Animal Rebellion: ‘The World’s Most Consequential
SociaL Justice Movement?’
by Philip Murphy, Co-Founder, Animal Rebellion NYC and Continental Liaison, Turtle Island (North America)
We do not display greatness by going to one extreme, but in touching both at once, and filling all the intervening space. –Blaise Pascal, Pensées
The climate justice movement Extinction Rebellion (XR) burst into public consciousness in dramatic fashion on 31 October 2018 with a “Declaration of Rebellion” against the UK government, delivered in Parliament Square in London. Responding to the climate and ecological emergency (CEE) and advancing behind a narrative calling for systems-level change through nonviolent direct action, XR grew into a glob-
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al movement that precipitated worldwide mass civil disobedience demonstrations in April and October of 2019. Extinction Rebellion framed their movement in the context of three stated demands, and ten associated values. The first of these demands dictates that governments address the climate and ecological emergency with honesty, while the second and third demands focus on a dramatic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions – to net zero, by 2025 – and a utilizing of instruments of direct democracy in order to take appropriate political action. However, it wasn’t long before some early XR Rebels, holding as they did insights into the incontrovertible fact of animal sentience and also being steeped in the knowledge of so-called animal agriculture’s profoundly dele-
terious environmental impacts, began to point to an addressing of the “the animal question” as being conspicuous by its absence. From this knowl-
edge, and an attendant deep questioning was born Animal Rebellion. While retaining the broad framing of the demands and values of Extinction Rebellion, this new movement re-envisioned them in a manner that affirms the categorical imperative to recognize the moral standing of all sentient beings. To actualize this imperative is to refrain from exploiting these beings in any and all ways including in the production of food – which is, in aggregate, the greatest source of ecosystem degradation. Consequently, the First Demand reads: “Animal Rebellion recognizes that one cannot speak about the CEE without openly talking about the
