The Power of Protest: Learning from Nonviolent Social Justice Movements

Chase Avior, actor and filmmaker

I have learned that the most fulfilling purpose in life is to help those in need, but it was a long and rough path that led me to this realization. Growing up, I was socially awkward and was bullied by other kids because of my strange behavior. Sometimes I would overwhelm people with my intense energy, and other times I was harsh and avoidant because I didn’t understand how to regulate my emotions, which got me into a lot of trouble. Much of the bullying was done by authoritarian adults who would physically hurt me and cast me off to sit in isolation because I wasn’t compliant with some of their oppressive rules and dogmatic beliefs. I was completely dominated my entire childhood, which made me feel powerless, and because my power had been stripped away, I lashed out at the world. The wounds that resulted from being bullied caused severe depression and anger, which led me to become a bully myself. I used violence to make myself feel superior, much in the same way that speciesism works—humans oppressing nonhuman animals from an ego-driven mentality—until I developed my ability to empathize. Having been subjected to bullying, I know the feeling of being scared and defenseless, and I see that same terror in the eyes of every animal headed to the slaughterhouse.

I stopped eating animals in 2009, and off and (mostly) on for the past several years, I’ve been sleeping in my car so that I can live without worrying about money very much and dedicate most of my time to volunteering for animal rights. I left behind my growing career as an actor, which some might call me foolish for because I could have made a lot of money, but my priorities changed. I enjoyed the excitement of Hollywood, but justice was always on my mind, encouraging me to take immediate action for the animals I used to exploit, and I fell in love with this calling. Now I use my skills as an actor and filmmaker to create motivating videos about animal rights. I’m building a strong following on Facebook and YouTube and I currently have over forty supporters donating to me monthly on Patreon to help keep my work going. My activism is bold and uncompromising, which results in some folks dismissing me as a “crazy vegan.” This all raises two questions: 1) How did I get to the point where animal rights is so important that I am sacrificing money, comfort, and social acceptance? and 2) Why do I think controversial tactics are the most effective?

In 2009, my life was forever changed when I saw the science fiction film District 9, which tells the story of a group of aliens who come to earth and are discriminated against simply because they aren’t human. The humans segregate the aliens from society and perform violent experiments on them. The next day I was eating a steak as usual, and for the first time I seriously thought about the individual who was killed for that piece of flesh. I suddenly understood that I had been discriminating against animals simply for being different. Like the aliens in the film, animals are sensitive beings with friends and families who want to live as much as humans do.

I ate animals for twenty-six years, until the day I finally looked at it from the victims’ perspective and realized that we don’t have the right to kill them. I couldn’t find any real difference between humans and animals that justifies us committing unnecessary violence against them. I had been telling myself that animals aren’t as intelligent as humans, but realized that this isn’t a justification for taking an individual’s life. I came to recognize that nobody gets to choose how they’re born and that it was prejudice for me to say that only humans (and certain animals like dogs and cats) deserve the right to safety, but that cows, pigs, and chickens deserve to have their throats slit.

I watched slaughterhouse videos of these innocent creatures screaming and struggling to stay alive—baby animals who were killed at ages representing a fraction of their natural life span. I realized that animals need us to speak up for them in the same way we would speak up for ourselves if we were in their position, so I became an activist in search of the most effective methods of change.

There are many important forms of activism such as conversational outreach, social media outreach, bearing witness at slaughterhouses, animal rescue, sanctuary operation, legislative change, and creating vegan alternatives, but my focus is primarily on the power of disruptive protests. We learn from the women’s rights movement, the gay rights movement, and the civil rights movement that disrupting oppression is essential to dismantling it. As history clearly shows, protesting draws attention to the issue, communicates the severity of the problem, and empowers people to take collective action. For example, the lunch-counter sit-ins of the civil rights movement in 1960 were successful in getting media coverage and public support precisely because these protests were disruptive and controversial. These nonviolent acts of civil disobedience shined a light on the battle against racial segregation in the southern United States. The whole country was watching news reports of peaceful protestors being assaulted by white, racist customers and then arrested by police. This polarized the issue and caused an uproar of public discussion about racism and the struggle for equality. White people who were neutral about segregation saw that acts of violence were being perpetrated by the oppressors, not the oppressed, and these brave acts of nonviolent resistance motivated the public to seriously discuss the issue with their families and social circles.

The initial four-person sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in North Carolina inspired over one thousand college students to join the disruptions in constant waves and led to copycat actions in fifty-five cities with about seventy thousand protesters and three thousand arrests. People who were already against racial segregation found themselves empowered to push their activism to the next level as these daily protests paralyzed business and sent a clear message to society. After only six months of protests and mass boycotts, Woolworth’s desegregated its lunch counters. Demonstrations like the sit-ins helped ignite the movement, and in 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race.

Martin Luther King Jr. explained the efficacy of this approach when he said, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so it can no longer be ignored.” MLK was arrested twenty-nine times for protesting against segregation, and many racists thought Rosa Parks was rude for disrupting prejudice when she sat in the whites-only section of a bus, but their activism threw a wrench in the running wheel of discrimination and inspired millions to take to the streets.

I believe our main goal as animal rights activists should be to make speciesism socially unacceptable like civil rights activists did with racism. This will be achieved by educating and inspiring the public and collectively speaking out boldly and frequently. As activist Lauren Gazzola said, “We can only challenge what is normalized by normalizing the challenge to it.” Change is not always popular, so resistance to it is understandable, but that should not scare activists into silence. According to the website ElectionStudies.org, when Americans in 1964 were asked what they thought of the civil rights movement, 63 percent said that activists push too fast and 58 percent said activists hurt their own cause, yet today we look back and revere their actions.

A few decades ago, members of the LGBTQ community could not be open about their sexuality without fear of losing friends, family, and their jobs, and even being assaulted or killed. Yet today society has shifted immensely, and same-sex marriage has been deemed a constitutional right. This astounding victory was largely set in motion by loud and energetic protest groups such as ACT UP that empowered gays during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s to come out of the closet and demand equal rights to medical treatment. While there is still a struggle to eradicate racism, sexism, and homophobia, these lessons from history teach us that massive social change happens when a group of people publicly refuses to tolerate discrimination and takes serious action.

It’s important to consider what causes individuals and communities to hold prejudiced beliefs in the first place and what causes them to shift toward justice. Sociological research by Yale professor Nicholas Christakis shows that the strongest predictor of human behavior is adherence to the social norms that dominate our culture. In short, “People eat animals because other people eat animals.” Humans are social creatures who tend to follow the crowd to avoid awkward interactions. What we see now when we walk into a grocery store or restaurant is a social norm where violence against animals is considered acceptable and speaking out in defense of the victims is taboo. One of the goals of disruptive tactics is to challenge the normalized violence against animals and our silent compliance that allows it to continue. The purpose of disruption is to create a new social norm, one that publicly takes a stand against animal cruelty and empowers others to do the same.

As this form of activism continues to spread, disrupting speciesism will become the new norm until speciesism itself becomes socially unacceptable. For this to be accomplished, the animals need every vegan to become an activist and to speak the truth at every opportunity so people realize how much they’re suffering. The power in numbers is crucial, as is nonviolence. Nonviolent protesting means being love-based while standing in the way of tyranny. In accordance with the principles of nonviolence set forth by both Gandhi and Dr. King, the premise is to demonstrate anger at oppressive systems and ideologies, while striving to remain compassionate toward individuals who are part of these systems. We must remember that we were all programmed by the ideology of speciesism, and it can be very challenging for some people to escape the conditioning and the pressure to conform. However, none of this is an excuse for animal abuse, so we must intervene and defend the victims. We speak loudly during protests to be heard by everyone and to convey a sense of urgency, but, instead of condemning people, the goal is to highlight the animals’ perspective, emphasize the injustice of human supremacy, and empower everyone to make better choices. Choosing nonviolence helps our movement be seen in a more positive light and creates the space for a serious conversation among the public.

It’s understandable that some people inside grocery stores and restaurants get upset when we disrupt speciesism, because our message is challenging their habits and beliefs, but we have an obligation to the victims to speak the truth despite discomfort or denial, and protesting outside is simply not as powerful as disrupting business inside. A person who reacts negatively at first might simply be grappling with the cruel reality of speciesism and their own suppressed feelings of guilt, but when they go home and pet their dog or cat, they may come to accept our message of ethical consistency. For those who express anger at us for speaking out, we must consider what type of person gets mad at someone for standing up against animal cruelty. These individuals are not our target audience. We’re not trying to win over the people who say “Mmm . . . bacon.” Our primary target audience is the people who actually do care about truth and justice—many of whom are not even in the store, but are the thousands of people watching the protest video on the Internet or hearing about it in the news. Our actions empower these people to take a stronger stance in the same way that protests during past social justice movements empowered folks to publicly pick a side and get active. There are millions of people who are ready for this message and it is those people who we are reaching.

I’ve been to more than two hundred protests in the past several years, and I often see people applauding us and even joining our demonstrations. Educating the public on how to go vegan is important, but we also need to inspire them to talk about animal rights with their friends and families and to join collective demonstrations. We need to expose companies that are hurting animals, create a strong community of animal rights activists, and invite society to join our movement.

In training for nonviolent direct action, we learn of the “Spectrum of Allies,” which is a half pie chart that includes these sections from left to right: Active Allies, Passive Allies, Neutral, Passive Opposition, and Active Opposition. From the perspective of animal rights activists, our Active Allies are our fellow activists, and we need to grow that section by empowering our Passive Allies, who are A) vegans and vegetarians who are not yet activists, B) genuine animal lovers who happen to still be eating animals because they haven’t made the connection yet, or C) human rights activists who are already fighting for justice but who have not yet truly considered animal rights. These Passive Allies are people who are trying to do the right thing, and once we mobilize them into Active Allies we will have a bigger, stronger community with immense leverage over our Active Opposition on the far right, which are companies, individuals, and government agencies that have an in-depth knowledge of the cruelty and continue to cause it or support it anyway. The Active Opposition will likely never change unless we force them to by making animal slaughter unprofitable or illegal. Our Passive Opposition might be the people who heckle us during a protest, but who probably wouldn’t hurt an animal themselves. Their public scorn for our message can make us shy away from speaking out, but it’s best to continue speaking for the more receptive members of the audience. I used to be one of those hecklers until I stopped my selfish perspective and became more neutral. When I went vegan, I became a Passive Ally and when I started doing activism and really challenging speciesism in society, I became an Active Ally. As activists, it’s best to aim for the low-hanging fruit rather than the hard-to-reach branches, so our time is better spent mobilizing our Passive Allies into Active Allies.

In her TED Talk called “The Success of Nonviolent Civil Resistance” political scientist Dr. Erica Chenoweth explains her research on hundreds of social movements over the past 106 years, which shows that 100 percent of the time it takes a maximum of just 3.5 percent of the population engaging in consistent, nonviolent direct action to create massive social change such as gaining rights or overthrowing a corrupt government. On average, nonviolent campaigns were twice as successful and four times larger than violent campaigns, because peaceful demonstrations are naturally more inclusive for a wider range of people such as the elderly, children, folks with disabilities, and so on. Mass participation is key. It’s all about people power. For example, 3.5 percent would be eleven million people in the United States and just four thousand people in the city of Berkeley, California. This mobilization has the power to create a domino effect that starts in one city, then spreads to a whole state, and then the nation, but Erica Chenoweth’s numbers only apply to tactics of direct action such as protesting. They do not apply to consumer veganism, which is technically just an economic boycott (albeit an important one, especially when tens of millions of people are participating).

It is our duty to shut down animal-abusing industries and make animal exploitation impossible by physically getting in the way and making it illegal. Direct action prompts people to take to the streets and disrupt “business as usual.” Politicians and companies feel extreme pressure from a mass, nonviolent uprising, as do individual members of society, because many people don’t want to be on the wrong side of history when the times are changing. The social science is telling us that nonviolent direct action is likely the quickest way for a movement to reach the tipping point by challenging and changing unjust norms and laws.

Any reservations we might still have about disruption can be answered with one simple question: If we say it’s right to protest for humans, but wrong to protest for animals, isn’t that speciesism? The victims need us to take this seriously. Remember the worst pain you’ve ever felt. For me it was a kidney stone that caused me to fall to the ground screaming in agony. I felt helpless and desperate for someone to take away the pain. This is what animals experience every day, but their cries are hidden behind the walls of slaughterhouses. The discomfort that activists or the public might feel during a protest is nothing compared to the absolute horror animals are going through. These are gentle, innocent creatures—babies and their mothers—yet we stab them in the neck and call it humane. They need us to speak out against speciesism at every turn so that society will recognize the truth and find the power to fight for freedom.

What I’ve learned from activism is that there is nothing extreme about speaking out against oppression or sacrificing our own comfort for the sake of helping those who are suffering far worse. What is extreme is to stay silent. Nothing will change if we don’t stand up, speak out, and demand animal liberation now! Soon, our 3.5 percent will shut down every slaughterhouse in the nation, because that’s what the animals deserve, and the majority of people will side with us. We must be brave and remember that most growth takes place outside the comfort zone. As William Faulkner said, “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty, truth, and compassion against injustice, lying, and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.”

Throughout my life, I have struggled with major depression and have been suicidal many times because of how brutal this world can be. Though the darkness still creeps in at times, I’m much more able to cope now that I am part of a community of dedicated activists. I’m grateful I survived so that I can stand up for beings who are vulnerable like I was when I was bullied as a child. Although poverty has been hard on me, and not having easy access to a stove, refrigerator, or bathroom is a challenge, living in my car is worth it, because it gives me more time to help animals. And I’m still privileged compared to the individuals being tortured in factory farms and slaughterhouses. Eating meat for twenty-six years means that I’m responsible for the needless murder of over two thousand animals, and I owe them for that. We all do. There’s no greater purpose than to make this world a better place, and activism has brought me enlightenment through dedicating my energy to the animal rights movement.