Glenn's little ugly blog

On my recent trip to Texas I read the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. They are the founders of 37 Signals, a small and very successful company that makes applications for project management and CRM, along with some other things.

This isn't a book about activism, but I found many valuable ideas in it that can be applied to activism and small organizations that can potentially make us more effective and powerful.

37 Signals has built a successful business by breaking the normal rules of business. They've stayed small, opting for sustainability over growth. They embrace constraints, simplicity, and have flipped the traditional software development process on its head. Their first book, Get Real, was a very fun-to-read look at their software development process and is worth reading for anyone working on projects of any kind. (If you follow that link you can read the whole thing online for free.) A lot of the ideas from that first book are contained in this second book as well, but more refined and with broader application.

Rework focuses on the authors' ideas about starting and building a business – ideas which can be very easily applied to animal rights projects and organizations. Here are some of my favourite little gems of brilliance, but I'll leave it to y'all to think about how you might apply this to your own activism (or any aspect of your life).

Stanley Kubrick gave this advice to aspiring filmmakers: "Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all." Kubrick knew that when you're new at something, you need to start creating. The most important thing is to begin. So get a camera, hit Record, and start shooting.

If you want to do something, you've got to do it now. You can't put it on a shelf and wait two months to get around to it. You can't just say you'll do it later. Later, you won't be pumped up about it anymore.

Don't make up problems you don't have yet. It's not a problem until it's a real problem. Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.

The most common excuse people give: "There's not enough time." They claim they'd love to start a company, learn an instrument, market an invention, write a book, or whatever, but there just aren't enough hours in the day.

Come on. There's always enough time if you spend it right. And don't think you have to quit your day job, either. Hang onto it and start work on your project at night.

Instead of watching TV or playing World of Warcraft, work on your idea. Instead of going to bed at ten, go to bed at eleven. We're not talking about all-nighters or sixteen-hour days—we're talking about squeezing out a few extra hours a week. That's enough time to get something going.

"I don't have enough time/money/people/experience." Stop whining. Less is a good thing. Constraints are advantages in disguise. Limited resources force you to make do with what you've got. There's no room for waste. And that forces you to be creative.

Forgoing sleep is a bad idea. Sure, you get those extra hours right now, but you pay in spades later: You destroy your creativity, morale, and attitude.

Keep in mind that the obvious solution might very well be quitting. People automatically associate quitting with failure, but sometimes that's exactly what you should do. If you already spent too much time on something that wasn't worth it, walk away. You can't get that time back. The worst thing you can do now is waste even more time.

When is your product or service finished? When should you put it on the market? When is it safe to let people have it? Probably a lot sooner than you're comfortable with. Once your product does what it needs to do, get it out there.

You can turn a bunch of great ideas into a crappy product real fast by trying to do them all at once. You just can't do everything you want to do and do it well. You have limited time, resources, ability, and focus. It's hard enough to do one thing right. Trying to do ten things well at the same time? Forget about it.

So sacrifice some of your darlings for the greater good. Cut your ambition in half. You're better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.

A strong stand is how you attract superfans. They point to you and defend you. And they spread the word further, wider, and more passionately than any advertising could.

Strong opinions aren't free. You'll turn some people off. They'll accuse you of being arrogant and aloof. That's life. For everyone who loves you, there will be others who hate you. If no one's upset by what you're saying, you're probably not pushing hard enough. (And you're probably boring, too.)

I'm on my way back to Vancouver from Texas, waiting for my flight to board. Reading through my rss reader I saw a new post from Seth Godin that caught my eye.

This post is titled "Sabotage!" but has nothing to do with the Beastie Boys song. What it is about is how we often undercut our own potential by doing what's safe and comfortable.

This paragraph in particular:

Or consider the way we resist opportunities to lead, to connect, to do work that matters. We don't resist because we're not capable of it... we resist because if our marketing fails, if we don't get the job or earn the trust, then we're off the hook. No promises made, which means no promises to keep.

I see this happen in animal rights activism a lot. I've seen people come up with an idea but immediately start thinking about ways that it won't work, reasons why they shouldn't even start working on it.

I've listened to conversations about how people would do more if only they could quit their job, if only they could work for an animal rights organization, if only they could win the lottery. What they're doing is creating fake constraints that prevent them from working hard and taking risks and possibly failing.

It's all self-sabotage.

I've done more than my share of this sort of thing over the years. It's hard not too. It seems like it's a part of our very nature.

But that still doesn't excuse me from taking those risks, from working on projects even if I don't feel like I have enough experience, from doing things that are uncomfortable and a lot of work.

This post reminded me of an activist here in Vancouver who recently decided to start tabling at events, even though she had never done it before. She's really taking this to heart – when something needs to be done, we can't wait around for someone else to do it, we have to get in there and make things happen ourselves. We're the only ones we can count on. And by we I mean each and every one of us.

What great projects and ideas are you sabotaging?

I found this photo of me the other day.

It got me thinking about being willing to jump.

As a child I was often climbing up trees, taking jumps like this, doing all sorts of things that seemed as if they could have gone terribly wrong. Of course, I was pretty safe. I climbed trees I knew would hold me. I jumped onto areas that didn't contain old boards or junk. I checked around before I jumped.

But I still had to make the leap – and there is always uncertainty when jumping. Maybe I could have slipped right as I was jumping and hit my head. Maybe I could have misjudged the terrain and could have landed in a hole.

My point is, no matter how much I checked before I ran and jumped, I was still taking a risk by making that leap.

I'd like to get back to the spirit of that little boy, ready to jump. But not just off of buildings – I want to have that spirit in life. Am I as willing to take on projects where I might fail? And now that failure means losing money or possibly being embarrassed, am I less willing to leap than I was when it meant breaking a leg?

And not only leaping, but leaping with joy.

Over the recent years more and more information has been coming out about how harmful the production of animal products is to the environment. But by and large the environmental movement has worked really hard to sidestep this whole issue. When they do talk about it they end up advocating for "local" or "grass-fed" animal products, which also have marginally less environmental impact.

Why is this?

Environmentalists provide a continual sense of betrayal to animal rights advocates. We are so aligned on so many issues – and veganism is a step we all have to take if we hope to deal with the problem of feeding the world without a whole new planet – but they are constantly showing little to no concern for the animals involved in their "environment."

Here's my hypothesis. Environmentalists will hardly ever agree with animal rights activists because they are starting from a position of use. The world and the environment are ours to use, and animals are simply a part of that environment.

That's one of the reasons why some of the largest conservation groups were originally "sportsmen's" groups (hunters, fishermen, and other forms of animal killers).

As animal rights activists, we need to see that the environmental movement is founded on an ethic of "use" rather than "care" or even "justice." In other words, the environmental movement is still largely an anthropocentric movement. The world and its inhabitants have value only insofar as they have value to humans. In this sense they are exactly the same as any mining corporation or hunting group. The difference comes in terms of how far into the future they look to determine value and what strategies they employ to conserve resources.

Does this mean that I would suggest we abandon our efforts to reach out to environmentalists? No, but I think we should be more cautious with our belief that environmentalists are our natural allies. To them, abstaining from animal products is just a strategy for conserving other important resources for humans, and they are highly unlikely to ever advocate an end to the exploitation of animals.

I think that we neglect potential alliances with social change movements that are based on rights and an end to exploitation. I think animal rights shares a lot of common foundation with other rights movements. I don't mean to say that we are entirely neglecting these issues, but rather that it does not get the focus and attention it deserves.

I see multiple articles each week discussing the environmental impacts of meat and other efforts to reach an environmental audience, but I hardly ever see articles drawing out the possible connections between social justice issues and animal rights. There are a few, of course, and one great example of some really good content on this topic is the Animal Rights & Anti-Oppression blog. There's also the Food Empowerment Project.

One of the local events in Vancouver that we (Liberation BC) table at is Justice Rocks, a music and social change event. We've been the only animal rights (and the only animal-focused group) there. But the audience is amazingly receptive to the message of animal rights – the fundamental message of non-exploitation, that animals have a right to lead their own lives, just as we do.

I think there are some really strong alliances that could be formed if we support other social justice causes – with or without promoting animal rights to them. Let everyone see that our ethic of non-exploitation really applies across the board. Find and support workers' rights, women's rights, fair trade, and so on. As it becomes more and more apparent that systems of oppression are linked, any work anyone can do to weaken those systems will benefit us all.

At least, that's what I think...

Seth Godin just posted a blog entry (Betting on smarter (or betting on dumber)) that begins:

Marketers fall into one of two categories:

A few benefit when they make their customers smarter. The more the people they sell to know, the more informed, inquisitive, free-thinking and alert they are, the better they do.

And most benefit when they work to make their customers dumber. The less they know about options, the easier they are to manipulate, the more helpless they are, the better they do.

This reminds me of the strategies of animal rights activists and the opposing strategies of animal agriculture.

On the one hand animal rights activists work to provide information about what happens to animals and the truth about animals. We work to see animals as they really are, rather than how we want them to be.

Animal rights activists risk their own safety to document the conditions inside factory farms, labs, puppy mills, fur farms, and so on. Our strategy is basically to give people the information they need to make honest choices about our use of animals.

On the other hand, most of animal agriculture takes the opposite approach. After each undercover investigation is released, the industry responds by locking down tighter, denouncing the activists, and misleading consumers into thinking that these are isolated cases.

They build higher walls around slaughterhouses, use misleading imagery on their packaging and marketing materials.

As an example, the dairy industry always leaves out the fact that cows need to be impregnated yearly to produce milk and that the resulting calves are taken away immediately. They also leave out that cows are considered "spent" after just a few years of producing many times more milk than they did half a century ago, and are sent off to slaughter.

The very use of the word "welfare" coming out of the mouths of animal agriculture advocates is a smokescreen designed to take attention away from the reality of the conditions these animals face.

Who will win in the end? Are most people open to making informed decisions or do they want to be hoodwinked by a profit-driven industry?

I'm optimistic, but it still dismays me when I talk to people on the street who wave away information with an "I don't want to know."

But that just makes it so much more important that we keep pushing to reveal the truth. That's our job as animal rights activists - tearing down those walls, revealing the dirty truth behind animal agriculture, spreading information about who these animals really are.

Do you want to see fun and exciting outreach events happen in Vancouver? Do you have ideas for music, theater, poetry, or art performances or shows that promote compassion for animals?

I am organizing another animal rights community dialogue event through Liberation BC. It's happening in July and will be focused on the topic of using entertainment (and even "fun") for outreach.

I'm still trying to sort out the exact format of the event. Some people will hopefully be coming with ideas for actual events they want to put together. Others will likely be coming to brainstorm about ideas. And other people may be there for conversation or to help other people with their ideas.

The format needs to give people space and permission to organize their own discussions – in such a way that people have a chance to hear what other people are there to work on.

I'm thinking that Open Space will likely be the best format for the event. At just 3 hours long, it will be quite compressed. Probably a half hour for the welcome and agenda setting, and four 30-minute sessions, with another half hour for a closing wrap-up. This will be a very full, but hopefully productive, afternoon.

This is the second of this series of animal rights community dialogues hosted by Liberation BC. The first event produced many ideas for ways we can work together to achieve our goals. At the conclusion of that event we determined the topics for the next 4 events. The 3 events happening later this year will be:

• Developing a local information hub: who, what, why, and how?
• Educating ourselves: becoming better activists through education and practice
• What is our message?

Register now at http://apowerfulvoice.eventbrite.com. If you have any ideas about the event, please leave them in the comments. I'd love to hear what you have to say!

There's something about using the word "fun" in connection with animal activism that seems to bother some and inspire others.

I've been organizing a series of animal rights community dialogues through Liberation BC this year. The first of these happened in April.

One of the topics that many of the people in the group wanted to focus on for one of the following meetings was using entertainment and fun for outreach. Some people in the group, though, took issue with the emphasis on fun.

It's almost as if they feel that doing good or being active is somehow not fun and should never be viewed as such. Or, if you're having fun, you must not be as focused on the animals as you should be.

Here's how I think of fun in connection with my activism.

Most of what I do, I enjoy doing. Writing, building websites, tabling, talking to people, organizing community events – these are all fun activities to me. Because I enjoy doing them I am much more willing to sustain doing them for most of my free time.

If I were just doing things because I had to, but didn't get any enjoyment out of it, what are the chances I would continue to do it? Pretty close to zero. I also likely wouldn't be very effective. If I simply hated talking to people about veganism, I probably shouldn't talk to people about veganism; they'll be able to tell, they'd be less likely to listen, and so on.

This is a lot different than avoiding what is necessary because it won't be fun. I think we can all find areas of overlap between what needs to be done, what we are good at, and what we enjoy.

If we hope to sustain our activism, we'd better learn how to have fun doing it or we aren't going to last long at it. And we won't be doing the best for animals that we can. Our mental and physical health will suffer and we might even suffer burnout or a breakdown.

How do you think about fun?

I sometimes hear people say "I don't know how to do that" when they are asked to take on a task. Is this just a way of passing it off or making an excuse to get out of the work?

Photo by sheila_blige

None of us start off knowing how to do much of anything, except maybe grabbing things and sucking. Those are pretty instinctual. But everything else we learn how to do. Skills like reading, walking, talking, typing, using a telephone, driving a car, riding a bicycle, and so on. We learn how to do new things all the time.

But, strangely, there often seems to be some sort of block when we are asked to stretch our knowledge a bit and teach ourselves how to do something slightly complex. It's almost as if we spend a bunch of our life learning how to do things, and then we forget that knowledge is not absolute. We start to think that if we don't know something now, then it's not worth knowing or that we aren't capable of learning it.

It might just be that a lot of what I know I learned on my own so maybe I have less of an idea of knowing something and more of an appreciation for learning new things.

When someone says "I don't know how" what I hear is "I don't care about that enough to learn how." I really think it's all about caring enough to stretch our knowledge to learn enough to get things done. Learn how to update your website, edit HTML, bake cupcakes, talk to people on the street about animal rights, give presentations, and so on. These are not impossible tasks, and if you care enough, just take some time to learn.

To me, collaboration has meant working closely together on project or forming coalitions to get work done and to achieve goals.

I wonder, though, if there might be more ways to collaborate? Ways that are less time and resource intensive and that let us do our own work while still fitting in with larger projects and goals?

Liberation BC is organizing a dialogue event around the topic of "How can we best work together to achieve animal rights?" We are hoping that a roomful of passionate animal rights activists can come up with some interesting and novel ways of working together that actually lighten our workloads. No one wants to work together if it just means more work, right?

Through collaborative thinking we may be able to rethink collaboration.

If you are interested in attending the event, you can register at apowerfulvoice.eventbrite.com. There is a small registration fee. The event is being held in Radha's beautiful dining room on April 10th, from 1:30 to 4:30pm.

Photo by Leona Shanana

Here's a crazy idea: What if the city of Vancouver and VANOC had officially sanctioned dissenting views and activist events?

It would be a pretty strange and delicate move to make, but I wonder what it would look like if activist events had been included in the Olympic plans. Delicate because they would need to legitimately give the activists the space and respect to reach a real audience, without being deliberately pushed off into a corner somewhere.

Just imagine if VANOC had listened to protest groups and sat down with them to coordinate promotion and safety for their events. They could have included the protests and other activist events in the official event listings, bringing a bigger audience to the events, legitimized them, and made them a safer and more fun time.

I definitely don't mean an allowance for dissent through the use of "free-speech zones" or other schemes that hide protests so far away from the rest of the event that the activists are only talking to themselves. That's what usually happens, and only exacerbates the frustration felt by activists. I also don't mean a government-sanctioned PR presentation of some of these issues.

This idea is probably crazy, and neither group would have likely agreed to it, but sometimes crazy ideas work.

Communities that exist because of geographic boundaries (like a city or neighborhood) are composed of many different people who think and feel many different ways. The residents of Vancouver are not all patriotic sports fans who drink Coke and eat at McDonald's. Even making the slightest effort to present the fullness of Vancouver would have gone a long way to making the Olympics more interesting and true to who and what we really are.

I mean, the protests and events are going to happen anyway. Couldn't we make something more positive out of them?