UPDATED: Tuesday, July 23
Karen Davis and Hope Bohanec: Speaker Sessions at the Animal Rights National Conference
July 25-28
Please visit our exhibit table and attend our presentations. We look forward to seeing you at the Animal Rights National Conference!
Presentations:
Get Inspired for Animals (for newcomers)
[Update: Karen Davis will be speaking]
Friday-10:45 to 11:45am
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns
Empowering personal stories from impactful activists with Genesis Butler of Genesis for Animals, Victoria Moran of Main Street Vegan, and Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns. Moderated by Veda Stram.
Karen Davis will tell her story of growing up in a hunting community in Pennsylvania where her painful empathy for animals led her to launch, many years and “careers” later, an organization dedicated to promoting the rights of chickens, turkeys and other domesticated fowl, despite being warned that an organization focusing on “chickens” would never succeed. That was 30 years ago!
Liberating the Language of Farmed Animal Abuse
Friday-Noon to 1pm
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns
Karen Davis shows how farmed animals and their advocates are beset by the language of agribusiness. She explains why we must liberate farmed animals from degrading characterizations, and how we can do that. Chickens and other farmed animals are depersonalized, even de-animalized, in farm-speak as “broilers,” “layers,” “livestock,” “steers,” “swine,” and “veal.” Self-styled “natural” farmers refer to their animals as “grass-fed beef,” “pasture-raised eggs,” and “pastured turkey.” Karen shows how we affirm the dignity and reality of animals through the words we choose in our advocacy for them.
Abuse of Land Animals for Food
Saturday-Noon to 1pm
Karen Davis & Hope Bohanec, United Poultry Concerns
Hope Bohanec will expose the conditions, forced reproduction, and universal farming practices used for breeding cows for beef and dairy and pigs for their flesh. She will also talk about goat and sheep milk products, a popular new alternative to cow dairy. She explores some of the most recent undercover investigations as well as the “humane hoax” of misleading labels and marketing perpetuating the lies of animal agriculture.
Karen Davis will discuss the experience of chickens and turkeys in the poultry industry including the fictions of “humane” farming. Birds on factory farms are not only in factories. They are viewed and treated as factories for continued manipulation of their bodies and brains to fit the conditions of commerce. She will contrast these conditions with who chickens and turkeys are in themselves, free from “the farm.”
Robin: Rescued From the Dead. Film Debut
Sunday-10 to 11am
[Update: new date and time]
Karen Davis, United Poultry Concerns
Karen Davis of United Poultry Concerns joins Steve and Vanessa Dawson in moderating the debut by Unparalled Suffering of Robin: Rescued From the Dead. This brilliant, poignant, haunting and excruciating film documents the rescue from a plastic trash bag of a “dead” chicken who was slaughtered during the ritual of Kaporos in Brooklyn, New York. Please plan to attend!
Fighting for Fishes
Sunday-4:30 to 5:30 pm
Hope Bohanec, UPC & Mary Finelli, Fish Feel
When we hear about fishing, it’s generally in the context of the impact on the ocean and the environment, but what about the individual fish? There is now extensive scientific research confirming that fish suffer pain, experience fear, feel joy, and form friendships. Hope will discuss the amazing latest scientific research on fish and how our sentient sea cousins navigate complex lives, play and have fun, have individual personalities, preferences, family lives, and complexities. We will learn who fish are and how we can help protect them.
Special Book Signing Session
[New session]
Saturday-4:00 to 5:00 pm
Karen Davis will be signing and selling copies of For the Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation. Stop by and buy!
We hope to see you at the conference!
AR National Conference 2017. Left to right: Karen Davis, Franklin Wade, Jessica Fomalont, Hope Bohanec, & Liqin Cao