring food so their fresh shipments stand a fair trial in the produce section.  The result is for grocery stores to simply pitch perfectly good food days *before* their expiration dates.  Yet even the expiration date is simply an estimate so even more perfectly consumable food gets dumped because the expiration date is enforced and not the subjective quality of the food.  ‘Food Not Bombs’ then prepares the food into meals or takes them out to downtown areas to be picked up by the hungry for free.  So, with the volunteering of people like Christina, an enormous amount of vegan resources are made available by the public starting with the simple act of taxiing.

But the impact of anarchy-inspired movements like voküs and Food Not Bombs doesn’t stop with making vegan resources available.  Groups like the Food Not Bombs in the Wicker Park neighbourhood of Chicago operate in a food- and space-sharing apartment with an open door encouraging the neighbourhood to come together to help others less fortunate.  Because the food is almost always vegan and often organic, the food options of the homeless is not limited to cheap, processed animal products usually prevalent in government-granted soup kitchens.

Observing the anarchist approach to distributing goods gave me a compelling urge to slap myself on the forehead, "of course!" I've always believed that as long as animals are property, suffering will be imposed upon them by their owners in order to effectively use them as a commodity. Anarchists are generally against the property status of *anything, *so why haven't I paid more attention to them? This woman with whom I spoke at the squat had no apparent interest or knowledge of animal rights. Living without animal products was just the most feasible diet in her squat.  While I certainly wouldn't argue that animal rights ideology should be abandoned, anarchist societies support the rights of animals more efficiently when the practice thereof does not necessarily depend on adopting animal rights beliefs. But couldn't a squat just as well give preference to animal products in their distributions?

Regardless to the philosophy, serving second-hand vegan food is a must.

Food Not Bombs co-founder McHenry puts it best in his "Seven Steps to Starting a Food Not Bombs Group" guide, that "...the potential for problems with food spoilage are greatly reduced when dealing strictly with vegetables. With the process we use, we rarely hold the food we collect for more then a couple of hours. Second, teaching people about the economic and health benefits of a vegetarian diet [meaning free of animal products] is directly connected to a healthy attitude about ourselves, each other, and the planet as a whole. It is also a direct challenge to the injustice of the military/industrial economic system."  Instances of vegan communities exist in numerous regions besides Berlin.  Unfortunately, I have yet to visit them.  Nevertheless, anarchy-inspired communities such as Rigaerstrasse demonstrate how a dramatic shift in support of the animal industry can be born from a simple model of a community.  Success in the animal rights movement is not measured by how many people show up to a protest, the money an organisation raises, but the animals that are saved.  Replicating such models would give the animal rights movement an edge over simple leafleting and bumper stickers.  While I wouldn't knock the old-fashioned protest, awareness should be raised for direct-action campaigns like Food Not Bombs and events like voküs.  Practices which I hope will quickly spread with our united support.

For more information about Food Not Bombs and to find local groups in your area, visit http://www.foodnotbombs.net

Contact: Adam Kochanowicz
Email: adam@vegpage.com
Web Address: www.VegPage.com