Living in Alignment with My Values: My Path to Animal Rights Activism
Brittany Michelson, teacher and writer
“Living with integrity means behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.”
—Barbara De Angelis
Like many children, I grew up loving animals. My family had a variety of pets that we adored—dogs that slept on our beds, rats that my brother and I made climbing structures for, guinea pigs we let scurry around our bedrooms, and other furry and shelled companions. While we considered ourselves animal lovers, we would sit down at the dining room table to eat spaghetti with meat sauce, lemon chicken, and tuna melts. And there was always ice cream for dessert. We didn’t think of the animals we were eating. We also thought nothing of the leather shoes and wool sweaters we wore, or the down jackets for skiing.
When I was a high school senior, my brother, who is two years younger and had recently stopped eating meat, showed me an undercover video that was my first glimpse into the animal agriculture industry. It was a PETA video from a meat-producing facility. I remember the cow that hung upside down in a warehouse-like building. I remember her face and big eyes, her degradation and defenselessness, and the angry man kicking her with a large boot. I was stunned, the air nearly sucked out of me. It was as if my cells had rearranged with this new knowledge of where meat came from. I loved animals; didn’t most people? How could this be allowed? Why was nobody stopping it? The wide eyes of the gentle animal stared through the screen with a mix of fear and surrender, and I could do nothing but stare back at her suffering. There was innocence, hanging like an object.
I made it through only a minute of the video, then reached over and shut it off. I locked eyes with my brother. There was a thick sadness between us.
I could never unlearn what I had learned.
I wish I could say that the video made me instantly give up meat, but seventeen years of ingrained meat eating was more influential than the sadness I felt over that suffering cow. I tried to justify meat consumption by telling myself that humans had always eaten it, that we are omnivores, that we need meat for protein. All of my friends ate meat, and my father owned a restaurant at the time that was known for its steaks. I also told myself that the footage my brother showed me was surely an exception, that usually cows lived in fields—not in metal buildings—and that they weren’t treated like that.
I shut the video out of my mind and went on with my busy teenage life, but the visual of the hanging cow in the building surfaced, creating an unsettled feeling inside of me. I found myself questioning the reality behind meat, but I didn’t allow myself to do any research, because I never wanted to be subjected to images like that again. The pressures of maintaining a successful grade point average, managing a demanding varsity sports schedule, and navigating the dramas of adolescent social life were more pressing than educating myself about what I was eating. It was easier not to think about it.
Also, at the time I would do anything to avoid creating extra anxiety. I already battled a barrage of obsessive internal repetition about how I said things or how I didn’t say them, how I acted, and what others were thinking about me. I couldn’t shake the underlying anxious feeling that lived in my chest. I already felt different from my peers due to persistent anxiety—it seemed like nobody I knew experienced anxiety to the degree that I did—and I was determined not to let it define me. Though I had very good friendships and socialized at weekend parties, at school I was quite shy and felt more awkward than anything.
Shortly after my brother showed me the video of the cow, I graduated from high school, and then a few months into my freshman year of college, I decided to become vegetarian. Eating dead animals had started feeling strange to me. I also started buying plant-based milk because I no longer liked the taste of cow’s milk. I was eighteen and living in the university dorms a couple of hours from my family’s home in northern Arizona. The following spring, my brother, who was then sixteen, turned vegan. He didn’t vocalize his reasons for changing from vegetarian to vegan, but later on, I found out that he had been inspired by his favorite band Propagandhi and an older musician friend that he greatly looked up to. My parents accepted my brother’s “dietary choice” but they also figured it was something that he, as a teenager, was experimenting with. He was in a punk band and into anarchy, and at the time being vegan was an anomaly that seemed to fit right in with rejecting societal norms.
During my years of vegetarianism, there were periods where I was pescatarian, as I thought I needed the protein, and my mom told me that omega-3s from fish were very important. Also, at the time I didn’t think eating fish was the same as eating animals like cows and pigs. It seemed like they didn’t have as much capacity for pain and emotion as mammals do. My assumption was rooted in speciesism, and I had no idea. Speciesism involves the lack of consideration to certain animals based on species classification. Its premise underlies the notion that fish don’t suffer as much as cows, or that animals classified as “pets” are worthy of love and protection while animals who are designated “food” are for human consumption.
What I didn’t know back then is that the dairy and egg industries also operate from serious animal suffering. I thought that cows readily produced milk and were living in fields. I assumed that eggs were collected after hens laid them, and I figured they were pecking atop grass and dirt, certainly not crammed into cages so tightly they couldn’t spread their wings. I had no idea that animals were genetically manipulated to produce much more than they naturally would. It never crossed my mind that their production levels would go down, nor did I think about what happened to them after their production ceased. I didn’t know that male calves are slaughtered for veal and that female dairy cows are eventually sent to slaughter. I also believed that the widespread “Milk Does A Body Good” and “Got Milk?” ads were informing the public about the calcium for our bones and other nutrients that we needed from milk.
An Awakening
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
—Aldous Huxley
In 2014 I began dating someone who led a plant-based diet for health. At some point he started talking about the negative health effects of dairy. Curious, I looked into it and found plenty of information online validating that dairy is acidic and causes inflammation. I also learned about the growth hormones given to cows and about the antibiotics in their feed that help control bacteria and the infections that result from being overmilked. I was disgusted. Milk cartons and company trucks show images of peaceful animals grazing in green fields, but upon discovering the disturbing reality of dairy, I went vegan. It was the first of May 2015, and it was only then, through that crucial decision, that my actions became fully aligned with the values I had always considered important to me—compassion, nonviolence, peace, and justice.
In becoming vegan, I realized that something known as cognitive dissonance had been responsible for the rift between my values and my actions. Cognitive dissonance is the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as related to behavioral decisions. Although I had always considered myself to be someone who loved and respected animals, I had been passively accepting their torture and misery by eating and wearing animal products. I also learned the concept of speciesism, which is rooted in the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals.
Dogs are widely considered to be beloved companions, yet in some Asian countries they are slaughtered for the dog meat trade. While cows are sacred in India, they are one of the most popular “food staples” in America. Growing up, I never would have accepted the idea of eating dog meat, and had I known back then that such a thing existed, I would have been outraged and disgusted. Yet I ate hamburgers without thinking of the cows who had been killed. We have been conditioned to reject the abuse of certain animals, yet ignore the abuse of animals used for food, clothing, and testing. We are taught contradictions at a young age and have also been taught how to compartmentalize.
The philosopher Hippocrates said, “The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.” This prompts the simple, thought-provoking question often vocalized in the animal rights movement: “Why love one, but eat the other?” A frequent chant at animal rights protests is “Humans and animals, we’re all equal.” This is essentially what Hippocrates’s quote means. We are all made of the same energy. How could I be opposed to racism and sexism and homophobia and yet ignore the largest group of oppressed (in the trillions) and most severely abused beings on the planet?
Years prior, during my high school graduation trip to Europe, our student group visited the historical site of Dachau, a former concentration camp in Germany. Upon our arrival, we watched a video that showed emaciated human bodies put into ovens and dumped into a huge pit in the ground. Then we toured the grounds, where we saw rows of wooden barracks and buildings containing the large stone ovens that had burned the bodies. Behind the walls of farm facilities, animals—who are just as capable of love, fear, and pain as the dogs and cats we share our homes with—are confined, tortured, and killed. By the billions. The definition of holocaust is destruction or slaughter on a mass scale. A speciesist would argue that the purpose of certain animals is to be bred for human consumption. An anti-speciesist believes that humans are not superior to animals, and that animals do not exist for human use. Speciesism is responsible for society’s failure to acknowledge that what happens to animals on a daily basis in the animal agriculture industry is indeed a holocaust.
Another frequent chant at animal rights protests is “One struggle one fight, human freedom animal rights.” At its core, the animal rights movement is about dismantling oppression, just as any social justice movement seeks to do—whether it is oppression based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species. I suppose that animal rights has not yet been fully accepted as a social justice movement by the mainstream public, not only because the exploitation of animals is so deeply entrenched in society but also because this oppressed group is the only one that is nonhuman. Due to the fact that speciesism is so ingrained in our human actions and behaviors, sentient beings are reduced to objects and items by consumers who purchase their packaged body parts and secretions.
How many times have I heard non-vegans say they are animal lovers? How many times did I say that as a child and an adult, all the while eating and wearing animal products? This “love of animals” is usually (and unconsciously) compartmentalized, reserved for animals known as companions like dogs and cats, or fascinating wild animals like dolphins and elephants. Yet how many people who say they love dolphins and elephants go see them at aquariums or zoos? For many, the idea of being an “animal lover” is only a constructed idea of what love is, as we wouldn’t actually pay for the exploitation and confinement of anyone we love. The unfortunate truth is that not enough of the general population realizes that visiting places like these funds the exploitation of animals, as these venues promote “species conservation” and “education” messages.
Though animals are similar to us in the ways that truly matter—such as the capacity to experience pain, fear, joy, and emotional connection—they have been deemed inferior and thereby have no real rights as citizens of the earth. Albert Einstein said, “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” Our ability to achieve planetary peace depends on our ability to stop the mentality of separation based on form, and instead honor our interconnectedness by embracing all beings. If we hope to evolve into a society of justice, it is crucial that we value everyone, including nonhuman animals, as deserving of rights and autonomy.
Taking a Stand for Animals
“I will not stay silent so that you can stay comfortable.”
—Anonymous
Animal cruelty is like the domino effect. You hear of one form of cruelty and then another and another, forming a line of horrors that seems to collapse into itself. When I started learning about the abusive practices inherent in animal food production, I felt an acute level of anger. I found out that male chicks are ground up alive—tossed into a macerator like trash—because they are of no use to the egg industry. I learned of an industry practice called thumping, where piglets deemed too sick and weak are slammed headfirst onto concrete to kill them. I thought of cows hooked up to machines so that their milk could be extracted for humans instead of being fed to their babies. I thought of their worn-out bodies being hauled off to slaughter after they had spent several years in a cycle of impregnation and having their babies taken away. I thought about the male calves, kept in crates so small they couldn’t turn around, being tenderized for veal. Thinking about the confinement, mutilation, and abuse of these animals caused me anxiety. I lost sleep at night; images of animal suffering flashed in my mind. I was overwhelmed, to say the least. How could I live in a world where this kind of sickening abuse happens to the most innocent and vulnerable beings simply because they aren’t able to speak out and defend themselves?
The acute anxiety I was experiencing in regard to animal cruelty quickly led me to do more than simply be vegan. In July 2015, just a couple of months after going vegan, I attended my first animal rights protest at a grocery store. The action involved standing on the sidewalk holding signs to draw the public’s attention to the awful conditions of animals bred for food, and chanting phrases like: It’s not food it’s violence; Their bodies not ours; There’s no excuse for animal abuse. We proceeded to go inside the store and chant. I was intrigued and empowered by this experience, both by the act of speaking up for animals in a public space, and the immediate sense of camaraderie I felt being with a group of like-minded individuals. A number of shoppers and employees stopped what they were doing and watched us; a few took out their phones to record a video. After about five minutes inside the store, we made our way outside and continued chanting on the sidewalk.
I learned that the concept of doing a disruption is to challenge normalized violence against animals by vocalizing the message of animal rights in a public setting. Deceptive advertising leads consumers to believe that meat, dairy, and eggs come from peacefully raised animals who are somehow killed humanely. Yet from an activist’s standpoint, there is no humane way to kill someone who doesn’t want to die. I immediately aligned with this philosophy, and attending that protest solidified my decision to become an activist. I realized that I needed to go beyond the refusal to consume or purchase animal products. Taking action was the only way I could move forward knowing the atrocities that humanity inflicts on innocent animals on a daily basis. I decided I would do everything in my power to dismantle speciesism.
A couple of years after becoming an animal rights activist, I was presented with the unique opportunity to bring activism to the classroom. In college I majored in education, and I have taught in various capacities since then. In September 2017, I started teaching in a private K–8 program centered on inquiry with a variety of unique and creative classes. Along with various writing classes, I teach activism classes, where I encourage students to explore human, animal, and environmental causes. They each focus on a cause that’s important to them during a semester-long Action Project, which involves making awareness signs and a visual display to educate other students and teachers. Most of my students have chosen animal causes, which isn’t surprising given that kids naturally tend to feel compassion toward animals. In Spring 2018, my ten-year-old vegan student chose the topic of animal agriculture. She and her vegan mother met me at a few of the Los Angeles Animal Save pig vigils and she shared her experience of bearing witness with the other students. She also incorporated video footage from the vigils into her project. I added my voice to the dialogue to support her and to educate students about the effects that animal agriculture has on animals, the environment, and human health.
Since I started teaching these activism classes, I’ve often thought about how my life might have been different had I been exposed to the truth about what happens to animals in zoos, marine parks, and the food industry when I was growing up as an innocent and unaware animal lover. There is this idea that children should be protected, so as not to upset or traumatize them, but this fear is often what keeps the truth carefully hidden. It also enables animal-abusing industries to get away with heinous standard practices. It’s often said that kids are the future, and I believe that if activism classes were taught all over the country, we would be educating a new generation of activists, which would naturally inspire great change.
Building Fundamental Connections
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
—Mary Oliver
Becoming vegan was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for two significant reasons. It was from that moment that I started living in true alignment with my values—as I am against animal abuse, against the destruction of the environment, and against damaging human health. Veganism also resonates with me on a spiritual level—the idea of non-harm to fellow beings—and I realized that, energetically, I didn’t want to consume torture. As someone who values feminism, I realized that I could not accept the exploitation of female bodies, regardless of species.
Second, becoming vegan led me to animal rights activism, which has gifted me with a focus and motivation that is greater than myself. It has inspired me to be of service to suffering beings and the planet, while bringing human connections into my life that are based on fundamental values. It is a challenge being vegan in a world that values convenience, tradition, and palate pleasure over sentient lives—but when I feel overwhelmed by the cruelty and frustrated with the societal conditioning that permits animal exploitation, I focus on the amazing community of animal rights activists that I am a part of. While society at large views “food” and “clothing” animals as products, we view them not as unknowns in the industry’s machine, but as individuals worth fighting for with the privilege of our human voice.
Over the past several years, I have participated in all kinds of disruptions, demonstrations, protests, marches, and vigils, and I have connected with people from diverse walks of life. Some have been vegan for many years and some have recently turned vegan. Many of us feel that it is our obligation to stand up for animals by engaging in activism, to make up for the years that we were complicit in their suffering. People who are not involved in the movement often refer to animal rights activism as a passion, but in a world where innocent animals are horrifically exploited by humanity, taking action for them is a moral imperative.
As a part of the animal rights community, I feel a sense of belonging that surpasses any sense of belonging I previously felt. Regardless of age, background, experience, or any other categorical factor, there is an instant bond with fellow activists, a bond between those who believe that animals’ lives are more important than taste, habit, convenience, or tradition. It is a profound experience to come together to bear witness to truckloads of animals outside a slaughter facility and to spend hours with hundreds of activists at a factory farm for a mass open rescue. While some might wonder what the point is of giving water to pigs about to die, or singing songs of liberation to chickens trapped in buildings, we know that every individual deserves to be honored and that their stories must be told.
I am dedicated to bringing justice to the victims of speciesism and planting seeds in the minds of people who have been conditioned by society (as we all have) to passively accept and fund the abhorrent treatment of sentient beings by industries that view them as dollar signs. Within my activism, I have discovered the power in my voice as I speak truth to the public through a megaphone at nonviolent protests and disruptions. I feel empowered in speaking up for silenced victims by attending actions, and also in the form of writing. I have written a number of awareness-raising articles on animal issues, which is more gratifying than any material I had previously written.
My commitments have merged—teaching, writing, and activism—and in this I have found tremendous satisfaction. As a teacher, I am in the profession of helping youth, which is certainly fulfilling, but animal rights activism is a different type of fulfillment in that it’s fighting against oppression and advocating for justice. It’s standing up for the most mistreated beings on the planet. I’ve come to realize that my definition of a life well lived is to be of service to others and the planet. It is true that a gift we give to others is a gift we give to ourselves.
Living in alignment with my values and being committed to work that inspires and fulfills me has also helped alleviate anxiety. My struggles pale in comparison to the nightmare that so many animals are constantly subjected to. Furthermore, while animal cruelty continues to upset me, it doesn’t provoke the level of anxiety that it used to, because I know that I am actively part of the solution. I live for the day when animal exploitation ceases to exist and when nonhumans are valued and respected for the individuals they are. Until that day, I will continue to take action.