Changing the Game Norm Phelps
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In this controversial and timely book, animal liberation activist Norm Phelps argues that the animal rights movement has reached a crisis point. Faced with the overwhelming wealth and power of the animal exploitation industries, animal activists are like David trying to stand up to Goliath. But rather than following the unsuccessful strategies of the past, Phelps proposes that we change the game by adopting David's strategy of refusing to play by Goliath's rules. First, Changing the Game examines the challenge facing activists and explains why animal liberation is the most difficult struggle for social justice ever undertaken. Next, it surveys the environment in which the American animal rights movement has had to operate since its founding in 1975, and concludes that a period of rapid social progress is about to begin in which animal rights should be aligned with the progressive movement. In addition, it explores the implications for animal liberation in regards to the rising economic, political, and cultural power of nations such as China, India, and Brazil. Finally, the book analyzes the current strategies of the animal liberation movement in terms of the debate between "abolitionists" and "new welfarists," using a theoretical framework created by sociologist Max Weber and elaborated by feminist historian Aileen Kraditor. Compellingly and clearly written, filled with passionate arguments and undeniable truths, Changing the Game is a must read across the animal protection movement and among members of the academic community whose fields of interest include animal rights and social justice.
Changing the Game Norm Phelps
Changing the Game: Why the Battle for Animal Liberation Is So Hard and How We Can Win ItBy Norm Phelps
New York. Lantern Books. 2013.
Reviewed by Daniel Redwood
Norm Phelps is a veteran animal rights activist whose books include The Dominion of Love: Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion: Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004) and The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007). His writings on the spiritual and religious roots of animal rights stand as a unique contribution to the movement. Scholarly yet fully engaged, they are imbued with compassion and a burning desire to move humanity ever closer to the embodiment of principles for which its spiritual traditions too often provide lip service but little more.
Phelps' new book, Changing the Game: Why the Battle for Animal Liberation Is So Hard and How We Can Win It, positions the contemporary animal rights movement within the continuing story of the social justice movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, noting that while it shares some of other movements' core characteristics -- defending the weak against the powerful, advocating for their moral parity, and basing its appeals on compassion and empathy -- there are also dramatic differences.
These differences are easy to overlook. In the long forward march of all other social justice movements in the United States -- minority rights, women's rights, labor rights, and gay rights -- the oppressed groups played a central role in their own liberation. They could speak for themselves, testify about their oppression and their needs, serve as the movement's core constituency, provide its most committed activists and leaders, and correct well-meaning allies whose understanding of their plight was inaccurate or incomplete.
Animals cannot contribute to the animal rights movement in these ways. "Try to imagine a civil rights movement led and conducted entirely by whites with no mechanism to get regular, reliable feedback from blacks," Phelps asks. "Or a feminist movement led and conducted entirely by men with no mechanism to get regular, reliable feedback from women. The thought boggles the mind. And yet that is where we are in the animal rights movement."
Moreover, the oppression of animals has lasted far longer than the forms of oppression that sparked other social justice movements, in one form or another crossing all national, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Because animal slavery and slaughter are not specific to any particular religion, nation, or economic system, abandoning or overthrowing such systems or regimes will not solve the problem. Animal oppression, Phelps asserts, is the "universal crime ... more securely embedded in our psychology and culture than any other form of despotism."
Phelps then points out something less obvious and ultimately more hopeful -- that in the United States and much of the Western world, the entire history of the modern animal rights movement (from the 1970s to the present) has taken place during a period of "conservative consensus," historically the most difficult of times for any social justice movement to achieve significant progress. In contrast, the period of liberal consensus between the 1930s and the 1970s saw major breakthroughs in social justice for workers, women, and minorities. Phelps describes that era as one "that by any reasonable standard would have to be regarded as one of the most remarkable periods of human progress in the history of the world."
In such eras of liberal consensus, even conservative leaders do not seriously challenge the fundamental assumptions of the liberal worldview; in conservative eras such as ours, the reverse is true. Phelps illustrates the point this way: "Just as conservative presidents Eisenhower and Nixon made no serious efforts to dismantle liberal programs, Obama has made no serious effort to overturn the conservatives' philosophy of social Darwinism and unregulated cutthroat capitalism." He describes the conservative consensus as characterized by "substantive attacks on the idea that caring for the well-being of the people is a legitimate function of government."
The implications for the animal rights movement are profound, if often unrecognized. "The civil rights movement had nearly 20 years to make progress in the [liberal] consensus' nurturing environment, while the women's movement had barely ten and the gay and lesbian movement no more than five. Timing is everything, and the animals' movement had the great misfortune of coming into being just as the liberal consensus was passing into history. Animal rights is the orphan child of the 1960s."
Phelps long-term optimism springs from the fact that all such eras have a beginning and an end and his belief that a new progressive era is now on the horizon. "We are approaching a period of social upheaval that promises to combine the concern for economic justice that characterized the 1930s with the impulse toward social justice that defined the 1960s." When this period of opportunity emerges, Phelps says, it will bring with it the potential for major breakthroughs in many areas, including animal rights. While this by no means guarantees success, it will differ markedly from the current conservative era, in which the strategic focus of progressive activists, including animal rights activists, has been to prevent major steps backward rather than to achieve major steps forward.
With the long-arc view of an elder, Phelps proposes a series of directional guideposts for current and future animal rights activists, a Seven-Point Program for Changing the Game. First, however, he cautions that "animal slavery and slaughter will end when and only when four conditions coincide":
1. Our society enters an era that is sympathetic to progressive social justice causes and accepting of rapid, radical social change.
2. There is a genuine and broadly based universal liberation movement that pursues justice for humans, animals and the environment together.
3. The animal liberation movement establishes its identity in the public mind as a public social justice movement (such as civil rights or women's rights) rather than a private morality movement (such as prohibition or the war on drugs).
4. The movement adopts a two-track strategy, pursuing both agitation and politics.
Regarding agitation and politics, this review cannot do justice to Phelps' detailed and evidence-based case for combining agitation (the "abolitionist" wing of the movement) and politics (the "animal welfare" wing). Basically, he is saying that the bird can't fly without two healthy wings and that no social justice movement has ever succeeded without both agitators and politicians. To fully appreciate the clarity and elegance of Phelps' thinking on this subject, readers of this review will need to read Changing the Game.
Here is a brief summary of the Seven Point Program with which Phelps closes the book. He has previously addressed each of the points in detail:
1. Align the cause of oppressed animals with the cause of oppressed human beings. "When the new age of social change arrives, it will be essential for the leaders of that change to be on the side of animals."
2. Align with the environmental movement, establishing animal rights as essential to the protection of the planet.
3. Establish animal rights as a compassionate social justice movement in the progressive public tradition.
4. Create a pedagogy of animal liberation based on findings of contemporary ethologists (who study animal behavior) like Mark Beckoff, Victoria Braithwaite and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and others.
5. Practice two-track activism.
6. Present animal liberation as a universal human value, with deep roots in both East and West.
7. Maintain nonviolence in fact and rhetoric.
Norm Phelps' Changing the Game could prove as valuable to animal rights activists of the 2010s and 2020s as Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals was for the generation of community organizers that came of age after the 1960s, or Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed for educators and activists of the same era. I suspect that nothing would please its author more.
Daniel Redwood, the reviewer, is a vegan singer-songwriter whose most recent album is Songs for Animals, People and the Earth. [...]
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Changing the Game Norm Phelps Reviews
Fantastic. Addresses the cause of great differences among vegans regarding how to achieve animal liberation Are single-issue campaigns worth the time and effort or should we disregard welfare at the expense of animals, focusing on the ethical issues of animal exploitation, suffering, and death? Both sides have value. I believe we can support single-issue campaigns as long as animal liberation remains front and center. Campaigns can be ways to raise awareness and eventually provide less horrific environments for the animals. Note I did not say 'nice' environments. The moment an animal becomes a commodity it loses its freedom and is ultimately put into harm's way.
HANGING THE GAME first came out as an e-book in 2013, and Lantern Books (at which I am the editor and publisher) worked with Norm to update and expand it as a printed book for its publication in February 2015. Sadly, Norm died after a long illness on December 31, 2014, and so CHANGING THE GAME is his epitaph. I was privileged to work with Norm on all four of his titles, and I found him to be a consummate professional. He was always graceful and and enthusiastic and open to our suggestions. His writing is often polemical, and he wasn't afraid to call it how he saw it; but he was nonetheless unfailingly generous even with those with whom he disagreed, and he always took the extended view on social change (which transferred itself into his prose, which has a calmness and confidence that speaks of conserving energy for the long haul). CHANGING THE GAME asks animal advocates to stop falling into the ideological traps that divide us and to recognize our strengths. For all of Norm's commitment to a rights-based animal advocacy, he was very aware of the need to reach out to others and to honor the motivations of those who may care about animals but whose tactics we disagree with. We are, he states in CHANGING THE GAME, only in the early stages of our campaign for justice, and we should stop acting as though we expect change to happen tomorrow. Such magical thinking is naive, counterproductive, and ahistorical, and stops us from doing the hard work necessary to build coalitions, broaden our constituency, and make genuine inroads. We at Lantern will miss Norm's voice; at the same time, we're honored we were (and are) able to bring his voice to the reader.
good book, not sure what else to say except that stupid rating requires 18 words so I will keep writing until... good book.
Norm Phelps makes a strong case for not approaching animal advocacy from an all-or-nothing standpoint. He tackles tough issues and makes that point that we are ultimately more likely to make progress in our work for animals by celebrating steps in the right direction than we are by assuming a hard-line veganism-only approach. While I certainly appreciate both sides of the argument and find steps in the right direction to be less than completely satisfying, I also respect Phelps' assertion that we probably won't see the world turn vegan in our lifetimes, but slow progress in the right direction is still progress. It is unhelpful for people interested in animal advocacy--or in social justice, in general--to fight amongst ourselves. We will be more effective if we can recognize that we are all on the same side and if we can celebrate each drop in the bucket of increased justice in the world.
Changing the Game Why the Battle for Animal Liberation Is So Hard and How We Can Win It
By Norm Phelps
New York. Lantern Books. 2013.
Reviewed by Daniel Redwood
Norm Phelps is a veteran animal rights activist whose books include The Dominion of Love Animal Rights According to the Bible (2002), The Great Compassion Buddhism and Animal Rights (2004) and The Longest Struggle Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA (2007). His writings on the spiritual and religious roots of animal rights stand as a unique contribution to the movement. Scholarly yet fully engaged, they are imbued with compassion and a burning desire to move humanity ever closer to the embodiment of principles for which its spiritual traditions too often provide lip service but little more.
Phelps' new book, Changing the Game Why the Battle for Animal Liberation Is So Hard and How We Can Win It, positions the contemporary animal rights movement within the continuing story of the social justice movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, noting that while it shares some of other movements' core characteristics -- defending the weak against the powerful, advocating for their moral parity, and basing its appeals on compassion and empathy -- there are also dramatic differences.
These differences are easy to overlook. In the long forward march of all other social justice movements in the United States -- minority rights, women's rights, labor rights, and gay rights -- the oppressed groups played a central role in their own liberation. They could speak for themselves, testify about their oppression and their needs, serve as the movement's core constituency, provide its most committed activists and leaders, and correct well-meaning allies whose understanding of their plight was inaccurate or incomplete.
Animals cannot contribute to the animal rights movement in these ways. "Try to imagine a civil rights movement led and conducted entirely by whites with no mechanism to get regular, reliable feedback from blacks," Phelps asks. "Or a feminist movement led and conducted entirely by men with no mechanism to get regular, reliable feedback from women. The thought boggles the mind. And yet that is where we are in the animal rights movement."
Moreover, the oppression of animals has lasted far longer than the forms of oppression that sparked other social justice movements, in one form or another crossing all national, ethnic and cultural boundaries. Because animal slavery and slaughter are not specific to any particular religion, nation, or economic system, abandoning or overthrowing such systems or regimes will not solve the problem. Animal oppression, Phelps asserts, is the "universal crime ... more securely embedded in our psychology and culture than any other form of despotism."
Phelps then points out something less obvious and ultimately more hopeful -- that in the United States and much of the Western world, the entire history of the modern animal rights movement (from the 1970s to the present) has taken place during a period of "conservative consensus," historically the most difficult of times for any social justice movement to achieve significant progress. In contrast, the period of liberal consensus between the 1930s and the 1970s saw major breakthroughs in social justice for workers, women, and minorities. Phelps describes that era as one "that by any reasonable standard would have to be regarded as one of the most remarkable periods of human progress in the history of the world."
In such eras of liberal consensus, even conservative leaders do not seriously challenge the fundamental assumptions of the liberal worldview; in conservative eras such as ours, the reverse is true. Phelps illustrates the point this way "Just as conservative presidents Eisenhower and Nixon made no serious efforts to dismantle liberal programs, Obama has made no serious effort to overturn the conservatives' philosophy of social Darwinism and unregulated cutthroat capitalism." He describes the conservative consensus as characterized by "substantive attacks on the idea that caring for the well-being of the people is a legitimate function of government."
The implications for the animal rights movement are profound, if often unrecognized. "The civil rights movement had nearly 20 years to make progress in the [liberal] consensus' nurturing environment, while the women's movement had barely ten and the gay and lesbian movement no more than five. Timing is everything, and the animals' movement had the great misfortune of coming into being just as the liberal consensus was passing into history. Animal rights is the orphan child of the 1960s."
Phelps long-term optimism springs from the fact that all such eras have a beginning and an end and his belief that a new progressive era is now on the horizon. "We are approaching a period of social upheaval that promises to combine the concern for economic justice that characterized the 1930s with the impulse toward social justice that defined the 1960s." When this period of opportunity emerges, Phelps says, it will bring with it the potential for major breakthroughs in many areas, including animal rights. While this by no means guarantees success, it will differ markedly from the current conservative era, in which the strategic focus of progressive activists, including animal rights activists, has been to prevent major steps backward rather than to achieve major steps forward.
With the long-arc view of an elder, Phelps proposes a series of directional guideposts for current and future animal rights activists, a Seven-Point Program for Changing the Game. First, however, he cautions that "animal slavery and slaughter will end when and only when four conditions coincide"
1. Our society enters an era that is sympathetic to progressive social justice causes and accepting of rapid, radical social change.
2. There is a genuine and broadly based universal liberation movement that pursues justice for humans, animals and the environment together.
3. The animal liberation movement establishes its identity in the public mind as a public social justice movement (such as civil rights or women's rights) rather than a private morality movement (such as prohibition or the war on drugs).
4. The movement adopts a two-track strategy, pursuing both agitation and politics.
Regarding agitation and politics, this review cannot do justice to Phelps' detailed and evidence-based case for combining agitation (the "abolitionist" wing of the movement) and politics (the "animal welfare" wing). Basically, he is saying that the bird can't fly without two healthy wings and that no social justice movement has ever succeeded without both agitators and politicians. To fully appreciate the clarity and elegance of Phelps' thinking on this subject, readers of this review will need to read Changing the Game.
Here is a brief summary of the Seven Point Program with which Phelps closes the book. He has previously addressed each of the points in detail
1. Align the cause of oppressed animals with the cause of oppressed human beings. "When the new age of social change arrives, it will be essential for the leaders of that change to be on the side of animals."
2. Align with the environmental movement, establishing animal rights as essential to the protection of the planet.
3. Establish animal rights as a compassionate social justice movement in the progressive public tradition.
4. Create a pedagogy of animal liberation based on findings of contemporary ethologists (who study animal behavior) like Mark Beckoff, Victoria Braithwaite and Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and others.
5. Practice two-track activism.
6. Present animal liberation as a universal human value, with deep roots in both East and West.
7. Maintain nonviolence in fact and rhetoric.
Norm Phelps' Changing the Game could prove as valuable to animal rights activists of the 2010s and 2020s as Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals was for the generation of community organizers that came of age after the 1960s, or Paolo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed for educators and activists of the same era. I suspect that nothing would please its author more.
Daniel Redwood, the reviewer, is a vegan singer-songwriter whose most recent album is Songs for Animals, People and the Earth. [...]
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