LIBERATION THEOLOGY

Catholic priest and Indigenous activist Pérez killed by 2 gunmen in southern Mexico

Associated Press
Sun, October 20, 2024 a




Mexico Violence
People gather around an altar where Catholic priest Marcelo Perez died in an armed attack after attending mass at a church in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas state, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Isabel Mateos)

TAPACHULA, Mexico (AP) — Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez, an activist for Indigenous peoples and farm laborers in southern Mexico, was killed on Sunday.

The prosecutors' office in the city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the state of Chiapas, said the religious leader was shot dead by two gunmen when he was in his van.

Pérez was a member of the Tzotzil Indigenous people and had just finished serving a Mass when he was attacked. He served the community for two decades and was known as a negotiator in conflicts in a mountainous region of Chiapas where crime, violence and land disputes are rife.

Pérez also led several marches against violence, which has brought him several death threats.

Chipas Gov. Rutilio Escandón posted on X that he condemned "the cowardly assassination of father Marcelo Pérez.

“We will collaborate with all the authorities so his death doesn't go unpunished and those guilty face the courts,” Escandón said.
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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Paulo Freire’s Legacy And The Necessity of Critical Pedagogy in Dark Times

By Henry A. Giroux

September 30, 2024

Source: Counter Punch


Freire in 1963

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world

–Nelson Mandela

Paulo Freire, the radical Brazilian educator, would have turned 103 on September 19, 2025. Freire was not merely an academic; he was a revolutionary, a fierce champion of the oppressed whose lifelong fight for economic, educational, and social justice has left an indelible mark on generations of teachers, students, and cultural workers worldwide. His seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was written under the brutal political repression of 1960s Brazil, yet its message reverberates even louder today in the face of rising authoritarianism and the war on critical thought. Freire knew that education is never neutral—it is always a political act. It either serves to liberate or to domesticate, to empower or to subjugate.

Born in 1921 in Recife, Brazil, Freire experienced poverty and inequality firsthand, shaping his lifelong commitment to the oppressed. A staunch advocate of liberation theology, he pioneered an emancipatory pedagogy rooted in critical literacy—a tool not just for understanding the world but for transforming it. Following the military coup in Brazil in 1964, Freire was imprisoned for 70 days before being exiled for nearly two decades. His return to Brazil in 1980 did not mark the end of his activism; until his death on May 2, 1997, Freire remained a voice for the marginalized and oppressed.

Paulo and I were close friends, working together from 1980 for fifteen years. I witnessed firsthand his unwavering belief that democratizing education is at the very core of political resistance. Today, as education comes under attack by neoliberal and authoritarian regimes worldwide, Freire’s ideas are more vital than ever. We saw this clearly when fascist president Jair Bolsonaro sought to smear Paulo’s name, discredit his legacy, and censor his books in Brazil—a testament to the enduring power of Freire’s vision.

In these perilous times, Freire’s work is not just relevant—it is a radical call to arms. As fascism resurges globally and civic culture crumbles beneath the weight of manufactured ignorance, remembering Freire is not enough. We must reclaim his legacy as a rallying cry to resist and rebel. Freire understood that education and politics are inseparable; teaching critically is an act of defiance, a direct challenge to oppression. His pedagogy is not a sterile method but a living project of freedom, a force against oppression. Freire wasn’t just an intellectual—he was a revolutionary whose work offers both analysis and a pathway to liberation. He understood that people must be informed to act for justice, and that education, inherently political, empowers individuals to reflect, manage their lives, and engage critically in the struggle for power, agency, and a more just future. Freire’s message was clear: an informed and critically engaged populace is the greatest force against tyranny, and education must serve as the foundation for this transformative power.

Paulo was well aware that people had to be informed in order to act in the name of justice. He observed that education in the broadest sense was eminently political because it offered students the conditions for self-reflection, a self-managed life, and particular notions of critical agency. Education was central to politics because it was a struggle over power, agency, identity, contexts, theory, and a vision of the future. Paulo Freire claimed that informed citizens are essential to the pursuit of justice. For him, education was inherently political because it fostered self-reflection, autonomy, and critical agency. Education, as a battleground over power, identity, and the future, stood at the heart of societal struggles. Freire’s contribution to pedagogy is unmatched—he rejected the notion of education as mere training or neutral transmission of knowledge. Instead, he saw pedagogy as a political and moral practice that equips students to become critical citizens, deepening their engagement with democracy. Freire’s vision was radical because he knew that only an informed populace could act in the name of economic and justice.

Paulo fervently argued that the value of education, civic literacy, and critical pedagogy could be measured by how much it improved people’s lives, gave them a sense of hope, and pointed to a future that was more just and free of oppression and domination. He believed that there was no possibility for social change unless there was a change in peoples’ attitudes, consciousness, and how they live their lives. Paulo rightly argued that a critical education could teach young people, the oppressed, and others not to look away, to take risks in the name of a future of hope and possibility. His radical belief in education’s power wasn’t just conviction—it was a commitment to social change, grounded in the idea that identity, power, and values are inseparable from political and educational struggles. Freire understood that theory doesn’t come first—real struggles do. He argued that you start with the concrete problems people face in their everyday lives, and that theory serves as a tool to confront and solve those problems. Theory, for Freire, is not an abstract exercise; it’s a weapon for liberation, drawn from the very ground of lived experience.[1]

At this critical juncture, education is under siege by the forces of fascism. Right-wing politicians and authoritarian regimes are not merely attacking the classroom—they are waging an all-out war on critical education. They seek to ban books, erase history, and crush dissent. These forces understand, as Freire did, that whoever controls education holds the power to shape the future. That’s why the battle for education is inseparable from the larger struggle for democracy and social justice. Education is not simply a path to individual advancement—it is the foundation of collective liberation.

Freire’s pedagogy is a rallying cry against authoritarianism. He exposes the ways in which those in power seek to turn education into a weapon of oppression. In contrast, Freire teaches that education must be a practice of freedom—a dynamic space where students and educators engage in critical dialogue, question power structures, and dare to imagine a world beyond the chains of domination. His work compels us to see education not as passive consumption, but as an active, revolutionary process—one that involves critically reading both the word and the world and taking collective action to dismantle the conditions of oppression.

The rise of fascist politics across the globe has revealed the latest stage of gangster capitalism in all its ugliness, which include the death producing mechanisms of systemic astonishing inequality, deregulation, a culture of cruelty, White Christian nationalism, systemic racism, and an increasingly dangerous assault on the environment. It has also made visible an anti-intellectual culture that derides any notion of critical education, that is, an education that equips individuals to think critically, take risks, think outside of the box, engage in thoughtful dialogue, appropriate the lessons of history, and learn how to hold power accountable. At the same time, the claims of global capitalism have been undermined as a result of its economic failures, the emptiness of its promises of upward social mobility, and the horrors it has let loose upon, especially in the form of endless wars, massive poverty and staggering concentrations of wealth in the financial elite.

It is hard to imagine a more urgent moment for taking seriously Freire’s ongoing attempts to make education central to politics. At stake for Freire was the notion that education was a social concept rooted the goal of emancipation for all people. This is a pedagogy that calls us beyond ourselves, and engages the ethical imperative to care for others, dismantle structures of domination, and to become subjects rather than objects of history, politics, and power.

This was a political project infused with a language of critique and possibility while simultaneously addressing the notion that there is no democracy without knowledgeable and civically literate citizens. Such a language is necessary to enable the conditions to forge a collective international resistance among educators, youth, artists, and other cultural workers in defense of public goods. Such a movement is important to resist and overcome the tyrannical fascist nightmares that have descended upon the United States, Hungary, Turkey, Argentina, and several other countries plagued by the rise of right-wing populist movements. In an age of social isolation, information overflow, a culture of immediacy, consumer glut, and spectacularized violence, it is all the more crucial to take seriously the notion that a democracy cannot exist or be defended without civically literate, informed and critically engaged citizens.

Education both in its symbolic and institutional forms has a central role to play in fighting the resurgence of anti-democratic cultures, mythic historical narratives, and the emerging ideologies of white supremacy and white nationalism. Moreover, as far-right extremists across the globe are disseminating toxic racist and ultra-nationalist images of the past, it is essential to reclaim education and critical pedagogy through the lens of historical consciousness and moral witnessing. This is especially true at a time when historical and social amnesia have become a national pastime matched only by the masculinization of the public sphere and the increasing normalization of a fascist politics that thrives on ignorance, fear, the suppression of dissent, and hate. Education as a form of cultural work extends far beyond the classroom and its pedagogical influence, though often imperceptible, is crucial to challenging and resisting the rise of fascist pedagogical formations and their rehabilitation of fascist principles and ideas.[2]

Cultural politics since the 1970s has turned toxic as ruling elites increasingly gained control of commanding cultural apparatuses turning them into pedagogical disimagination machines that serve the forces of ethical tranquilization by producing and legitimating endless degrading and humiliating images of the poor, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and others considered excess, dismissed as wasted lives doomed to terminal exclusion. The geographies of moral and political decadence have become the organizing standard of the dream worlds of consumption, privatization, surveillance, and deregulation. Within this increasingly fascist landscape, public spheres are replaced by zones of social abandonment and thrive on the energies of the walking dead who are the embodiment of a culture of manufactured ignorance, cruelty, and misery.

Under a global gangster capitalism, the destruction of the public good is matched by a toxic merging of inequality, greed, and the nativist language of borders, walls, and camps. It is crucial for educators to remember that language is not simply an instrument of fear, violence, and intimidation, it is also a vehicle for critique, civic courage, resistance, and engaged and informed agency. We live at a time when the language of democracy has been pillaged, stripped of its promises and hopes.

Paulo was right in insisting that if right-wing populism and authoritarianism are to be defeated, there is a need to make education an organizing principle of politics and, in part, this can be done with a language, form of critical literacy, and pedagogy that exposes and unravels falsehoods, systems of oppression, and corrupt relations of power while making clear that an alternative future is possible. Language is a powerful tool in the search for truth and the condemnation of falsehoods and injustices. Moreover, it is through language that the history of fascism can be remembered and the lessons of the conditions that created the plague of genocide can provide the recognition that fascism does not reside solely in the past and that its traces are always dormant, even in the strongest democracies. Paulo was keenly aware of Primo Levi’s warning that “Every age has its own fascism, and we see the warning signs wherever the concentration of power denies citizens the possibility and the means of expressing and acting on their own free will.”

James Baldwin was certainly right in issuing the stern warning in No Name in the Street that “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” Thinking is now viewed as an act of stupidity, and thoughtlessness is considered a virtue. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture. Ignorance is not innocent, especially when it labels thinking dangerous while exhibiting a disdain for truth, scientific evidence, and rational judgments. However, there is more at stake here than the production of a toxic form of illiteracy celebrated as commonsense, the normalization of fake news, and the shrinking of political horizons. There is also the closing of the horizons of the political and pedagogical coupled with explicit expressions of cruelty and a “widely sanctioned ruthlessness.”[3]

Under such circumstances, there is a full-scale attack on thoughtful reasoning, empathy, collective resistance, and the compassionate imagination. As Toni Morrison has noted we live at a time when language is censored, reduced to a kind of narcotic narcissism, and cannot tolerate new or critical ideas. As a tool of domination, it becomes a dead language, stripped of its transformative potential. Instead of fostering critical thought, it erases history, promotes menace, subjugation, and is wielded as a practice of violence. Think of how language in support of Palestinian freedom has been censored, disabled, and hollowed out under the claim of being antisemitic.

Given the current crisis of politics engulfed in a tsunami of disimagination machines, educators need a new political and pedagogical language for addressing the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which capital draws upon an unprecedented convergence of resources–financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, and technological–to exercise powerful and diverse forms of control. If educators and others are to counter global capitalism’s increased ability to separate the traditional sphere of politics from the now transnational reach of power, it is crucial to develop educational approaches that reject a collapse of the distinction between market liberties and civil liberties, a market economy and a market society. Resistance does not begin with reforming capitalism but abolishing it. In this instance, critical pedagogy becomes a political and moral practice in the fight to revive civic literacy, civic culture, and a notion of shared citizenship. Politics loses its emancipatory possibilities if it cannot provide the educational conditions for enabling students and others to think critically, realize themselves as informed and engaged citizens willing to fight for social change in the name of democracy. There is no radical politics without a pedagogy capable of awakening consciousness, challenging common sense, and creating modes of analysis in which people discover a moment of recognition that enables them to rethink the conditions that shape their lives.

Freire was clear in arguing that as a rule, educators should do more than create the conditions for critical thinking and nourishing a sense of hope for their students. They also should assume the role of civic educators within broader social contexts and be willing to share their ideas with other educators and the wider public by making use of new media technologies. Communicating to a variety of public audiences suggests using opportunities for writing, public talks, and media interviews offered by the radio, Internet, alternative magazines, and teaching young people and adults in alternative schools to name only a few. Capitalizing on their role as public intellectuals, faculty can speak to more general audiences in a language that is clear, accessible, and rigorous. More importantly, as teachers organize to assert both the importance of their role as citizen-educators and that of education in a democracy, they can forge new alliances and connections to develop social movements that include and expand beyond working with unions.

In the current historical moment, it is all the more crucial to embrace critical pedagogy as a political and moral practice that cannot be removed from issues of power, assigned meanings, and definitions of the future. Education operates as a crucial site of power in the modern world. If teachers are truly concerned about safeguarding education, they will, as Paulo suggested have to take seriously how pedagogy functions on local and global levels. Critical pedagogy has an important role to play in both understanding and challenging how power, knowledge, and values are deployed, affirmed, and resisted within and outside of traditional discourses and cultural spheres. In a local context, critical pedagogy becomes an important theoretical tool for understanding the institutional conditions that place constraints on the production of knowledge, learning, academic labor, social relations, and democracy itself. Critical pedagogy also provides a discourse for engaging and challenging the construction of social hierarchies, identities, and ideologies as they traverse local and national borders. In addition, pedagogy as a form of production and critique offers a discourse of possibility—a way of providing students with the opportunity to link understanding to commitment, and social transformation to seeking the greatest possible justice.

This suggests that one of the most serious challenges facing teachers, artists, journalists, writers, and other cultural workers is the task of developing a language, discourse and pedagogical practices that connect a critical reading of both the word and the world in ways that enhance the creative capacities of young people and provide the conditions for them to become critical agents. In taking up this project, educators and others should attempt to create the conditions that give students the opportunity to acquire the knowledge, values, and civic courage that enables them to struggle in order to make desolation and cynicism unconvincing and hope practical. Hope in this instance is educational, removed from the fantasy of an idealism that is unaware of the constraints facing the struggle for a radical democratic society. Educated hope is not a call to overlook the difficult conditions that shape both schools and the larger social order nor is it a blueprint removed from specific contexts and struggles. On the contrary, it is the precondition for imagining a future that does not replicate the nightmares of the present, for not making the present the future.

As Freire noted, educated hope at best is a form of active social hope that dignifies the labor of teachers, offers up critical knowledge linked to democratic social change, affirms shared responsibilities, and encourages teachers and students to recognize ambivalence and uncertainty as fundamental dimensions of learning. Such hope offers the possibility of thinking beyond the given. Without hope, even in dire times, there is no possibility for resistance, dissent, and struggle. Agency is the condition of struggle, and hope is the condition of agency. Hope expands the space of the possible and becomes a way of recognizing and naming the incomplete nature of the present.

For Freire, the merging of politics and pedagogy is rooted in the dream of a collective consciousness and imagination fueled by the struggle for new forms of individual and collective identity that affirm the value of the social, economic equality, the social contract, and democratic values and social relations. Democracy should be a way of thinking about education, one that thrives on connecting pedagogy to the practice of freedom, learning to ethics, and identity to the imperatives of social responsibility and the public good.[4] For Paulo, education was not just a tool for defending democracy, it also enabled it. The fact remains that without hope there is no agency and without collective agents, there is no hope of resistance. In the age of nascent fascism, it is not enough to connect education with the defense of reason, informed judgment, and critical consciousness; it must also be aligned with the power and potential of collective resistance. We live in dangerous times. Consequently, there is an urgent need for more individuals, institutions and social movements to come together in the belief that the current fascist regimes of tyranny can be resisted, that alternative futures are possible and that acting on these beliefs through collective resistance will make radical change happen.

At a time when democracy is under relentless assault, Paulo Freire’s work is not just necessary—it is a revolutionary imperative for survival. We must reclaim education as a radical act of resistance, a space to nurture critical consciousness, collective power, unyielding civic courage, and collective change. . We must confront and dismantle the authoritarian forces that seek to transform education into a weapon of domination, embracing instead Freire’s vision of education as an emancipatory force—one that ignites the oppressed to reshape their world and forge a future anchored in justice, radical equality, and genuine democracy. Moreover, we must call not for reform but for structural change. This is a call not to merely lessen the horrors of capitalism but to replace it with a form of democratic socialism, while recognizing that capitalism and democracy are not synonymous.

In the face of rising fascism, Freire’s pedagogy demands we see education for what it truly is: a fight for freedom. He showed us that education is either an instrument of liberation or a tool of tyranny. Most of all it must be a practice of freedom and a project of collective emancipation. In an age starved of vision, Freire offered a revolutionary pathway, insisting that education, critical pedagogy, and civic literacy must be bound to a fierce responsibility to resist the unspeakable and unthinkable.

Freire inspired educators and cultural workers to act with bold conviction, audacity, and the fierce courage needed to confront the forces that would drag us back into a dark past—a past defined by fear, terror, and submission. He taught us not only to learn from history but to transform it, to stand in defiance of oppression, and to commit ourselves wholly to the struggle for justice, liberation, and radical joy. Now, more than ever, this is the moment for all of us who care about education as a defender and enabler of critical education to embody the spirit Freire invoked. We must rise with the conviction, audacity, and courage that he ignited within us—confronting those who seek to chain us to a history of fear and submission—and instead, fearlessly carve out a future rooted in justice, equality, and collective emancipation.

Freire’s legacy is not just a memory; it is a revolutionary flame burning brightly in the heart of the call for individual and collective resistance. In this age of rising authoritarianism, we must expand our understanding of education beyond traditional boundaries and infantile notions of empiricism and overt repression. We must see education in every space—as an act of defiance, a tool for liberation, and a force for emancipation. If we are to build a truly democratic socialist society, every corner of culture must become a site of critical inquiry and resistance, where citizens are empowered to challenge oppression and reimagine a world built on justice, equity, and freedom. Freire’s fire is ours to keep alive, fueling the struggle for a future where learning itself becomes an act of revolution.

Notes.

[1] Cindy Patton, “Refiguring Social Space,” in Linda Nicholson and Steven Seidman, eds. Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 227.

[2] See, for example, Jane Mayer, “The Making of the Fox News White House,” The New Yorker (March 4, 2019). Online: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house

[3] Pankaj Mishra, “A Gandhian Stand Against the Culture of Cruelty,” The New York Review of Books, [May 22, 2018]. Online: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/05/22/the-culture-of-cruelty/

[4] I take this up in Henry A. Giroux, Pedagogy of resistance (London: Bloomsbury Books, 2022).




Henry A. Giroux

Henry Giroux (born 1943) is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic, Professor Henry Giroux has authored, or co-authored over 65 books, written several hundred scholarly articles, delivered more than 250 public lectures, been a regular contributor to print, television, and radio news media outlets, and is one of the most cited Canadian academics working in any area of Humanities research. In 2002, he was named as one of the top fifty educational thinkers of the modern period in Fifty Modern Thinkers on Education: From Piaget to the Present as part of Routledge’s Key Guides Publication Series.

Rick Turner and Steve Biko were leading liberation thinkers in 1970s South Africa – why their ideas still matter

By Michael Onyebuchi Eze - 17 September 2024
THE CONVERSATION


Steve Biko was undoubtedly the most influential South African liberation struggle theorist and activist of the 1970s. Rick Turner was arguably among the most effectual white anti-apartheid activists of the era. Biko espoused black consciousness while Turner was a Marxist philosopher. Biko (30) was murdered by apartheid police in 1977. Turner (36) was shot dead by an apartheid assassin in 1978. Their ideas continue to resonate. Political scientist and philosopher Michael Onyebuchi Eze sets out, in a chapter of a new book, Rick Turner’s Politics as the Art of the Impossible, how the two men’s philosophies mirrored and critiqued each other. The Conversation Africa asked him to explain.

What were Turner’s and Biko’s philosophies?

Following almost three centuries of colonialism, the National Party came into power in South Africa in 1948. It formalised apartheid (apartness) into law. The policy kept black people and white people apart, and discriminated against the black majority. In 1960, the apartheid regime banned the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress liberation movements.

Rick Turner and Steve Biko gained prominence in the freedom struggle in the 1970s. Turner taught philosophy at the segregated University of Natal. Biko was studying at the “non-European” section of the university’s medical school. They met in Durban in 1970. The meeting triggered the “Durban Movement”, which mobilised workers’ and wider societal resistance against apartheid and capitalist exploitation. The movement shaped strategies in the fight against apartheid.

Biko’s black consciousness movement articulated a profound and multilayered critique of apartheid. It called for the psychological and cultural liberation of black South Africans. The core argument of black consciousness was that black people (“Africans”, “Coloureds” and “Indians”) needed to rally together around the cause of their oppression — the blackness of their skin. It implored them to work as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bound them to perpetual servitude.

Freedom would only be possible if black people cultivated a sense of pride, self-worth and agency. Black consciousness sought to change negative connotations of blackness into an empowering ideal of freedom. This also meant liberty from the internalised racism and self-hate imposed by apartheid.

It involved rejecting the imposed narratives and values of the white oppressors, and developing a positive self identity.

Biko advocated for black people to champion their own liberation without reliance on white paternalism. As he famously noted,

the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.

Since Christianity was also implicated in apartheid, Biko championed a new understanding of Christianity, rooted in black theology.

Black theology said Christianity was not about surrendering to oppression as the will of God, but about liberation from oppression. Biko’s philosophy was centred on the psychological and cultural liberation of black South Africans. For Biko, resistance meant freedom as defiance and defiance as freedom.

Turner called for radical social and political change through his critique of apartheid, capitalism and liberalism. These ideologies were connected in reproducing social systems of oppression and dehumanisation.

Apartheid was a form of racialist capitalism: the idea that access to labour, jobs or economic life is determined by race. It perpetuated unjust capitalist accumulation through oppressing black South Africans and excluding them from the economy.

Turner was not only critical of racialist capitalism; he also condemned white liberalism: an ideology of social justice and equality championed by white activists, who often do not fully understand their own privileges or biases.

He saw white liberalism as inadequate and superficial in fighting the root causes of systemic inequality, and often complicit in maintaining the status quo. Beyond the material basis of oppression, Turner also challenged the ideological foundation of apartheid.

Turner advanced a new idea of freedom that focused on transformation of the mind and socio-cultural mindset. He linked political rights with dignity. Doing so made apartheid oppression inherently illegal and immoral. Where apartheid used Christianity to justify racialist capitalism, Turner found potential in Christian egalitarian principles for mobilising resistance.

He rejected white paternalism, and championed a radical restructuring of society based on egalitarian principles and Christian liberation theology.

Therefore, Turner and Biko’s philosophies mirrored each other in several ways. They reflected a shared vision for radical social and political change in South Africa. Their shared vision of resistance was rooted in human restoration, freedom from imposed colonial language and ideas, and a rejection of white paternalism.

They saw political freedom as synonymous with dignity and rights (Biko), and a radical restructuring of society based on egalitarian principles (Turner).

To Turner and Biko resistance was not just a reaction to oppression but a proactive effort to create new social relations and restore agency to the oppressed.

How did their philosophies differ?

While Turner and Biko shared many philosophical similarities, their approaches and emphases had notable differences. Turner’s critique was rooted in the analysis of capitalism. His focus was on disrupting the capitalist structures that underpinned apartheid.

Biko’s focus was on the psychological and cultural dimensions of oppression. He emphasised the importance of black consciousness, which aimed to instil pride and a sense of agency among blacks. He was more concerned with internalised racism and psychological liberation.

To Turner, Christianity was instrumental to dismantling apartheid. To Biko, black liberation was the purpose of Christianity.

They both rejected white liberalism and its paternalism, but for different reasons. Turner rejected it on pragmatic grounds of not being forceful enough to achieve substantial change. Biko rejected liberalism because racial privilege meant whites could not experience what it meant to be black.

What can South Africa learn from both men?

Turner and Biko offered lessons for contemporary South Africa. They are particularly valuable in the context of ongoing struggles for social justice, equality and true decolonisation.

South Africa remains the most unequal society in the world despite government reform efforts. Where change is visible, the distinction between the new black elites and the less privileged turns into elitist discrimination.

Superficial reforms on land redistribution, access to basic healthcare or even basic education do not address the root causes of systemic inequality. Both Turner and Biko emphasised the need for deep structural changes.

True decolonisation requires a shift on how knowledge is acquired, affects and shapes the cultural foundations of a society. This involves challenging the narratives and values that justify and sustain oppression.

Turner and Biko teach that paternalistic attitudes, even from well-meaning allies, can undermine genuine liberation efforts. Empowerment initiatives should be led by those directly affected by oppression, ensuring that their voices and experiences are at the forefront of the movement.


Rick Turner’s Politics as the Art of the Impossible is published by Wits University Press (2024).

Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Assistant Professor, California State University, Fresno

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The global gag rule and women’s abortion rights

9th September 2024Leave a Commenton The global gag rule and women’s abortion rights

“Supporters of women’s equality understand that equal participation in the public sphere, and for women living our lives as full human beings, involves the right for women to choose if, and when, to become mothers.”

By Liz Lawrence

In the context of the forthcoming US Presidential election, in which Republican and Democratic parties take very different positions on abortion rights and in which the Democratic presidential contestant, Kamala Harris, is taking a clear pro-choice stance.

Why birth control is essential for women’s liberation

Decades of feminist campaigning in many countries have led to a widespread understanding among feminists, socialists and labour movement activists that access to birth control is essential for women’s liberation. Many trade unions now have pro-choice policies. Debates around access to birth control, both contraception and abortion, often contain debates about the position of women in society. For conservatives who seek to restrict reproductive rights women should primarily be wives and mothers, living in a traditional patriarchal family, with other activities, such as education, employment and participation in public life, secondary to the maternal role.

Supporters of women’s equality understand that equal participation in the public sphere, and for women living our lives as full human beings, involves the right for women to choose if, and when, to become mothers. A human being cannot participate equally in education, employment, politics or any other sphere, if life might be disrupted at any moment by unplanned pregnancy, and if their participation in the public sphere is always subject to the assumption that they might leave any position they occupy at any moment on account of pregnancy and motherhood. This stigma of potential maternity was used for generations to deny women equal opportunities in the workplace.

There are questions of bodily autonomy and access to health care involved. For the anti-abortionists the woman’s body is the property of anyone other than the woman, whether it be her parents, husband or the state. Birth control is healthcare. Without access to birth control many women suffer health damage and risk to life from repeated pregnancies and childbirth.

Why birth control is essential for women’s liberation

The global gag rule is a United States Government ban on foreign NGOs which provide abortion services (including abortion advice) from receiving any US Government funding. It is also known as the Mexico City policy, because this was the venue where it was announced by the US Government at the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development.

This ban also affects NGOs which advocate for abortion law reform such as the decriminalisation of abortion. Even if any abortion-related activities are funded by the NGO from other sources, it still loses all US Government funding. The global gag rule originally ended $600 million in money for family planning services.  International Planned Parenthood lost 20% of its funding. Thus, healthcare organisations were faced with a choice of either losing funding or restricting the services they provided.

The global gag rule was first introduced in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan. Since then, each successive US administration has decided either to maintain or lift the gag. This has made funding for abortion-related healthcare services a party-political issue in the USA and a matter of increasingly sharp political division. In some countries such matters can be seen as healthcare issues where there is a bipartisan or multi-party consensus, which is based on respect for the right of women to choose and on medical and scientific evidence. In the USA a change of President can almost immediately mean either the lifting or the re-imposition of the global gag rule, with Democratic Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden all lifting the gag.

In January 2017 President Trump expanded the global gag rule to cover more health areas. It had originally applied to NGOs in the family planning field, but it was extended to all international healthcare assistance and affected nearly $9 billion in healthcare funding. It thus affected areas like HIV education.

The global gag rule restricted the ability of healthcare workers to counsel clients properly and offer a full range of options or to campaign on healthcare issues. It had a chilling effect on health education and advocacy, similar to section 28 or other attempts by governments to limit sex education and advice by sexual health services. It can thus also be seen as a freedom of speech issue.

The health impact of the global gag

Maternal mortality worldwide is unacceptably high. About 287 000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2020.  Almost 95% of maternal deaths occurred in low and lower middle-income countries in 2020, and most could have been prevented by access to better healthcare.

Women in low-income countries have a higher lifetime risk of maternal death. A woman’s lifetime risk of maternal death is the probability that a 15-year-old woman will eventually die from a maternal cause. In high income countries, this is 1 in 5300, versus 1 in 49 in low-income countries.

For many women in the world today pregnancy is a life-threatening condition, as it was centuries ago world-wide. This means women go through pregnancy knowing it could lead to their death or permanent injury to health. This takes a toll on both physical and mental health.

Cutting funding for family planning services leads to more unplanned pregnancies, and may increase the abortion rate. Bans on abortion do not stop abortion; they just increase the likelihood that the procedure occurs under unsafe conditions, with higher rates of mortality and morbidity. The World Health Organisation estimates that 45% of abortions are unsafe.

The global gag has also impacted health education and health advocacy, including HIV/AIDS education and support for marginal and vulnerable groups, including workers in the sex industry. When funding for healthcare is cut, it is often the poorest and most vulnerable who are most affected.

How the abortion issue has been politicised

“My name is Ann Richards. I am pro-choice and I vote.” This is what Ann Richards, Democratic Governor of Texas said at the Democratic National Convention in 1992. This is a good example of how women and pro-choice activists can be galvanised by this issue, as is happening now with the Kamala Harris campaign for the US Presidency.

The Republican Party has made alliances with the Christian evangelical right, treating abortion as a key political dividing issue. Ultra-conservatives often pick an issue or two, whether abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights or sex education in schools as a focus for campaigning and as a test of political acceptability.

Right-wing Christian evangelicals and other religious fundamentalists subscribe to a theology in which salvation is linked with conformity to narrowly-defined, traditional gender roles, in which sex is only for reproduction and in which foetal life is given equal or higher status than the life of the pregnant person. Hence the woman who declines motherhood or the person who lives in a same-sex relationship or seeks to change gender cannot be accepted. This is a quest for Gilead, the dystopian society portrayed by Margaret Atwood in “The Handmaid’s Tale”.

Some Republican politicians are Christian nationalists; that is to say, they want to remove the separation of religion and the state, which was one of the major achievements of the American Revolution and to establish some version of a theocratic state. It can be hard for reasonable and liberal-minded people to appreciate just how reactionary all of this is.

Donald Trump and JD Vance use misogyny to mobilise a section of the electorate and to attack their opponents. It may fire up their base, but it will also turn off many American voters. Vance is mentioned often for his notorious remark that the US was governed by ‘childless cat ladies’ and the implication that only parents have a right to an opinion or a vote. Such views are off the wall and have sparked many amusing ripostes. Nonetheless they should not be ignored because they express both a serious level of misogyny and contempt for single people.

What happens in the US presidential election has significant implications for women’s lives and for reproductive rights and healthcare provision world-wide.

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• Liz Lawrence is a former President of University and College Union (UCU).
• This article was originally published by Anti*Capitalist Resistance on 24th August 2024.
• The Labour Outlook Editorial Team may not always agree with all of the content we reproduce but are committed to giving left voices a platform to develop, debate, discuss and occasionally disagree.

Animal Activists are “Poor in Spirit”

by Jon Hochschartner

 September 10, 2024
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Photo by Suzanne Tucker

In the first beatitude, Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” The analogous blessing from the Sermon on the Plain, in the Gospel of Luke, is more straightforward. Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor.” The text from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew is a little ambiguous.

Commentators frequently interpret ‘poor in spirit’ to mean those who have a humble attitude toward God. It implies an openness to the divine will and presence. Only by working to empty ourselves of selfish desires do we leave room for God to fill the space. Similarly, this emptying allows us to recognize the divine presence in others.When we’re poor in spirit, we can sense God telling us it’s wrong to kill animals and cause them to suffer. When we’re poor in spirit, we can see the divine presence in all, including other creatures, no matter how different they look on the outside. Finally, when we’re poor in spirit, God gives us the energy to pursue animal liberation.

Syl Ko is a writer known for highlighting the ways in which race, species and gender are interconnected. Along with her sibling, she wrote the book Aphro-ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters. Ko studied philosophy at San Francisco State University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Like many of the activists and scholars I highlight here, Ko didn’t employ spiritual language to describe her adoption of an animal-rights perspective, but it certainly could be described that way, with a sufficiently perennialist and panentheistic theology. Ko’s anti-speciesist insight was possible because of her openness to the divine will.

Ko was perhaps six or seven when she realized chicken bones were bones formerly inside animals’ bodies. “I remember the whole night I was just really hard on myself that I never made the connection,” Ko said in an interview with McGill Daily. “Then I started to hide the meat from our meals in my shoes, and I would go flush it down the toilet.“

Steven Best is co-founder of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies and the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. His work frequently provides justification for the Animal Liberation Front and seeks to link the nonhuman movement with the broader left. He is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Best explicitly described his conversion to animal-rights consciousness in religious terms. “I experienced something sacred within the bowels of the profane,” he wrote on his blog. “I was in Chicago, driving about 2 am, half-drunk and goddamn hungry. I pulled into a White Castle fast food restaurant and ordered a double cheeseburger.”

Best was usually content with a single cheeseburger. There was something about the two cheese slices and two meat patties that seemed so excessive, gross, and steeped in violence that he felt nauseated. For the first time in his life, Best made the connection between the food in his hands and the body of a living animal.

“I spit the vile flesh out of my mouth in utter revulsion,” he said. “I stumbled around in a dietary no-man’s-land for two months, not knowing what to eat, not wanting this consciousness but unable to shake it.” Thankfully, Best met some vegetarians who reassured him and steered the future animal-rights scholar in the right direction.

Ingrid Newkirk is the cofounder of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. She is the most influential nonhuman activist of her generation. Besides running PETA, she is the author of a number of books, including Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.

As many in the nonhuman movement are, Newkirk is an atheist. However, when we enlarge our concept of the God to include all goodness, we can argue the value she saw in our fellow creatures was the divine presence. Newkirk began to accept the implications of this value and it led to a profound shift in her thinking.

“As an animal cruelty officer, I went to a farm in Maryland, and they had abandoned all the animals,” Newkirk told WWTW. “All the animals were dead except one pig. I gave him water and put him in the truck to go to the vet. And on the way home, I thought, I wonder what I will have to eat for dinner tonight.”

Newkirk realized she had frozen pork chops at home. Suddenly, she connected the dots, thinking about the pig who she was bringing to the veterinarian. The contradiction of prosecuting people for animal cruelty while she continued to eat meat was too much for Newkirk to bear. She became a vegetarian.

Faraz Harsini is a scientist at the Good Food Institute, where he researches cultivated meat. Additionally, he is the founder of Allied Scholars for Animal Protection, which seeks to bring nonhuman advocacy to different academic settings. Farsini has collaborated with groups like PETA, Humane Society of the United States and others.

Like a great number of those I discuss here, he became vegetarian first and then vegan. Farsini made the initial change after someone accused him of hypocrisy. Instead of staying defensive or cynical, Harsini recognized and responded to the call of God, or, to put it in secular terms, the call of conscience.

For Harsini, the initial change resulted from a disagreement, in which he opposed buying a fish as part of Persian New Year celebrations. “It’s a tradition to keep live goldfish in water tanks, symbolizing life and freedom,” he said in an interview with Farm Animal Rights Movement. “Ironically, many fish suffer and die during this process.”

Harsini’s friend told him it made no sense to be advocating for this fish while he was eating other fish. The comment initially upset Harsini, but it got the scientist thinking and eventually led him to an anti-speciesist perspective. For many, who aren’t so poor in spirit, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Leah Garcés is the president of Mercy for Animals. Previously, she oversaw campaigns in 14 countries at the World Society for the Protection of Animals and launched Compassion in World Farming in the United States. She’s written a couple books, including Grilled: Turning Adversaries into Allies to Change the Chicken Industry.

She became vegetarian, as people frequently do, when she became aware of the inconsistency in her feelings toward animals and her diet. When we love our fellow creatures, as Garcés does, we love God, who is present in all. This is one of my favorite aspects of a panentheism. Fighting nonhuman exploitation becomes a religious duty.

“I grew up in the swamps of Florida, watching wild ducks raise their young in my mom’s flower beds,” Garcés recounted to Planetary Press. “I grew up with the conviction that these ducks, and all animals, have rich inner lives and could experience joy, love, and families, just like us.”

Garcés was deeply upset when she saw a documentary about factory farming as a teenager. Despite her affection for animals, Garcés realized she was complicit in their abuse. Rather than suppressing these negative feelings, Garcés chose to dedicate her life to protecting God’s creatures.

Ronnie Lee is the founder of the Animal Liberation Front, who, in recent years, has changed his focus to vegan education and electoral work. The Green Party of England and Wales has been Lee’s vehicle in politics. He hosts an online news show, called Slash the Banner, with his wife, Louise Ryan.

Having spent many hours interviewing Lee, I know he’d never describe his transition to vegetarianism as spirituality inspired. However, it can be interpreted that way with a broad definition of God. The divine isn’t an old man in the sky. That’s a metaphor which can serve a practical purpose, but is also limiting.

Lee’s sister was dating a vegetarian, who opposed killing animals. This simple rationale was a profound challenge to Lee. As he said in one of our conversations: “I spent about three nights staying awake thinking about this, and it playing on my mind, and me trying to find some excuse to carry on eating meat.” Ultimately, he listened to God.

Corey Lee Wrenn is the author of a number of books about animal rights. These include Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain’s First Colony. She is also the founder of Vegan Feminist Network and a co-founder of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists.

As a teenager, Wrenn was poor in spirit, so when she was confronted with the violence of our food system, she became a vegetarian. “I was watching a cooking program with my mom,” Wrenn said on the Sentientism podcast. “The guy went to a butcher shop in the program. There were pigs heads hanging from chains. That was the moment.”

The imagery made a connection for her in a visceral way. The meat she ate came from a once living animal. Surely Wrenn knew this before, but the cooking program made it more difficult to avoid. Wrenn announced she wouldn’t consume flesh again. Her mother was skeptical, but Wrenn stuck to the pledge.

Paul Shapiro is the the author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World. He is CEO of Better Meat Co. and host of the Business for Good podcast. Previously, he founded Compassion Over Killing, now Animal Outlook, and served as a vice president at HSUS.

At an early age, Shapiro recognized what we might term a divine spark in our fellow creatures. “I basically figured that we don’t have to eat animals,” Shapiro said on the Cultivated Meat and Future Food podcast. “And so if I had my choice between committing violence against them or not, I would really rather just live and let live.”

Priya Sawhney is a co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere. As part of her activism, she has disrupted events featuring Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Sawhney has been arrested a number of times and faced a variety of felony charges. She seems indomitable.

In an interview on the YouTube channel RenaissanceMarieAustin, Sawhney explained she had long been sympathetic to the suffering of animals. It upset her to see others treat God’s creatures with such callousness and disrespect. The reality of industrial agriculture came as a great shock.

“I grew up India where I saw a lot of stray dogs,” Sawhney said. “I really didn’t like it when I saw people bullying them, throwing rocks at them, you know, just treating them like they’re not living beings. To me, that was the worst thing that was happening. Then I started learning, ‘Oh wow, there’s factory farming.’”

Andrew Linzey is an Anglican priest and theologian. He is the author of many books making a Christian case for nonhuman rights. These include Animal Theology. Linzey is the founder and director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the editor of the Journal for Animal Ethics.

While I have to translate the motivations of most of the activists and scholars I write about here into spiritual language, he is very clear about the religious motivations of his concern for nonhumans. From Linzey’s description, it sounded as if his Christian identity came first.

“When I was in my teens I had a series of intensely religious experiences,” he told Satya magazine. “They deepened my sense of God as the creator of all things. And they also deepened my sensitivity towards creation itself so that concern for God’s creatures and animal rights followed from that.”

Carol J. Adams has written a long list of titles, most famously The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. It has been translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, Polish, Spanish, and French. In the 1970s, she helped launched a hotline for battered women in upstate New York.

Adams traced her vegetarianism to the killing of a horse, one she adored, after her first year at Yale Divinity School. Because Adams was poor in spirit, she was able to sense God telling us it’s wrong to eat animals. Most people dismiss these troubling intuitions. It’s to Adams’ credit she didn’t.

“I returned home,” she recounted to Nervy Girl. “As I was unpacking I heard a furious knocking at the door. Our neighbor greeted me as I opened the door. He exclaimed, ‘Someone has just shot your pony!’ I ran, with my neighbor, up to the back pasture behind our barn, and found the dead body of the pony I had loved.”

That evening, Adams was eating a hamburger, when she stopped mid-bite. The incongruity was too much. She was mourning one animal, while eating another. Adams couldn’t summon a defense of her ethical favoritism and so she became a vegetarian. Like Saint Paul in Damascus, the scales were falling from her eyes.

Christopher ‘Soul’ Eubanks is the founder of APEX Advocacy, which seeks to increase the numbers of people of color who participate in animal activism. He has volunteered with a variety of groups, including the Humane League, Anonymous the Voiceless, PETA, the Animal Save Movement, Mercy for Animals and others.

Eubank’s embrace of an anti-speciesist consciousness seemed to be the result of following the divine will wherever it led him, reflecting a humble attitude toward God. We should all aspire to this. Of course, that doesn’t mean we abandon reason and judgement, which help guide our inchoate sentiment.

“When I saw animals suffering, I thought about all the injustices that I saw happening to Black and brown people,” Eubanks told the Humane League. “I didn’t feel it was morally consistent for me to advocate against one form of oppression while contributing to another form of oppression.”

Sue Coe is a political artist and illustrator whose work frequently includes animal-liberation themes. Her pieces have been collected in a series of books, such as Cruel: Bearing Witness to Animal Exploitation. She received the Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking Award from the Southern Graphics Council International.

Growing up in England in the aftermath of World War II, near bombed-out ruins and a slaughterhouse, Coe came to see the divine — whatever she might have called the concept — in all, including our fellow creatures. That insight has informed her work throughout what is now a long, accomplished career.

“Art always has to go beyond human health, human drama, and human issues,” Coe said in an interview with Artforum. “As a child, I was forced to see the correlation between war, violence, and fascism, and animal cruelty and abuse. Once I figured that connection out, so early on, I realized that the Other is always at risk.”

Wayne Hsiung is the co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere. Since then, he’s launched a nonprofit called The Simple Heart Initiative, which seeks to expand the movement for open rescue. Hsiung also maintains a popular animal-rights blog and podcast, which share The Simple Heart name.

The activist told the YouTube channel VeganLinked he became vegan after his childhood dog died. This was prompted by feelings of guilt about the ways he and his family had not heeded the call of conscience or what might be called the will of God in their treatment of the animal.

“She lived in the laundry room for the first couple years of her life,” Hsiung said. “We didn’t have any experience raising animals, so my parents thought it was appropriate to hit a dog. That’s the way we disciplined her. It was not cool. We stopped eventually when we figured out this is a member of our family. This is not some sort of toy.”

More than that, though, Hsiung felt guilty about not visiting the dog when she was sick. He was studying for graduate school and ultimately didn’t see the animal before she passed. Hsiung resolved to do something important in her honor, and for him that was finally going vegan, after being vegetarian for some time.

Karen Davis was the founder of United Poultry Concerns, a group which seeks to address the treatment of domestic fowl. As part of her work, she ran a chicken sanctuary in Virginia. Davis was also the author of several books, including The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tail: A Case for Comparing Atrocities.

“I grew up in a meat-eating household in Pennsylvania,” she told the Eugene Veg Education Network. “Although I have always loved animals and hated animal cruelty, I ate animal products so unthinkingly that, while arguing at the dinner table with my father about hunting, it would be over a plate of dead animals.”

Ultimately, her inspiration for giving up meat came from a religious source. Davis read a famous essay by Leo Tolstoy called The First Step, in which the Christian pacifist recounted his visits to Moscow slaughterhouses and argued for vegetarianism. The article was originally a preface to someone else’s book.

Josh Harper was a member of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, a global pressure campaign which sought to close a notorious vivisection firm. Like some of those I mention here, he served time in prison for his activism. Among other things, Harper is now a volunteer archivist of movement history.

In various outlets, he’s mentioned the influence of hardcore music in his adoption of veganism. For many campaigners of his generation, this politicized scene was deeply formative. Fundamentally, however, his decision came down to a desire not to harm other creatures, who we could say bear the imprint of God.

“I went vegan because I can’t stand the idea that someone would needlessly suffer and be confined so that I can eat or dress myself,” Harper told Vegan Skate Blog. “Its very simply the right thing to do.” I believe most people know, deep down, it’s the right thing to do, but they’re not poor enough in spirit to follow the intuition.

lauren Ornelas is founder of the Food Empowerment Project, a food justice non-profit that promotes veganism. As a teenager, she started the first high school nonhuman liberation group in Texas. In a similar, trailblazing fashion, Ornelas was the first woman of color inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame.

Ornelas’ dietary journey wasn’t linear. However, in recognizing the moral worth of other creatures, she recognized their shared divine origin. “I went vegetarian as I didn’t want to contribute to the suffering of non-human animals or be responsible for separating them,” Ornelas explained to Authority Magazine.

Alex Hershaft is a Holocaust survivor and the co-founder of Farm Animal Rights Movement. He organized national non-human liberation conferences, World Day for Farmed Animals and other initiatives. Hershaft served on the boards of a number of organizations, including Jewish Veg and the American Humanist Association.

Perhaps he would use different language to describe the experience, but I believe, from a religious perspective, Hershaft came to see God was present in other beings, like God was present in humans. This realization, which came after a visit to a slaughterhouse in the 1970s, completely reordered his life.

“I suddenly came across piles of hearts, lungs, heads, hooves, and discarded body parts,” he said in a FARM interview. “Very quickly, I made the association with the piles of body parts I saw in Auschwitz, the use of cattle cars to transport people to the gas chambers, [and] the crowding in wood containers of the victims.”

Angela Davis is primarily recognized as a socialist, feminist and anti-racist, but she’s also made clear her leftist sympathies cross the species barrier. Davis, of course, is a world-famous intellectual, best known for her autobiography or maybe the later title Women, Race and Class. She was a longtime member of Communist Party USA.

“Most people don’t think about the fact that they’re eating animals,” Davis said in an interview with Grace Lee Boggs, explaining her veganism. “When they’re eating a steak or eating chicken, most people don’t think about the tremendous suffering that those animals endure simply to become food products to be consumed by human beings.”

The vocabulary of Marxism is very dissimilar to the vocabulary of religion. Still, using an expansive understanding of the divine, I think we can say, in following her ideals through the unfamiliar territory of anti-speciesism, Davis is following the path God has laid before her. She’s remarkably poor in spirit.

Tom Regan was a philosopher specializing in nonhuman ethics. His most influential book was The Case for Animal Rights, which was inspired by Immanuel Kant. Regan was also a cofounder of the Culture and Animals Foundation, a nonprofit that continues to support artistic and intellectual work which benefits other creatures.

He had accepted the merits of vegetarianism on an abstract level, but it wasn’t until the death of a beloved dog, Gleco, that Regan and his wife changed their personal habits. The couple seemed to generalize the inherent value or divine spark they recognized in their companion to creatures humanity typically exploits.

“I often say that reason can lead the will to water but only emotion can make it drink,” he explained in a statement quoted by the Vegetarian Resource Group. “We saw the animals we ate in the same way that we saw Gleco. Well, when the mind and heart are on the same page, that sealed the deal for us.”

Jane Velez-Mitchell is a former network television anchor who left the mainstream media and founded UnchainedTV, a non-profit which produces videos dedicated to animal liberatation and veganism. Among other honors, she has received a Compassionate Leadership Award from Mercy for Animals.

Velez-Mitchell was a vegetarian when she interviewed Howard Lyman, a fourth generation cattle rancher turned animal advocate, who compared milk to liquid meat. Velez-Mitchell was newly sober and wanted to put her deepest principles — or, to use the spiritual language, the will of God — into practice. So she became vegan.

“I wrote a book about what I call my three miracles: getting sober, coming out as gay, and going vegan,” Velez-Mitchell told VegNews. “When you get sober, you get clarity. I realized I couldn’t lie to myself about my sexual orientation. And then I started realizing that my behavior wasn’t in alignment with my values. I began thinking about factory farming.”

Marc Bekoff is a biologist, ethologist and behavioral ecologist. He is the author of a long list of titles, including The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow and Empathy — and Why They Matter. Bekoff is a cofounder of Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“My vegan journey probably started when I was about two or three years old,” he said to Vegan FTA, recounting stories his mother told him. “She said that I could feel the joy, pain, anxiety, or stress of an animal when I was very young.” Empathy is a spiritual endeavor, as it involves one being recognizing the shared divinity in another.

Nicoal Sheen is a former spokeswoman for the North American Animal Liberation Front Press Office. She is now a certified yoga instructor and the author of a number of texts, including a zine of vegan recipes, called Do No Harm, Eat No Crap. Sheen became vegetarian in high school after watching the PETA short Meet Your Meat.

“I had always considered myself an ‘animal lover,’ yet I was oblivious to how I actively contributed to the pain and suffering of other animals,” she said in an interview with Meatless Movement. The future spokeswoman was able to process this new information in a productive way because she was poor in spirit.

Christopher Sebastian is a journalist and lecturer on nonhuman rights. He writes about food, politics, media, pop culture, and animals. Sebastian teaches in the School of Journalism, Media, and Visual Arts at Anglo-American University in Prague. He became vegan after reading the book Skinny Bitch.

Sebastian was riveted as the bestseller pivoted away from a discussion of diet into a conversation about the exploitation of God’s creatures. “That was so much more emotionally arresting, and, of course, unexpected for me, that it was just an immediate shift as soon as I put the book down,” he said to Vegan FTA.

Jo-Anne McCarthur is a photojournalist and animal-liberation activist. She was the subject of a documentary, called The Ghosts in Our Machine. Her photographs documenting the treatment of nonhumans have been collected in a number of books, including We Animals. McCarthur runs a media agency that shares the same name.

She became vegan while interning at Farm Sanctuary. “I found myself in a pasture brushing my new friend Arbuckle,” McCarthur wrote in a Medium post, reminiscing about an elderly steer. “The only non-vegan thing I had with me at the sanctuary was a pair of boots. Leather boots. And I was wearing them that day.”

The photographer realized she didn’t want to wear clothes made of creatures like Arbuckle. McCarthur decided to abstain from animal products going forward. She recounted feeling at peace, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally and ethically. One might add spiritually, which is roughly synonymous with those terms.

Bruce Friedrich is co-founder of the Good Food Institute, which is leading the effort to accelerate the development of cultivated meat. Previously, he worked for PETA and Farm Sanctuary. Outside of the animal movement, Friedrich spent a few months in prison for damaging a fighter jet as part of an anti-war action.

He was another whose anti-speciesism was inspired by a religious source. Friedrich was first vegan for human-rights and environmental reasons, then he read one of Linzey’s books, specifically Christianity and the Rights of Animals. Friedrich was running a Catholic Worker hospitality house at the time.

“It changed my life,” he wrote in National Catholic Reporter, recalling the title’s impact. “As a result of my prayer over Linzey’s work and conversations with my spiritual director at St. Aloysius Catholic church, my focus turned to animal protection…  By any measure, what happens to farmed animals today is anti-Christian.”

Nirva Patel is the executive director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. She was a producer of the documentary Game Changers, about vegan athletes, and serves on the board of Farm Sanctuary. Patel was also influenced by her faith. In her case, that’s Jainism.

“Growing up in a Jain community, I always had that sense for suffering and for animals,” she told Young Jains of America. “I did consume dairy, ghee, milk, and cheese… It’s a common oversight to recognize the violence limited to the meat industry, but there is an egregious amount of cruelty just in the dairy industry.”

Peter Singer is the most influential anti-speciesist philosopher alive. He’s the author of a number books on a range of subjects, but the most important, for our purposes, is Animal Liberation. It’s a title that is often credited with rejuvenating the nonhuman-rights movement and inspiring multiple generations of activists.

Singer began to take vegetarianism seriously after a discussion with Richard Keshen, a fellow graduate student at Oxford, who abstained from meat for moral reasons. “Within a week or two, I said to my wife, who was here with me, ‘I think we have to change our diet,’” Singer recounted in an interview with Sung Hee Kim.

Of course, many people are convinced of the merits of vegetarianism, but that doesn’t lead them to actually change their habits. Singer did, because he was poor in spirit. The rest, as they say, is history. Despite the limitations of his utilitarian view, the philosopher helped millions consider animals in a more favorable light.

Genesis Butler is an animal-rights activist and one of the youngest people to ever give a TEDx talk. She has worked with Farm Sanctuary, HSUS, Mercy for Animals and other organizations to spread her compassionate message. She’s currently an ambassador for Earth Day’s Foodprints for the Future.

Butler became vegan at an early age. “I started to ask a lot of questions, like where my food was coming from, and my mom finally told me how we had to eat animals and kill them for my food,” she said on the All About Change podcast. “That really devastated me, and I was like, ‘I don’t want to eat this again,’ so then I went vegan.”

Young kids, who aren’t burdened by decades of speciesist socialization, often have an easier time seeing the divine presence in animals. I imagine this wasn’t exactly what Jesus had in mind when he said we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Still, I don’t think it could be too far off.

Kim Stallwood has held a variety of positions in the professional animal movement. For instance, he’s a former national director of PETA and executive editor of Animals’ Agenda. Stallwood wrote a memoir, called Growl: Life Lessons, Hard Truths, and Bold Strategies from an Animal Advocate.

He gave up meat after getting in an argument with a vegetarian friend about his summer job at a slaughterhouse. “Eventually, I realised that what I had been responsible for was wrong,” Stallwood recalled to Vegan FTA. Inspired by a friend, he listened to his quiet, innermost voice — what we might call the voice of God.

Melanie Joy is a social psychologist and author. She’s written a number of books, including Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism. Joy is also the founder of the nonprofit group Beyond Carnism. She is a recipient of the Ahimsa Award, the Peter Singer Prize and the Empty Cages Prize.

Joy initially became vegetarian for health-related reasons. She ate a burger contaminated with campylobacter that made her so sick she couldn’t imagine consuming flesh again. Then she started learning about the suffering of our fellow creatures on farms and the other costs of animal agriculture.

“But what shocked me in some ways even more than what I was learning was that nobody I talked to was willing to hear what I had to say,” Joy told Vox. “I mean, the response was almost always something like, ‘Don’t tell me that, you’ll ruin my meal.’” This reaction fascinated her and became a focus of her research.

There’s a psychological explanation for it, but, as I’ve tried to show here, I believe there is a spiritual answer as well. Those who avoid such distressing information are not yet poor enough in spirit, the quality Jesus praised in the first Beatitude. We should all cultivate an openness to God’s will and the divine spark in animals.

Works cited

Andreann Asibey, G. M. (2018, January 16). A seat at the table with Syl Ko: A discussion on black veganism. The McGill Daily. https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2018/01/a-seat-at-the-table-with-syl-ko-a-discussion-on-black-veganism/

Notes from a diary of struggle: From epiphanies to aftermath. Dr. Steve Best. (2013, June 20). https://drstevebest.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/notes-from-a-diary-of-struggle-from-epiphanies-to-aftermath/

PETA founder protests pork industry practices, reflects on history of activism. WTTW News. (n.d.). https://news.wttw.com/2024/06/11/peta-founder-protests-pork-industry-practices-reflects-history-activism

Crescente, L. de. (2024, July 6). Dr. Faraz Harsini. FARM. https://farmusa.org/drfarazharsini

The Planetary Press. (2023, June 1). Transfarmation: Leah Garcés takes on Factory Farms, empowers farmers to shift to plant-based agriculture. The Planetary Press. https://www.theplanetarypress.com/2023/03/transfarmation-leah-garces-takes-on-factory-farms-empowers-farmers-to-shift-to-plant-based-agriculture/

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Jon Hochschartner is the author of a number of books about animal-rights history, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter, Ingrid Newkirk, and Puppy Killer, Leave Town. He blogs at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com.