Europe Conference
ICAS Europe 2021 Conference will take place on Zoom on Saturday 7 August, 6pm UK time.
If you want to present a 15 minute paper then please email Jörg Hartmann jh[at]jh72[dot]de and Will Boisseau Will.Boisseau[at]Hotmail[dot]com
Current speakers:
Ronnie Lee
The Road to Animal Liberation
Ronnie Lee has been a vegan and campaigner for animal liberation for almost 50 years. In the early 1970s he was one of the founders of the Animal Liberation Front and served three prison sentences (a total of about 9 years in prison) for animal liberation activism. Since his last release from prison, in 1992, he has been involved in various animal protection campaigns and political activities. His main focus is now on vegan outreach and on the creation of a network of local activist groups to spread the vegan message.
Laura Schleifer
Beyond Statist Solutions: Total Liberationism in Totally Occupied Palestine
In discussions about how to solve the Israel/Palestine “conflict”, typically the focus has been on statist solutions–most commonly, the ‘two state solution’; more recently, a growing push for a ‘One state solution’ in the form of a single, binational, democratic state with equal rights for all. Yet, there is an even more radical idea among the Israeli and Palestinian anarchist Left–true decolonization in the form of a ‘no state solution’. While there are many perspectives on what might be the best longer-term solution, anarchists in the region are taking the struggle for Total Liberation into their own hands. Deeply entwined with the struggle for Palestinian liberation from Israeli colonization is the liberation of the land itself and the other species who live there, as well as liberation for all humans from all oppressive systems–patriarchy, Capitalism, white supremacy, etc. Rather than focus on tired old tropes about statist solutions, this presentation will focus on the radical energy coming from the grassroots, from a historical look at the Israeli anarchist group ‘One Struggle’, so named after the slogan ‘One Struggle, One Fight, Human Freedom, Animal RIghts!’, to the current One Climate movement, in which Palestinian and Israeli Leftists are working in solidarity towards climate justice within a decolonial framework, to Palestinian mutual aid efforts such as the Plant the Land Team in Gaza, which provides vegan food and other necessities and plants food forests in Gaza, to Palestinian animal liberationists working to liberate both themselves and the land and its animals from Israeli colonization, to the ways in which grassroots activists in the Total Occupied Palestine (‘from the river to the sea’, aka the entirety of the land that was one historic) are building solidarity with other resistance movements for justice, decolonization and liberation around the world–and how the animal liberation movement can join in that struggle.
Laura Schleifer created the word ‘artivist’ to describe her vocation as an artist-activist. An NYU Tisch graduate (BFA, Drama), she’s toured the Middle East, performing for Palestinian and Iraqi refugee children with the Boomchucka theater/circus troupe, taught in China, Nicaragua, and at Wesleyan University’s Green Street Arts Center, performed off-Broadway, and arts-mentored homeless/targeted youth. Her screenplay, The Feral Child, was a Sundance Lab finalist. Her essays appear in The Leftist Review, Project Intersect, Forca Vegan, The New Engagement, and “Kropotkin Now! Life, Freedom and Ethics”, published by Black Rose Books. Currently, she’s writing a book, Liberating Veganism, for Vegan Publishers. Laura is also the Institute for Critical Animal Studies Total Liberation Campaign Director, a Board of Directors member for the peace organization Promoting Enduring Peace, and co-founder of Plant the Land, a vegan food justice/community projects team in Gaza.
Richard J. White
A call for vegan anarchist geographies to re-assert the radical praxis of veganism
Searching for veganism in 2021, the paper begins by outlining some important truths about why “veganism” continues to fall short of its radical potential to (a) bring new and important forms of inter-species liberation in to being and (b) contribute fully to a broader intersectional framework of social and spatial justice activism. Responding to this, the paper considers ways in which the intent and promise of veganism can yet be re-asserted. Invoking a ‘spirit of revolt’, a case for a resurgent vegan praxis – forged through vegan-anarchist geographies – is made. This, it approach it will be argued, carries with it the potential to (a) better envisage and enact both “post-capitalist” and “post-speciesist” futures, and (b) fully embrace a politics of total liberation ecology.
Richard J. White is a Reader in Human at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. Greatly influenced by anarchist praxis, his work explores a range of ethical, economic and activist landscapes rooted in questions of social and spatial justice. He co-edited Anarchism and Animal Liberation (2015); The Radicalization of Pedagogy (2016); Theories of Resistance (2016) and The Practice of Freedom (2016). He has published widely within journals and books including: A Historical Scholarly Collection of Writings on the Earth Liberation Front (2019); Education for Total Liberation (2019); Animal Oppression and Capitalism (2017, Praeger); Critical Animal Geographies (2014) and Defining Critical Animal Studies (2014). Richard is a former Editor of The Journal for Critical Animal Studies (2009-2012).