PROGRAM
Saturday March 24
Morning
8:00-8:40 Registration, Exhibit Table Set Ups
8:40-9:00 Welcome & Introduction by Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns, Conference Host
9:00-9:40 Pattrice Jones – “Race, Class, Sex . . . & Species? The Difficulty and Necessity of Confronting Inconvenient Connections”
9:45-10:25 Charles Patterson – “Animals, Slavery and the Holocaust”
10:30-10:40 BREAK
10:45-11:25 Carol J. Adams – “The War on Compassion”
11:30-12:30 Panel Discussion on Morning Presentations-Q&A
12:30-1:30 LUNCH BREAK
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1:35-1:55 Introduction to Afternoon Speaker & Program by Martin Rowe, Publisher of Lantern Books, Conference Co-Host
Announcements
2:00-2:40 Andrea Smith: “Animal Exploitation: Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy”
2:45-3:15 Afternoon Speaker Panel Discussion-Q&A
3:15-3:30 BREAK
3:30--4:30 Open Forum – General Discussion & Comments
4:30-5:00 Closing Remarks, Announcements
5:15-7:15 Reception catered by the Red Bamboo Vegetarian Café and Book Signings hosted by Lantern Books
Inadmissible Comparisons
United Poultry Concerns’ 7th Annual Conference
Co-hosted by the NYU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and Lantern Books
Saturday March 24 - Sunday March 25, 2007
NYU Law School
Vanderbilt Hall Room 210
New York, NY 10012
PROGRAM
Sunday March 25
Morning
8:45-9:00 Registration
9:00-9:25 Welcome by Tara West, C-chair of the NYU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, Conference Co-Host
Announcements
9:30-10:10 Karen Davis – “Comparing Atrocities: Pros, Cons & Paradoxes”
10:15-10:55 Roberta Kalechofsky – “Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons”
11:00 – 12:00 Panel Discussion on Morning Presentations-Q&A
12:00-1:15 LUNCH BREAK
1:30-1:55 Introduction to Afternoon Speaker and Program by Karen Davis
2:00-2:40 Ashanti Alston – “Bridge-Building in Times of Attacks Makes It Urgent: The Recent Arrest of 8 Former Members of the Black Panther Party and the Green Scare”
2:45-3:15 Afternoon Speaker Panel Discussion-Q&A
3:15-3:30 BREAK
3:30-4:15 Open Forum – General Discussion & Comments
4:15-4:30 Closing Remarks
4:30-5:00 Exhibit Tables & Evaluation Forms
THANK YOU!
Inadmissible Comparisons
United Poultry Concerns’ 7th Annual Conference
Co-hosted by the NYU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and Lantern Books
Saturday March 24-Sunday March 25, 2007
NYU Law School
Vanderbilt Hall Room 210
New York, NY 10012
Presentations & Presenters
Presentation: In “Comparing Atrocities: Pros, Cons and Paradoxes,” Karen Davis will argue that significant parallels can be drawn between incommensurable atrocities affecting both human and nonhuman animals, but that we need to be selective and careful in our use of parallels. She also argues that while every experience is incommensurable, each unique experience paradoxically expresses the larger fabric of life to which no single individual or group can lay claim as the sole proprietor. Paradoxically, while African-American slavery, the Native American genocide and the Holocaust (for example) represent unique historical phenomena, they can also transcend these phenomena to function more broadly, thus holding promise for a more enlightened and compassionate future than does privatizing each event to the extent that its only permissible reference is self-reference.
Presenter: Karen Davis, PhD is the president and founder of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl. She is the founding editor of UPC’s quarterly magazine Poultry Press, selected by Utne magazine as one of the best nonprofit publications in North America. Karen was elected to the U.S. Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2002 for “outstanding contributions to animal liberation.” Her books include Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry (Book Publishing Co.), More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality and The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities published by Lantern Books. She has essays in Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations (Duke University Press) and Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals published by Lantern Books. www.upc-online.org. www.upc-online.org/karenbio.htm.
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Presentation: In asking the question, why have we failed to care about genocide, Carol J. Adams, in “The War on Compassion,” argues that violence against people and animals is interdependent; that one of the most successful ways to represent that a person or a group of people is “untrustworthy,” less than human, is to view them as “animals.” Conditions for violence flourish when we structure our world hierarchically, in a false Darwinian progression that places humans at the top. The category “human being” was stratified by speciesism; the hierarchy imposed by colonialism, recapitulated the hierarchy of humans over nonhumans. As long as we treat animals as animals, as long as we accept that there is this category “animals,” both the treatment and the concept will legitimize treatment of humans that way.
Presenter: Carol J. Adams is the author of feminist classic The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory; The Pornography of Meat; and Living Among Meat Eaters all published by Continuum. With Josephine Donovan she is the editor of The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics: A Reader (forthcoming from Columbia University Press) and Animals and Women: Feminist Theoretical Explorations published by Duke University Press. Carol travels to colleges and universities to discuss the issue of interconnected violence. www.caroljadams.com.
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Presentation: In “Bridge-Building in Times of Attacks Makes It Urgent: The Recent Arrest of 8 Former Member of the Black Panther Party and the Green Scare,” Ashanti Alston will draw on the sense of urgency, the sense of one’s back being against the wall or bridge-building while yanking at the empire’s boot stuck deep in your neck. The sense of urgency makes race/class/privilege issues key in the creative resolution process. All power thru the people!
Presenter: Ashanti Alston is a former member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army. He is a former political prisoner who was imprisoned for 14 years. The current co-chair of the National Jericho Amnesty Movement, and always an anarchist outlaw for his movement in-laws, Ashanti has an essay in Igniting the Revolution: Voices in Defense of Mother Earth published by AK Press, and he is a speaker at many conferences including the Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Conference at Syracuse University. www.anarchistpanther.net.
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Presentation: In “Animal Suffering and the Holocaust: The Problem with Comparisons,” Roberta Kalechofsky argues that comparisons can be made among anything or event – nails and screws, horses and zebras – but comparisons should be appropriate to scale, cause, and consequences. The roots of the Holocaust lay in the Christian doctrine of the deicide charge. Hitler’s purpose was the extermination of every Jew. He considered his mission historical, but the consequences of his policy have been intense religious reflection by Christians of Christianity’s role in the Holocaust. Animal suffering is horrific, but its causes and consequences share little with the Holocaust.
Presenter: Roberta Kalechofsky, PhD is the author of seven works of fiction, a monograph on George Orwell and two collections of essays. She was the recipient of Literary Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and some of her fiction has been published in Italy. Roberta has been an animal rights activist for twenty-five years and runs Micah Publications which publishes vegetarian and animal rights books, in addition to fiction and poetry. Her publications can be viewed at www.micahbooks.com. Micah Publications is the source for Jewish vegetarian and animal rights books.
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Presentation: In “Race, Class, Sex . . . & Species? The Difficulty and Necessity of Confronting Inconvenient Connections,” Pattrice Jones will show why, despite the cognitive and emotional complexities of doing so, all sides must come to understand that racism, sexism, and speciesism are interlocked and intersecting expressions of the same dynamic of estrangement and exploitation that has driven us to the brink of environmental catastrophe. In order to make her talk accessible and engaging, Pattrice will trace her own evolution from social justice activist to animal liberationist, talking frankly about her own former thoughts and feelings and also describing the struggles she has observed in others as they have grappled with the reality of being disadvantaged by one kind of oppression but privileged by another. Pattrice will describe how her own research into the origins of racism led her back to the nexus of speciesism, sexism, and environmental exploitation. She will show that none of us will succeed in any of our struggles, least of all against the escalating emergency of climate change, unless we can summon up the courage and generosity to quit oppressing anybody. Pattrice will close by offering practical tips on the always difficult process of first making and then acting on what seem at first to be inadmissible comparisons.
Presenter: Pattrice Jones is coordinator of the Eastern Shore Chicken Sanctuary and the Global Hunger Alliance. She has an essay in Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals and she is the author of Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies both published by Lantern Books.
www.bravebirds.org
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Presentation: In “Animals, Slavery and the Holocaust,” Charles Patterson asks where does all the war, racism, terrorism, and genocide that’s so endemic to human civilization come from? Why is our species so cruel and violence-prone? Could it be that we exploit and massacre each other so readily because our abuse and slaughter of animals has desensitized us to the suffering and death of others? This talk is about how the enslavement (so-called “domestication”) of non-human animals led to human slavery and how industrialized animal slaughter contributed to the Holocaust.
Presenter: Charles Patterson, PhD is a teacher, therapist, editor and author of ten books. His best known book is Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (Lantern Books), which has been translated and published in Israel, Germany, Japan, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Croatia, and the Czech Republic with French, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian, Russian and Arabic translations underway. Charles’s other books include Anti-Semitism: The Road to the Holocaust and Beyond; The Civil Rights Movement; Animal Rights; The Oxford 50th Anniversary Book of the United Nations; From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall (co-author); and Marian Anderson (winner of the Carter G. Woodson Book Award). www.powerfulbook.com. www.excellenteditor.com
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Presentation: In “Animal Exploitation, Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy,” Andrea Smith observes that in developing coalition politics, activists often rely on comparisons between oppressions. In her talk, Andrea will reflect on the Incite! Process of moving away from comparisons to a model that focuses on interlocking logics of oppression. Such a model helps avoid “oppression olympics” and allows us to see the uniqueness of different logics of oppression while also seeing how they are related. Andrea will then analyze how the logic of animal exploitation is linked through the colonial logic of “discovery” to both heteropatriarchy and white supremacy.
Presenter: Andrea Smith, PhD (Cherokee) is a co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project. She is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide. She is also the editor of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, and the co-editor of The Color of Violence. Both Incite! anthologies are published by South End Press.
Presentations will be videotaped by Neil and Annie Hornish of the Compassionate Living Project
www.compassionatelivingproject.org
Inadmissible Comparisons
Hosted by United Poultry Concerns www.upc-online.org
NYU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Eajm420/SALDF/index.html
Lantern Books www.lanternbooks.com
NYU Law School
March 24-25, 2007
|
United
Poultry Concerns, Inc.