How I Learned to Love Shrimp

David Cole on what we can learn from the marriage equality and gun rights movements

• Amy Odene & James Ozden

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David Cole is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, a former national legal director of the ACLU and author of the popular book on social change in the US, Engines of Liberty. This book, a must-read for anyone interested in social movements, is the focus of our discussion today.

We spoke about the importance of local organising for political momentum, why incremental progress has seemed to work for other issues, the role of in-person community in social movements, and other lessons from the US marriage equality and gun rights movements.

Chapters:

  • The book in a nutshell (00:03:45)
  • Why incrementalism was crucial for marriage equality (00:09:36)
  • What can we learn from the NRA and gun rights? (00:17:19)
  • Why socialising & identity formation are key for movements (00:23:32)
  • Symbolic vs high-impact campaigns (00:32:11)
  • Messaging strategies in the NRA vs marriage equality (00:36:58)
  • Dave & James debrief and key takeaways (00:40:30)

Resources: 

With thanks to Tom Felbar (Ambedo Media) for amazing video and audio editing!

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David Cole:

It's very difficult to change laws. It's very difficult to change culture. What I've looked at in terms of what has worked in changing people's minds and ultimately changing the legal structures that reflect that, is incremental reform, small steps that make it easier to take the next step. That make it easier to take the next step. And you know that was certainly true with marriage equality, where much of the work of the gay rights groups in the many decades you know, up until we actually achieved marriage equality actually achieved marriage equality was convincing gay and lesbian couples in hostile states not to go to court and make a claim that they had a right to marriage equality, because the last thing we wanted was a set of precedents that said no, there's no such thing as a right to marriage equality, because that obviously is going to make it harder to prevail in the long term. And so the strategy was really to try to focus on smaller, small bore kinds of wins.

James:

Today we spoke with David Cole, who is a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, a former national legal director of the ACLU and author of the popular book on social change in the US Engines of Liberty, which is the topic of our discussion today, and we also tried something new on the podcast, where David Komenheide, who is a big fan of David Cole's work on social change, joined as a guest co-host. I know it's not ideal having two Davids, but I'm sure people can figure out who's who. Together. We spoke about the importance of local organizing for political momentum, why incremental progress seems to have worked.

James:

For the other issues, david Cole studied the role of in-person community in social movements, as well as many of the lessons from the US marriage, equality and gun rights movements, and David Komenhadi and I also tried something new with a 10-minute debrief of our conversation with David Cole at the end of our episode, trying to apply some of his insights to the animal movement and sharing some key things that stood out to us from the conversation. I highly recommend listening to the end for this section. So, without further ado, please enjoy the conversation with David Cole. So today we are joined by David Cole. Thanks so much for joining. The first question we'd like to ask everyone is what's something you changed your mind on recently, and why so?

David Cole:

set in my ways. Several years ago I read Eating Animals, which changed my practices of eating. It made me a vegetarian. I made my kids read it. They are also vegetarian. Wow, and I think more generally. I've been in the law now for 40-some years and I've definitely changed my views. I think I recognize today that the world is a more complicated place, that change is much more difficult to enact.

James:

Well, we're looking forward to unpacking, I guess, all the ways. Maybe your mind has changed and why change has gotten more challenging. But I guess today we're here to talk about your book Engines of Liberty, which came out in 2016. And I think I mentioned it was a big inspiration for lots of people in the farm animal movement. I'm kind of curious for those who haven't read it, you know, if you could kind of sum it up to the best you can.

David Cole:

So I think the core takeaway is that change requires engagement by individuals in collective endeavors through civil society, at many different levels, in a coordinated way, if at all possible, and generally in an incremental way, but that if one engages in thoughtful, incremental efforts to change the world, you can, and you can do so in pretty profound ways. And so the book was really an effort to kind of look at how, in particular, something that is very hard to change the Constitution of the United States constitutional law. How does constitutional law change? How did marriage equality go from being unthinkable in the 1970s to inevitable in 2015? How did the right to bear arms go from being dismissed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court as a fraud on the American people in the 1990s to a constitutional right recognized by the Supreme Court in 2008? How do those things happen? And I think the main takeaway is that they happen through civil society incrementalism.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

That makes a lot of sense to me. I'm curious, though so much has happened in the world since 2016. I wonder if you've updated your level of conviction on this kind of theory of change or if there's been complications added in this kind of theory of change, or if there's been complications added in it seems like you know. I remember in the book you talk about the memo that the Gill Foundation brings to all the donors and advocates, and the thesis is basically that the Supreme Court is going to be following roughly a little bit, lagging a little bit behind public opinion on some of these issues, and part of the project is to start shifting states and start shifting public opinions and create the kind of permission structure for court level change. Do you think that that is still as viable?

David Cole:

Well. So the Supreme Court is a much more challenging institution for progressive change in the United States today than when I wrote the book, given it's six to three three justices appointed by Trump, six very conservatives, three liberals on the court makes it tough right. But I will also say you know, since 1972, the Supreme Court has been majority Republican appointees since 1972. And over that period of time the court recognized the right of abortion. It recognized the notion that sex discrimination violates the Equal Protection Clause. It recognized the privacy protections of same-sex couples to engage in intimate sexual relations without it being made a crime by the legislature. It recognized same-sex marriage. It struck down the death penalty for juveniles and mandatory life without parole for juveniles, and it extended a whole host of other constitutional protections to criminal defendants over that time. So what political scientists have said about the Supreme Court and constitutional law in the United States is that when you look at over time at the court, it has generally followed public opinion with respect to the major constitutional issues that are before it, and when it has departed from public opinion in significant ways, there's always been a correction. Sometimes that correction is in a liberal way.

David Cole:

The court departed from public opinion, striking down all kinds of consumer protection laws and worker protection laws in the progressive era and the early part of the 20th century up through the New Deal, huge amounts of pressure on the court because it was out of step with where the American people were, what people needed, and eventually the court shifted.

David Cole:

It's also shifted in a more conservative way. The Warren Court the most liberal Supreme Court in our history, which was the court that introduced a lot of new constitutional protections for criminal defendants in particular, initiated and saw through the end of segregation in the United States. On a number of issues that court was arguably ahead of where Americans were at the time and there was a response to that. So I think today's court is behind where the people are. It is a much more conservative court than the country is, and so you know, I think there will be, and there already have been, popular sort of responses to that and I think at some point there will be a correction. But right now you know, if you're focused on constitutional progressive reform it's a tough sell.

James:

I want to maybe come back to something you said right at the very beginning in terms of the key takeaway and you kind of focus on the word like incremental reform and incremental progress, and you know there's this tension in you know, both animal movement but many different movements, whether there's always the kind of like more ambitious idea. There's some people who are kind of, you know, plugging away at like quite maybe small scale incremental reform and I'm kind of curious why you think it's so valuable that actually people go after incremental reforms rather than maybe go for something much more ambitious and sweeping and have lower odds of succeeding or use this to kind of shift the over to window.

David Cole:

You know, I think there's room for both in efforts to change the world, to make it a better place. And I, you know, I also think that there are arguments that on certain kinds of issues, like, in particular, climate change, we don't have time for incrementalism. You know, I'm sympathetic to that notion that when you're facing you know something that it's very difficult to change laws, it's very difficult to change culture. At least in what I've looked at in terms of what has worked in changing people's minds and ultimately changing the legal structures that reflect that is incremental reform, small steps that make it easier to take the next step. And you know that was certainly true with marriage equality, where much of the work of the gay rights groups in the many decades, you know, up until we actually achieved marriage equality, was convincing gay and lesbian couples in hostile states not to go to court and make a claim that they had a right to marriage equality, because the last thing we wanted was a set of precedents that said, no, there's no such thing as a right to marriage equality, because that obviously is going to make it harder to prevail in the long term on small-bore kinds of wins early on extending family benefits from progressive employers and progressive cities to same-sex partners that would otherwise go to married couples, changing family law so that it allowed for same-sex couples to adopt. Amending local anti-discrimination ordinances so that they would include sexual orientation as well as sex, race, religion, et cetera, things like that.

David Cole:

And then, even when the movement moved to marriage itself, it sought to pursue it only in the most friendly environments. So you know, the first case was filed in Vermont, then in Massachusetts, then Connecticut, california. By happenstance, these all happened to be fairly progressive states, blue states, where there was state Supreme Courts that folks thought might be amenable to recognizing the right. And that was very, very much a conscious effort. In fact, ordinarily when you file a lawsuit on an issue like marriage equality, you would make both federal constitutional rights claims and state constitutional rights claims. But in those cases they only made state constitutional rights claims because they knew that if they made a federal constitutional rights claim and won, it would go right to the Supreme Court of the United States and they were not ready to go to the United States Supreme Court. They didn't feel that there was sufficient support for the idea to go to the US Supreme Court. And if you limit your claim to a state law claim and you win on state law in Vermont or Massachusetts. The US Supreme Court has no authority to question the Massachusetts Supreme Court's decision about what Massachusetts Constitution means. So it was very much this kind of incremental effort that in the end achieved a radical change and brought people along rather than trying to, you know, hammer home some radical result, you know, from the get-go.

David Cole:

I think important lesson from the marriage equality campaign was the sort of the campaign outside of the courts for hearts and minds and that really changed over time from an effort that was a kind of like shock, awe and shame. How could you possibly not deny gay people the right to marry? If you're denying gay people the right to marry, you are a bigot, you are backwards. This is like being in favor of segregation, this is like being in favor of the internment of the Japanese. And they ultimately realized through some serious self-study, after losing a major proposition in California Proposition 8, which overturned a Supreme Court decision and took away marriage equality in California through a ballot initiative, a study of sort of how one can advocate effectively for they concluded that that kind of advocacy is not going to change people's minds and instead they moved from this kind of the more conservative the better.

David Cole:

You know Republican ministers, older people, who would talk about how they had initially thought same-sex marriage was kind of a weird idea, but that, you know, over time they had come to believe that it made sense, and it was usually by virtue of somebody in their family who they now knew was gay or lesbian, and he or she should have the same right to commit, you know, to a life partnership, as I did with my wife of 50 years or whatever. And so instead of hammering home to people we're right, you're wrong. You should be ashamed of yourself. It was much more. Look here's where I was, here's what brought me around to the view that I have today. That proved a much more effective way of changing hearts and minds in the long run, and I think that's an important lesson for all social movements.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

I wanted to ask about one of the other case studies in the book. The NRA, I think for decades has been seen as a highly effective political force in the United States a highly effective political force in the United States. You detail in the book how they turn a very small radical group with an unpopular opinion into this dominant political force. I'm curious what you see as some of the key strategic decisions that they made along that journey that got them to where they are today, or at least where they were a number of years ago, I should say.

David Cole:

Right, they've somewhat imploded in recent years, mostly because of well, I think, mostly because of sort of corruption in the some parts of the leadership. But I, you know, but possibly also they may be a victim of their own success. You know, for a long time they were the principal protectors of gun rights and then they, you know, prevailed in the Supreme Court and now the Supreme Court is arguably the principal protector of gun rights and maybe that's in some ways, you know, made them considered less essential. I don't know. You know, the history of the NRA is interesting. They started as not a gun rights group but a gun group, people who liked to hunt and shoot, and this was a way that they could come together with like-minded people to train people how to shoot, to have good standards for guns, et cetera, et cetera. And it really wasn't until the 1960s when, in the wake of lots of urban unrest, congress passed the first serious federal gun control law that the NRA said wait a minute we have to be political here.

David Cole:

We can't just sort of be a hobby group. We need to have a political arm. So they created a political arm in response to the first real, serious federal gun control law and that political arm became just very, very powerful and I think in some ways they did things like the marriage equality movement. They also believed in incrementalism. They did not go to the Supreme Court and say there's an individual right to bear arms in the Second Amendment.

David Cole:

Instead they went around the country and starting in the most conservative states, just like the marriage equality folks started in the most liberal states, getting state courts and state legislatures to recognize a right to bear arms under state law. And that was easier to you know, it was easier to mobilize. You could start in the more conservative states where it would be very easy get a few wins, and then you had a model that you could take to the next state, the next state, the next state, and so by the time the case that established a federal constitutional right to bear arms reached the Supreme Court, every state in the country but one, I think, had already recognized under their own state laws and constitutions a right to bear on, which made it a lot easier step for the US Supreme Court to do so. They also. I think another thing they did that was very effective was they were a membership organization. They worked very hard to recruit members, including giving people free membership when they buy a gun, etc. And they then deployed those members politically by giving scorecards to every legislator.

David Cole:

Everyone who was running for state or local or federal office across the country would get a grade from the NRA on his or her commitment to gun rights, and then they would send out cards urging people to vote for the candidate with the best grade, and people within the NRA were very responsive to that. They saw gun rights as central to who they were, and so they voted along those lines and that became a very powerful weapon. So then that led the NRA to be able to get Congress to put into law certain kinds of recognitions of rights to bear arms as a statutory matter. They then worked very hard to get George W Bush elected. He appointed John Ashcroft as the Attorney General.

David Cole:

John Ashcroft was a longtime member of the NRA, and so they immediately wrote to John Ashcroft and said you know, dear John, you know, I don't know if you're aware, but for 100 years the Justice Department has taken the position that there is no individual right to bear arms, because that had been the position of the Supreme Court as well, and he reversed the views of the Justice Department.

David Cole:

So by the time it got to the Supreme Court 2008, on whether there's a constitutional right to bear arms for individuals in the United States, virtually every state had already recognized that right. The Congress of the United States had recognized that right in statutory terms, and the Justice Department, the executive branch had changed its position, and then they also supported academics to do scholarly research to try to sort of buttress the case that the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right to bear arms. So I think they did a very thoughtful, strategic, incremental campaign that ultimately ended in the recognition of a right to bear arms, ultimately ended in the recognition of a right to bear arms, and that right, as I said at the outset, had been dismissed as a fraud by Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in, I think, 1990. And in 2008, less than two decades later, the Supreme Court recognizes that it is not a fraud but a right.

James:

I think there's a lot in there that we want to unpack, because one thing that I thought was particularly interesting on the nra was what you said at the very beginning was it very much started out as a almost like a social scene? You know, there was the gun clubs or like barbecues you go to, I guess like the range together so, and then that kind of morphed into this like political piece. I'm kind of curious, like how important do you think that social and kind of community aspect was, I guess both like bring in members and then kind of retain them and then get them engaged in political activism, because, like for me that feels like you know, it's not clear that someone who's just there for social scene also gets engaged in politics. But do you think that was a bit of like almost like a radicalization atmosphere maybe in like a lightweight happening in that community?

David Cole:

I think it was super important. I know the NRA folks who I interviewed for the book thought it was very important. I think it contributed to the sense of identity that people you know identified themselves as an NRA member and you know you vote your identity. So if your identity is a Democrat, you vote the Democratic ticket. If your identity is a Republican, you vote the Republican ticket.

David Cole:

If you identify as a gun, because you know there's something there, there's an actual thing that you have that you know in theory the government might try to take away. And it is the kind of thing where you know people are going to come together who are not necessarily sort of political activists, just like to hunt, like to shoot and like to hang out with like-minded people, and then you build a kind of collective consciousness and identity that way. Much harder, say, for if you're a First Amendment person or a privacy person, there isn't a thing there. There's not a reason to have a barbecue about free speech or privacy or, or you know, or probably animal rights. Right, definitely not. And and and and. So it's so I think that's a, that's a, a benefit they had.

David Cole:

But I think the sort of more sort of the sort of more generalizable point is to the extent that you can get people to sort of identify themselves as a part of their identity is I am against guns or I am for guns, and that's a really important thing for me the more likely they're going to be engaged on the issue, vote on the issue, be willing to, you know, donate on the issue. I actually think that vegetarianism could be a sort of political tool for the animal rights movements in a way right, because it means once someone like I did read a book like Eating Animals and understand how horrific factory farming is, and then you change who you are. Because of that, it seems to me you know you are more likely to be active and engaged on those issues. Not necessarily, but it is part of like you know, it's part of who you are, in a way that believing in free speech or believing in privacy is generally not.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

You've hit upon hit upon several of the most fiendish problems in the animal rights movement that James and I and our friends discuss constantly. This issue of identity is incredibly critical, but also the lack of an organic community. We don't have the organic gay and lesbian community forming in cities. We don't have the gun clubs. We don't have, you know, a particular church we're associated with. How much do we invest in creating that kind of social fabric out of thin air? Is that even possible? Yeah, yeah.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

The other thing I'm curious to get your thoughts on related to what you just said about this issue of identity. One of the things that I feel like we have in common with the NRA or the gun rights movement is we have very high intensity of preference. Activists whose identity, like current people in the animal rights movement, are single issue people and they're very intense and it is their life's cause in a way. That is, I think very few movements can claim actually, that the level of intensity of preference among our core cadre, but there's huge trade-offs here and that like even something like vegetarianism to say like this is kind of the price of entry to be part of the team and to be like in the interior of the movement. This is a very high cost for most people, and one thing we benefit from that's probably a little bit different than a lot of like, especially in the early years of organizing for the nra is a lot of people are just very sympathetic to our cause.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

So I think even most people if they just don't see it as possible to become vegetarian are very likely to vote in favor of banning battery cages for egg laying hands or just would generally agree with any statement you made. Like what you just said. Factory farming is unbelievably cruel. It's a terrible, terrible thing we're doing to animals. Virtually everyone agrees with us, right Like they can barely watch the footage from these files yeah, so I wonder, to what do you like?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

a part of me is it really sympathizes what you just said like yeah, like becoming vegetarian and changing yourself, getting this identity like this is so strong in political organizing, and like creating this latent group of people we can activate with this identity. But on the other hand, it's highly exclusionary and there's this tension of like how, how much we broaden the tent with these people where it's like a very low salience issue, but but where they agree with us. Do you have any thoughts on how we should consider that trade off or what you've seen work for the NRA or other movements?

David Cole:

I think what worked for the marriage equality folks with gay rights was to, you know, move beyond the gay community itself. Right, they had to move beyond the gay community itself, because that was a relatively small percentage of the population, you know. But they were able to do that by coming out, by sort of disclosing to the people they knew and loved who they were, in ways that had not been done, you know, for decades, for decades, centuries. I suppose those ties then made it more difficult for people to demonize and more likely that people would be sympathetic to their cause even if they didn't have that identity.

David Cole:

I'm a vegetarian, but I don't want to impose it on other people. So people ask me yeah, I'm vegetarian, why? I'll tell them why. But I also, you know, totally recognize that. You know, not everyone will make that choice and sometimes I felt like when other people sort of announce their vegetarianism, it can be in a way that sort of says well, if you're not a vegetarian, you're a bad person, and that doesn't work very well in terms of bringing people along and building a broader tent. So I do think there's a, you know, a real need obviously to build a broader tent.

David Cole:

I think, you know, the animal rights movement has two significant challenges. One is that there's no human being's self-interest is at stake or at least not in an obvious way self-interest at stake, and that's a very powerful motivator. And the other is that, at least in some measures, you're asking people to sacrifice for somebody else. That's the same kind of problem that climate change has. Where you're asking you know, people are asking us now to sacrifice for future generations, and that's people don't want to do that or they're reluctant to do that.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

I don't know.

David Cole:

I feel like vegetarianism is growing to be sure that there's sort of more and more consciousness about factory farming. You can get the sort of question before folks who could be against treating animals more, you know, humanely. You have both some serious challenges and you have, you know, this real benefit that you know, at the end of the day, what you're fighting against is really, really offensive to many, many people, and so, but for the agriculture lobby and the fact that our economy depends on it, you know you'd have an easy sailing.

James:

Well, welcome in the park. Yes, speaking of, I guess, tensions in the movement I guess, david, you've identified a couple and another one that we have come up a fair bit which I guess is similar to the incremental point is you know, to what extent should groups be mobilizing their base around kind of fights that are symbolic in nature, in that like they don't have a huge impact on their actual stated goals? And an example of the nra they were trying to allow, have guns allowed in national parks and restaurants and, like you know, that probably doesn't affect that many going on. It was, like you know, it's not as important as rights bear arms more broadly, but it seems like people were fired up about this and this was a useful tool in mobilizing their base. And I guess I'm curious for your thoughts on, like this trade-off between how much of our resources, like should a group kind of use to kind of mobilize people on these kind of symbolic stuff versus, like you know, focusing on the actual high impact things that progress their goals.

David Cole:

I guess on symbolic stuff, I'd say two things. One is it's important not to underestimate how important those measures can be. And in the marriage equality study I focused on the work done by organizations that sought to pressure both Hollywood and major television studios and news, you know, stations, et cetera, into including gay and lesbian characters in their fiction in you know non, you know serial killer form, serial killer form and covering LGBT people and issues in a way that is not sort of demonizing, or aren't they strange? And I think that was seen by many in the movement as a very important part of the struggle to kind of quote unquote, normalize gay and lesbian identity, to undemonize gay and lesbian identity. And it was symbolic and it did not involve laws, it was about culture.

David Cole:

I also think that people can sometimes overplay the symbolic stuff. I mean, I think you've seen this in the United States with respect to the left and sort of culture, wars and political correctness and wokeness, and a lot of that is ultimately about culture and it's been done too often, I think, in a kind of sort of ham-handed way that has played into the hands of the right wing. I mean, you know, woke has become a pejorative term. It didn't start out that way. That effort to kind of change the way people talk was seen as too heavy-handed, and so I do think it's important to do it. I think it's important to do it in the right way, and I don't think you can make a sort of one size fits all judgment about you know, I do think that. You know, I do think that small wins are generally better than big losses. If you don't mind, I'd like to go back to I've just been thinking about a little bit are generally better than big losses.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

If you don't mind, I'd like to go back to. I've just been thinking about a little bit of what you're talking about on framing and communications and the changes that allowed the same-sex marriage advocates to become a lot more effective by appealing to kind of more like middle America, using messengers are going to recognize. It strikes me that that has not been the path to success of the NRA and they've been much less afraid to be highly polarizing, using very strong language, being very purposefully provocative as a messaging strategy, which is actually probably closer to how the animal rights movement has behaved in the last few decades. How do you see these differences in strategy? Why is one appropriate for the gun rights movement and one is appropriate for gay marriage, and where do you see potentially the fight for farm animals as lying within those two?

David Cole:

I don't know.

David Cole:

I suspect that partly some of what goes on with a group like the NRA is that they are such a large organization and they have people for whom that issue is really really top of mind that they can kind of afford to kind of be oppositional towards others because that will motivate their base, even if it won't bring in new folks.

David Cole:

If you sort of read their magazine or watched their television thing when they had a television station, they did also try to bring in folks who you know sort of unlikely allies. They did a lot to try to bring in women. They did a lot to try to bring in people of color. They were, you know, they didn't want to be just a white male organization, they wanted to expand out. So you know, I think they saw the power of identifying an enemy to unify their significant base. But they also tried to expand that base by reaching out to folks who might not, you know, sort of otherwise identify. If you're a smaller movement like I think the marriage equality movement was a much smaller movement you don't really have the luxury of kind of just baiting the opposition in the hope of motivating your base because your base isn't that big, and I think that's probably also true for animal rights folks.

David Cole:

I mean, I think you've got people who care deeply, and probably part of the challenge is that they think deeply and they act radically in ways that people for whom this is not a critical issue are sort of like that's not who I am. I don't want to be that way and you need to kind of get over that hurdle in order to expand the pie. Ultimately, you have to expand the pie, I think, and the NRA had a bigger pie to start out with, or a bigger share of the pie to start out with.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

What you said earlier about people are not motivated by guilt, I think is definitely proven out, and having enemies that we're clear on is good definitely proven out. And having enemies that we're clear on is good. But I think the more we can make people feel like we have a shared enemy and these massive meat companies that are abusing animals, rather than in an individual and their personal choices, generate those feelings of guilt and like create the, create a context where they're standing side by side with the activists against the Tyson, the JBSs and so on.

David Cole:

The better sort of case study to model your work on. Is the Stop Smoking campaign right, because the Stop Smoking campaign changed America radically, radically right, and notwithstanding a major, major industry on the other side? I don't know, I haven't studied that campaign. It wasn't a constitutional campaign, it was more a public preferences campaign, but that seems like a. I'm sure that's a model that you've looked at and I assume can draw us from to some degree.

James:

Yeah, I guess I think they were quite successful because they kind of made not smoking cool. And you know there was like the campaign like smoke-free kids I don't remember the exact terminology, but yeah, I think that's something that there are some groups in the animal movement that are trying to kind of replicate. And you know, right now young men is like the biggest constituent for meat eating. So to what extent can we make not eating animals like an exciting and cool thing rather than like a big sacrifice you have to do?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

This has been so fascinating. I really really appreciate it, david.

David Cole:

Well, I appreciate the work that you guys do and happy to be of assistance in however I can, so thank you for doing what you're doing.

James:

So, dave, what did you think of the conversation with David?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

Yeah, it was great to meet him and what a delightful surprise that he's already on board with the cause. We didn't know that when reaching out to him, right, we did not know that.

James:

No, I had no idea he was vegetarian or red eating animals and that was oh yeah if people watch the videos, you'll see the surprise in our faces. We're like what?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

yeah, very, very exciting. You know, I was just already very pumped to speak with him because I love his book so much, so for him to come on and say that was a dream come true, for sure, yeah big time.

James:

So I think, yeah, we were chatting. There's a couple of useful things like interesting things that were probably, I think, working for us. I think one of them was the stuff he said about identity and, yeah, did you want to expand on what you thought was interesting around his discussions of identity and animal issues?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

yeah, well, he threw in that he thought vegetarianism was an incredibly useful tool for creating identity around this issue and we chatted a little bit about it with him. But I've been thinking about what he said and I feel very conflicted because I think a major misstep of the movement has been the focus on vegetarianism and veganism and, like I said in our conversation, these kinds of like costly feeling, personal, consumer choices, when I would like to see more attention move towards engagement as like a citizen, let's say, rather than a consumer, and having a bigger tent of people who feel like they can identify as an animal person and animal rights activists, whatever, whatever the term is for the community, without having to be a vegetarian or vegan, because that's just not going to happen for a huge number of very sympathetic people. On the other hand, if it is a very lightly held identity without this kind of like change in lifestyle and behavior and different community gathering points and all this stuff, then do we just never have what it takes to become an nra like body?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

yeah there's a real tension there and I don't know what the answer is, and maybe you just have what we have now, which is like the hardcore cadre inner circle of people who do make a big change and then they focus on outreach and organizing to the broader sympathetic community, but where it's like a low salience issue. Maybe that just has to be the path forward. It's definitely thought-provoking and interesting that he immediately landed on this as a new vegetarian thing like this is the way yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree that I'm also a bit torn in that.

James:

Yeah, there's like very clear trade-offs in that. You know, for the nra, having this like super tight-knit thing was like it's very mobilizing. It's kind of like, in a way, it kind of creates like us against the world and kind of almost like radicalizes people internally and that kind of fires people up and and we definitely have a bunch of that. And then that's quite a big difference. Like what magic quality didn't explicitly trying to, I guess you know, reach normal people and, I guess, not focus too much on, I guess, what made them different, but like what made them the same?

James:

And I do wonder if, like we can, if it's possible to like get the best of both worlds. Like you're maybe hinting at is like there's some small number of groups that do organize much more based on identity and like and maybe the diet change or whatever, and then it's like a small and like highly concerned and like passionate group of people and then similar groups do their much more broad stuff. But I wonder, like you know, is that really possible? Like right now, loads of groups get loads of flack for the whole vegan identity, even if they don't talk about veganism. So it's like it's not clear actually if you can get the best of both worlds.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

So yeah, I'm also a bit unsure on how we should adapt I guess you need to separate out the movable middle audience like the same-sex marriage folks had, yeah from the people doing the work and the campaigning and the organizing. But what's interesting about the nra example is they're not really trying to reach the movable middle like we talked about yeah, a little bit.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

They're more. Just like we have such a statistically small but somewhat large in absolute terms group of people who are willing to do enough to make it a dominant political yeah which is interesting.

James:

I think I read like at the height of the nra it's about three million members and I think that's roughly the number of vegans in the us. It's like one percent of the us, it's like roughly three million people. I wonder if we could achieve similar kind of success but then requires like basically everyone who's vegan to be like politically active very high bar. Maybe it's within reach, I don't know, and we're just like not good enough organized and I guess for them to be easier because they have a much easier entry admission. You know they just like guns. They buy a gun, they don't have to actually do anything really like changing their life.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

A lot easier to buy a gun in America than to be vegan.

James:

Sadly. Yeah, on the NRA example of, like the gun clubs, he said that actually that's kind of how the NRA started was a social scene, and then it kind of evolved this political beast. Once they had these threats and you know dangerous legislation for them. And I think he said, yeah, he was kind of skeptical of building a social scene around you know vegetarianism, but I'm like, in a way, we kind of have this. You know I know you're doing a bit of a face, but there's festivals and restaurants and events. People do kind of stick together. It kind of is happening.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

There could be something there. I guess it pains me a little bit, maybe because it's just not my thing as much, and making a movement about food and consumer choices is just like so, much less exciting to me yeah, yeah I guess we've got to work with what we've got to some degree yeah, because the alternative is, like you know, can you make a really strong identity and social scene around, like caring about animals?

James:

that seems much. I guess. There's like people who have pets often really love pets and there's like special things for them and on a much smaller scale, there's like sanctuaries. So it's like I guess the animal equivalent for me doesn't seem to be as like organic or as strong basically, but maybe we're underestimating that.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

You know that's so outside of my world, Like there's obviously like a huge community of people who do animal rescue and TNR and like you know this much larger part of the animal movement that exists outside of our farm animal world and perhaps we could be doing more to tap into that infrastructure and allying with them. I think you know part of the issue here is also like we're just we don't provide the opportunities for the sympathetic people to get involved in an easy way. Yeah, there just needs to be more opportunities for people to vote on behalf of animals as like the lowest barrier to entry, but also get involved in kind of like relevant local issues for animals and so on. Like beyond just asking people to change their diet and the community can come together around those things.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

So maybe maybe we're over complicating it a little bit. We part of it is just kind of creating the initial infrastructure for people to engage with what would that initial structure like? I mean like more like organizations that people can engage with, as like a community of volunteers.

James:

Like this does happen in various pockets, of course, and like of course it's happening, but it doesn't happen everywhere, yeah, and not in a way that's going to be appealing to a really broad set of people yeah, yeah, another thing that I guess I'm taking away from is, yeah, he was very focused on, like you know, incremental wins and I guess, like birth, marriage, equality and nra, different ways would start on like a local or state level, start in favorable states, focus on things they can actually win and then like kind of graduate up to the big league, so to speak, and I think that's something that groups in that movement are kind of doing. More and more is doing, you know, in the us, local and state level stuff, or like asking for things that are slightly not the big prize, but like steps there, whether it's, you know, banning foie gras or other stuff. So it seems like he, yeah, he was a big proponent of what do you say, small wins are better than big losses, which seems like a pretty good motto.

Dave Coman-Hidy:

Yeah, I I'm obviously very excited about that kind of work in the movement and that strategy in general. I think a big part of what you need to attract people is momentum and you know people want to be a part of a winning cause. They want to be part of something that, yeah, is exciting and making progress. And I think starting small and letting people get engaged in local wins or state level wins even if there's something that to like a hardcore ea, feels more symbolic than impactful I think is just incredibly valuable in making an appealing movement for people to join up with yeah, he did say he does think in the case of the nra that one question I asked.

James:

He did think the symbolic think in the case of the nri that one question asked. He didn't think the symbolic stuff was relatively useful in terms of in that case it was more like getting representation of gay people in tv and changing culture that way. But it didn't seem like he thought those worked well is there anything else that sticks out to you from that conversation, or things that people in the movement should be kind of thinking about or trying to integrate into their work?

Dave Coman-Hidy:

me. I mean, I guess I would just encourage any listeners who haven't read the book. Yeah, check it out definitely. I found it to be really informative and I'm sure I mentioned this on one of my other visits to the podcast, but it encouraged me to read the engagement the longer deeper dive into the fight for same-sex marriage. That I also found to be incredibly instructive, especially on the issues around, like the pivoting communications that that movement made and framing of the issue. So. So any advocate who's interested in this kind of like grand strategy for movements, I highly recommend checking out both of those nice.

James:

Yeah, we'll link those both below. Cool dave. Well, thank you for coming on as a guest co-host. It's nice to have you back in a different way and appreciate your time yeah, thanks for having me, it's been a blast.