The T-Shirt Argument!

[Words To Inspire Debate.]

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Q: Some people have argued that open rescues may be classed as problematic, due to the risk of violence, putting the lives of both those rescued and the rescuers at risk.

Some have also argued that, by wearing promotional shirts during a rescue, it alludes to the rescue being more about promotion of your group than the other animals’ lives. How do you respond to criticism such as this?

 

 

Jose Valle

 

 Ahhh the t-shirt argument! Sometimes also known as the donate-button argument. To answer your first point, the risk of violence for the animals is 100% if they are left on the farms. Their lives are at risk if they are not rescued. The first ones interested in avoiding risks and violent situations are the activists themselves. If, for example, you confront the farmer during a rescue, you are putting the rescue at risk and that implies that the animals you are putting the rescue at risk and that implies that the animals who were going to be saved will stay suffering in those farms facing real violence.

 

I've entered in +200 farms of all kinds (minks, pigs, chickens, hens, etc.) in the last three years and a half and I've never had to face any farmer. We take security very seriously and have never had a problem during an open rescue, nor do we know of any group which has. Even in the hypothetical scenario of being spotted, you don't have to rely on violence to solve that situation with the farmer. You can run, you can use a high-power light that will temporarily blind him/her so you gain some seconds to escape. It doesn't cause him/her any harm You can rely on non-violent solutions, there are several and the most likely scenario is that they will call the police instead of confronting you, but, as I said, you'd watch the farm before to make sure there is nobody around as I said before, not rescuing animals leaves them at a 100% certainty of violence so it's justified to take that small risk.

 

We understand the accusation that by publishing open rescues we are endangering the safety of the animals but we believe the risk is almost negligible and the benefit to other non-humans of publishing the open rescues far outweighs this. We take great precautions with security so the nonhuman animals will always remain safe. Until now, we've rescued +100 animals and we never had any problem with this only very few dedicated activists know where the animals are brought to; even if we are questioned by the police, we would never put them at risk or say anything.

 

To answer your other point, at the moment animal rights activists do not have a very positive image in certain parts of the world, particularly the UK. Society sees people, especially animal activists, wearing balaclavas, dark clothing and hiding in shadows as evidence that they are doing something wrong, so wearing the organisation's t-shirts instead of all-black or camouflage gear, sends a message that we are not trying to hide what we are doing. That we are a professional organisation and that we see rescuing animals as an act of justice, something society should support. They can see you and sympathise with your intentions. In our experience, showing your face doesn’t draw as much attention as if you were wearing a balaklava. As I said before, society has a high regard for animal activists in Spain at the moment and I think this is due to tactics from organizations such as ours and others. We also have the name of the organisation so that we appear professional, respectable and serious I see no problem in wearing t-shirts with the name of the group you work with, in the same sense I don’t see any problem in adding your name to the book / article you’ve written.

 

I find this complaint a bit silly and a bit awkward having to reply to this since I think it’s just a kind of attack on your intentions. We have the name of the organisation on our t-shirts the whole video, because it gives our message the whole way through. It helps people to get access to more information (like vegan recipes or AR arguments for example), solve doubts, join, etc. To suggest that our rescues are more about promotion of the group or ego is quite insulting. Is it so hard to believe that there are activists who really do care about the animals they are trying to save?