Podcast Transcript
Hope
Welcome to the Hope for the Animals Podcast sponsored by United Poultry Concerns. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec. And you can find all our episodes at hope for the animals podcast.org. And I welcome questions and comments on any of the shows. My email is hope at UPC – online.org.
The world is reeling from yet another crisis in so many months. And this time, it’s systemic racism.
In the last couple of weeks after a series of violent injustices against people of color, the groundswell of support in the streets, in response to the murder of George Floyd and several other instances in succession of just brutal racism, have captured the world’s attention. And I’m inspired seeing people standing up, speaking out and fighting for justice. I want to say that UPC stands in support of anti-oppression efforts. And we recognize the importance of this historic moment. And we stand in solidarity with the black and brown communities and all efforts to end systemic racism and injustice.
I want to give a recommendation for another vegan podcast, I love podcasts, and I listen to a lot of them. And I highly recommend the Bearded Vegans podcast with Andy and Paul. On their podcast, they dive deeply into the gray areas of vegan advocacy. And I think they have a really great take on those issues. I think they’re really smart. And I really like their latest two episodes: episode 231 and 232. One is on media literacy and online activism. And the other is called, On Solidarity and Hypocrisy Memes. And I think both of these and a lot of their episodes are really relevant to our current events, and how the vegan community should respond and can be supportive right now and can be supportive in the right way. So I really recommend that podcast, the Bearded Vegans. Shout out for the Bearded Vegans.
And I want to jump right into our guest speaker interview soon because Connie Spence has so much to share, and I want to give her as much of a voice as I can. But first I do want to just run down some basics about one subject that we talked about on a resent episode. We talked about numerous things but one thing we talked about was farm subsidies. Our veganism is working. Actually, demand for meat is going down. Demand for plant based meat is going up. So why is it that the number of animals killed every year often stays steady or even increases? It’s not that, you know, the human population is increasing. It’s not exports. It’s the manipulated farming system that has subsidized its way out of consumer supply and demand.
So what is a subsidy? A subsidy is a sum of money granted by the government or another public body to assist an industry or business. So the price of the commodity or service they provide remains low or competitive.
And with farm subsidies, the vast majority of the money is going to animal farming and animal feed, the feed that’s grown to feed the animals. This keeps a terribly cruel industry basically fail proof. The money covers losses for any reason, including when demand drops. It keeps unhealthy animal products like fast food artificially cheap. These subsidies were originally established to protect the food industry, the food system, so people could be fed. But it has turned, that was back in the 1930s. It has now evolved into something very different. And the government has been using our tax dollars to bail out corporate agribusiness from their failing animal food market. It is corporate welfare. And guess how much of these billions of dollars go to help the farmers that grow vegetables and fruits and legumes and seeds and other healthy plant based foods? Less than 1%! Less than 1% of the billions of dollars in farm subsidies go to help farmers who are growing plant based foods.
It’s a terrible system. These farm policies insulate the animal agriculture industry against falling demand. And animals are bred and slaughtered in this horrific system of exploitation. Whether demand is up or down, doesn’t matter. The government covers their costs. And it’s undermining our veganism with our own tax dollars. There’s a huge amount of surplus meat being stored in federal facilities, dairy gets poured out by the billions of gallons, not only in the time of the pandemic. I know that we’re seeing this in the news now, but they’ve been doing this ever since dairy demand has been dropping for the last 20 years. Despite changes in demand, animal ag is increasing production. So this is really a serious problem. And they have the lobbying power to really ensure that these policies continue to support animal ag, corporate animal agribusiness pays lobbyists $18 million every year to promote farm policy towards animal agribusiness’ advantage. As a result, these farm bills and the other legislation ensure animal farmers profit regardless of how Americans vote with their dollars. It’s really outrageous. And our next guest is fighting against this.
Hope
So I am really excited to introduce our speaker today. We have Connie Spence with us today, and she is the founder of the Vegan Justice League and the Agriculture Fairness Alliance and they are a federal vegan lobbying group influencing legislation to bring fairness back to farm policy and in subsidies for animal agriculture. And Connie has done some really creative animal rights activism. She has used a giant stage light to shine vegan messages onto buildings. It’s been called the vegan Batman light. And Connie projects these vegan messages that span 75 feet in diameter and can be seven stories tall. She’s shown this light projection in some really diverse locations like major freeways in LA, the Staples Center, Las Vegas hotels, and other places. And now through her organizations, she’s dedicated to educating vegans about how the food system is monopolized and rigged by the livestock farmers and what we need to do to solve it. So I’m really excited to talk to Connie Spence today, I think she is going to have a lot of wonderful things to tell us and I am just wondering, Connie, what got you into activism? What, how did you go vegan? What got you started in the movement?
Connie
Hey, yeah, so thank you for having me, first of all, and I’m happy to talk about like that range of where you become a vegan and then transition to vegan activist and then transition to getting political. I talked about how first we went vegan, then we became activists now we must lobby and so this goes right along with that. So, I went vegan 10 years ago, I was vegetarian for three years. I was one of those cheese holdouts where I literally was vegan in every way, including no leather, no household products, but except for cheese. So for three years, I was…
Hope
Mine was ice cream.
Connie
Was it? Yeah. So this cheese hold out happened for three years. That was 10 years ago. And then yeah, having my health actually improved. I don’t know if you experienced that. But at the time I did I was 30 and I did have my own situations that were a lot of it had to do with like, IBS, like where your stomach is just, I was one of those women that it would be three to six days before I’d go to the bathroom. You know, I was carrying so much waste. And all it took was for me to be vegan and daily, I became very regular and I had taken medications for that. I had adult acne that was cystic on my face and I had dermatologists tell me that oh you have a hormone problem so let’s give you all these extra hormone pills to regulate it. And two weeks without cheese and I didn’t ever get another cyst cystic like acne on my face again. So that was going vegan then activism. You know you have to think about social media because I really feel social media is what started making us even realize how amazing and cool activism could be and not undermining people who have been doing activism for years. But I think in 2015 or so, maybe 16, you started seeing groups of people consistently go out and do activism, daily, weekly, you name it, and they were trying to gather people together, and they would videotape their activism and it would be marches and would be, and then you started seeing disruptions. And then, I wasn’t one of those people that went vegan and then came activists, right. I didn’t, it didn’t even dawn on me, like I was always evangelizing and talking about it. But it had never dawned on me even as an advertising major in college that activism is such a powerful way to veganize people.
Hope
Tell us a little about your projection activism, the projecting onto buildings. How do you do it? And what gave you that idea?
Connie
Yeah, so I had joined other people’s activism, and it didn’t fit my personality, like yelling at people holding a sign that they can’t read from far away, and that sort of thing. It just didn’t vibe with my personality. And so I would go kind of reluctantly to do activism, knowing it was powerful, but it was just like, uh, you know, I, I just, I have a different personality. I wanted to figure out something where I could do it alone, and be just as effective. So I saw an article in 2016, right after Trump got elected. And believe it or not, there was some sentiment that probably matches today. Someone had shined a light on a hotel in Atlanta, and it said F Trump spelled out the F obviously. And it was huge, a huge light that looked like the hotel was branded with F, the words F Trump. And the article went on to say like the police didn’t know how to shut this guy down because technically he was on a public sidewalk. He was not trespassing physically, the light isn’t vandalism, because you know it, it isn’t defacing property with monetary value. And I was like, oh, my God, I need to do this. That is brilliant. And, you know, it could just be me. And I figured out what the equipment was from a lighting store. It actually was a scavenger hunt for a while. I tried to search online, there’s like no one giving you like a lesson on that. So this lighting store in Los Angeles, I showed them that what they were doing, and they said, okay, you’ll need this, this, this, and this and $2,000 later.
Hope
Oh wow.
Connie
It was like vacation money. I was like, you know what? Whatever I’m like, I’m gonna do this. And so and so the first time I tried it, I had no idea how to use the equipment. And I did it at the Los Angeles Farmer John slaughterhouse over their fence in into their property on their courtyard.
Hope
Wow.
Connie
And it was so powerful to see. And…
Hope
What was the message that you had shone?
Connie
I think several of them said something like, these pigs come, you know, to the slaughterhouse begging for our forgiveness, or these, these pigs fight for their last breath, just like we would in their place and stuff like that.
Hope
Powerful. Yeah.
Connie
And then I started shining light on walls everywhere, all over the city, on giant public, you know, stadiums. And I started putting things that I was I would play around with the messages because people would come find me, it would be like a scavenger hunt for people to find me. They’d see the light from really far away, you can see it for about a half mile away. And then they would they would come and be like, I was wondering where this was coming from, is their first thing they’d say. And, and, and again, like, it was instantly that that person wasn’t yelling back about, go bacon, you know, where they were, like, telling me that was so cool, you know, and, and so I started putting stuff, playing with messages based on how they react and I think one of the best formats was like a fact or fiction like on something so fact or fiction? 99% of all animals you ever eat are under six months old, which is a fact. And so when I started putting the fact or fiction stuff that was really powerful, I think to the passive audience because it made them think, and they all they honestly wanted to guess and that, you know, is that a fact? And it just, you know, you could see them really opening up when they found out that it was. So yeah, I’ve been, you know, I did that for like two or three years dealt with like, God, the amount of police interactions, I’ve really became a pro at dealing with police. I will say from a privileged persons’ standpoint, I would come really prepared. I’d come with like a binder with my rights and letters that have been sent to the mayor and stuff like that, to show them that my rights would be infringed—if they shut me down. And they had helicopters drones, people trying to take my equipment and, you know, kind of scuffling with me, I’ve had a wild ride with…
Hope
Goodness.
Connie
…the vegan Batman light.
Hope
That’s awesome. How creative! I mean, that’s really wonderful. I hope others pick up that idea. Because how cool is that they can’t really shut you down that you’re on public property? It’s not really defacing anything. So they probably just have to wait you out?
Connie
Yep. The only thing if someone does it I would recommend is that you can’t put advertising language on it. It has to be free speech. So you can’t say go to earthlings.com you can’t do that. Or you’ll get shut down. Because you can’t use somebody’s property to advertise your thing. You can say stuff like, go Dallas Cowboys or God Is Great, or the fact or fiction stuff that I do it you know, for animals rights but I’m only pointing out like what someone else could do. They could put a thought process and ideology up there. You can’t, you cannot make it seem like an advertisement or put URLs for people to go to.
Hope
Okay. Good to know. So I want to ask you about your organizations. So you focus on animal ag subsidies and farming practices. You have two organizations: the Vegan Justice League and the Agricultural Fairness Alliance. So how are these two groups different? And you’ve talked about the system being rigged for animal agriculture. How, how does that work? And how are these two groups addressing the problem?
Connie
Sure. So these two groups are sister organizations, Vegan Justice League, where you can find us at vegan Justice League . com is the educational arm of why the food system is rigged and how we must address it. Agriculture Fairness Alliance.org is the lobbying name that politicians see. And so they work together in just synergy to teach vegans that, okay, we became activists, and now we’re seeing the agriculture system do things that go against us with our taxes. How do we change that? So I founded them on the premise that I wanted to change the rigged food system. So…
Hope
Explain what the subsidies are.
Connie
Sure.
Hope
And, and how, you know, how that is connected, how our taxes are connected. I think this is something that people don’t realize, how deeply these subsidies are propping up the animal ag industry.
Connie
Sure. So I founded these groups, basically to combat what was going on and bring back supply and demand to the food system back. And so I founded this, these groups with my co-founder, Laura Reese, and it was because I found out the food system is rigged. A lot of people in our movement don’t know that and we talk a lot about supply and demand when we’re doing activism. So in my mind, this is where we’re using our vegan voices right? I’m not, when I’m talking about this, I’m letting vegans know that the food system is rigged and unfortunately, supply and demand does not work because they have been using our taxes really since 1933 with the Agriculture Act, which turned into the Farm Bill. But they’re using our taxes to subsidize livestock and dairy and livestock feed. And then they’re using our taxes for bailouts. So a subsidy basically, think about it as welfare. It is basically corporate welfare in this sense. So what happens is our taxes pay for their overhead costs. So their land can be subsidized, the soy feed can be subsidized, the water can be subsidized, the equipment can be subsidized, their insurance policies for to cover if an animal dies from weather related events can be subsidized, their insurance where it pays them if their margins get reduced by a market condition like what we have going on here, they get paid that back. Those are subsidized. Their insurance policies that pay them for losses when things like Chinese tariffs prevent sales from happening, are our taxes paying for those insurance premiums. And so our taxes through subsidies, have made them fail proof. It’s paying their overhead costs of anyone who owns a business today, or there are any entrepreneurs listening to this, you know, that you price your product. And your profit is based on a mixture of what the market can bear as well as subtracting your overhead costs. And so imagine what you could do if your product was subsidized by our tax dollars, where the majority of your price was all profit, right? And so what happens there is you start getting, especially the insurance policies, you start getting into a weird manipulation of supply and demand. Now, there’s bailouts on top of that, bailouts have been increasing during the Trump administration like they’ve never before. Trump completely knows that politically, he needs farmers to vote for him and I can talk about their political power in just a second. But bailouts used to be in the 20 million to 50 million range and are now in the billions. Last year, it was 28 billion. And this year, it’s already been close to 40 or 50 billion in with a mixture of different programs that were also included in the Coronavirus relief package. So bailouts are the worst thing that’s happened to the vegan movement because it, our taxes are now at war with our consumerism. And it allows them to over produce, and our taxes wipe clean of all of their losses, whether from Chinese tariffs or from veganism, it literally wipes clean our consumerism. And so what we have to do is we have to look at social justice in the lens that it was designed. Our activism is the social part, we absolutely need to change people’s minds and morals, but there will always be people in industries who will not morally change, right? So the Justice part is the legal and laws and the systemic part of the food system, which is that it’s rigged. And so we have to, we have to change these laws, we have to change the narrative. And we have to go against this. This is not just isolated for the vegan movement for any social justice movement, I guarantee you, you have to change the systemic part of it as well as the social part. And so that is what subsidies and bailouts are and you know what, how we’re trying to educate people and what we’re trying to work against. If I can just mention that what this system does is it incentivizes farmers to over produce so they over produce waste. Animals are literally stockpiled, the stockpile is the biggest it’s ever been and now they don’t even now they don’t even have storage space and food for them anymore. You see them dumping milk out. You see them euthanizing pigs, making other excuses about, oh, the supply system’s fragmented. So I can’t actually get it to food banks. And it’s such a lie, because our bailouts, if the payment for their meat, got it to a restaurant, a bailout for that meat should get it to a food bank. That was the original purpose of a bailout and bailouts that happened through FDR, Franklin Roosevelt, you know, in the 30s, in response to the Great Depression.
Hope
So what you’re saying about the supply and demand, as vegan activists we often say if we just decrease the demand, decrease the demand for meat, increase the demand for, for plant based foods, then the supply will go down. What you’re saying is that’s not necessarily the case because of the way the system is set up.
Connie
This system is rigged. And unfortunately that’s not the case. Supply has never dropped. Our veganism is through the roof, it’s absolutely working or consumerism is bringing unicorn stocks. You know? That haven’t happened since the Palm Pilot like in 2000. With beyond meat being a unicorn stock. We it isn’t even just about how many dedicated vegans are eating vegan food, like I know people struggle with as 3% of the population vegan? is 5%? is 8%? The truth is, is you know, you have stats that show there are 25% that incorporate plant based meats into their diet, whether it’s every day or some days, and none of that demand makes is changing the system because they keep getting bailed out. I’ve we’ve done some rough estimates. And based on the oversupply of how many animals are in the stockpile, how many animals could have been saved, it’s literally 250 million to 500 million animals get slaughtered each year that are not demanded. 250 million to 500 million not demanded.
Hope
Animals who are not going to be turned into a product, not going to become meat, but just being killed, wasted.
Connie
Wasted. Yeah, yep. And then with dairy, there’s about 10,000,009 to 10 million dairy cows in rotation in the United States, it equates to one to 3 million dairy cows in rotation who shouldn’t be there. Those are the animals what we were promised by our veganism that we would save. That’s why lobbying is so important for this movement right now. And, you know, I am not political, I don’t have a political background. I’m an anarchist, I’m an activist. And what this made me realize is that lobbying is taking activism to politicians into the White House, it’s channeling your communication. And so you know, it is an extension of our activism. And it’s imperative, it’s imperative that we become lobbying members to channel and centralize money to pay for these lobbyists, just like big agriculture does. And it’s important that we understand the local channels of communication that we can even have on you know, pressuring even our local house reps and senators on these subjects.
Hope
So I want to turn to current events, and the world has, once again in 2020, turned upside down in the last couple of weeks with the death of George Floyd and several incidents of injustice right in a row, the gunning down of Ahmaud Arbery and other incidents. It’s heartbreaking to see all these terrible events and at the same time, it’s really inspiring to that so many people are taking to the streets and speaking out all over the world. And you’ve spoken about the importance of connecting oppressions and engaging with, you know, social justice issues. You’ve mentioned that there is systematic racism in the food system. Can you talk a little about all this?
Connie
Yeah, so I’ll talk about this systemic food, food system racism first, and then I’ll segue into current events. I think they deserve their own sort of, you know, sentiment, that’s a little bit different. The systemic racism in the food system. So yes, we have to think about every system is having kind of the same oppressor, like this elite oppressor has a very, very similar prototype, especially in America. At the founding of this country most people were farmers. And they’ve kept everything intact since. They were racist. They were, they were xenophobes. They, you know, they to continue to do livestock farming, essentially pushing their livestock farms, that as we know today uses up and destroys land. And so as soon as they start doing that, they start taking over other people’s lands. So you start seeing indigenous communities getting affected by this first industry. And then you have slaves being brought over here to tend to their farming. Or the farming industry, in a lot of ways sat at the top of oppression. And so today the way the food system is systemically racist, there’s a lot of things. So one is food and equity. You have less than 1% of subsidies that go to directly to consumers like fruits and vegetables. Less than 1% of our taxes, pay for fruits and vegetables direct to consumer. The majority of it pays for livestock, dairy livestock feed. And so you have to understand that subsidized food is accessible food. Subsidized food is what all socio economic conditions can afford, or almost can afford, even the SNAP programs, if it provides access to meat and dairy, you know, at discounted prices. And so what happens to people with low socio economic conditions or in neighborhoods with people of color, you’ll start seeing these incredible food deserts. And the food deserts will not have any healthy food and no accessibility to vegan food at all. It’ll be fast food restaurants, and it’ll be places that might accept SNAP program filled with mostly meat and dairy products. And unfortunately, very few fruits and vegetables and the ones that are there cost a lot more. So if your SNAP card gives you 50 to 100 dollars and something a month, then it’s really hard to use it up in that way.
Hope
And SNAP is food stamps?
Connie
Correct? It’s a new version of food stamps. And so what happens is we really make vegan food inaccessible to certain communities, especially communities of color. And so then the food system is kind of forcing unhealthy food on them, which causes health issues, right? Other things are that the subsidy and bailout recipients are 99.5%, white, like 91% male. So people of color have been pushed out of farming for the last 100 years. At the turn of the century, 50% of African Americans were farmers. After slavery ended, and you had slaves who already worked on farms, it was natural for them to try to achieve to get land and be farmers. They were great farmers. And so, you know, anytime there was a loan or subsidy program, or you have farmers needing help, you know, from the Dust Bowl that was caused by overplanting, black farmers had no access to this. And so even back then we repeat those same things today. Our subsidies are our cowboy welfare, and it is 99.5% white recipients. It goes further where this causes social racism, where we wag our finger at the black and brown snap recipient for taking welfare, when really those subsidies are elite, white welfare. And so it’s really weird that every time people talk about welfare, they talk about, I don’t want my taxes paying for, you know, someone to live off of and things like that, but you never hear someone, I don’t want my taxes paying for white farmers to dump out unused dairy or put it in a stockpile. I don’t want our taxes, you know, having them waste food, you never hear that, you know, and these farmers are bringing in gosh, you have no idea the amounts you can get like $125,000 a year per family member and the head of household can get $900,000 for them alone and for their partner, you know $900,000 as well. They can build mega empire family farms through the subsidy programs. And nobody asked them to get drug tested. Nobody asked them for receipts. Nobody asks them, you know or says oh, you better not be you know buying alcohol and cigarettes with those subsidies. It is a huge in my opinion foundation of racism in in the dialogue that you hear in the United States. And it all is systemic from how the food system has continuously distributed money with no scrutiny of the farming industry.
Hope
Well furthering this conversation of systematic racism, and the discussion that is currently really amplified about police brutality. And, and specifically, you know, violence against our black communities. What are your thoughts on how to fix these systems?
Connie
So the synergies remain. And I am, I am half Hispanic and white and I grew up in Oklahoma and most of my adult life I’ve lived in big cities I lived in a lot of them. I feel like I have a really good perspective on overt and covert racism in the United States. And I understand the systemic aspect of racism. When I see this stuff play out, you know, it absolutely for years has been targeting marginalized communities. A lot of systems do, but specifically with the police system. And the police system, when you look at sheriffs and you look at police unions, you look at DAs and you look at their track record, there’s just no accountability. The synergies that exist is that part of social justice, which is marching the streets is amazing. It absolutely is bringing the dialogue. And, you know, it’s bringing up the discussion, and it’s showing the outrage that Americans have about something that has been going on for a while. It isn’t just about George Floyd. You know? There’s still not resultative accountability for Breonna Taylor, which happened, you know, recently where cops barged into the wrong address and just start up a house. Like, there’s no accountability there. This is a civil rights movement in 2020, our grandchildren will look back on these videos, and they will wonder what side we were on.
Hope
Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. And how you feel about the vegan community and how we need to respond to this moment in history are the things that we could be doing better as a vegan community? Are there things that we’re doing to obstruct as a vegan community? You know, what should we as a movement be focusing on?
Connie
So our org has had inclusivity policies that actually three months ago, before, you know, the protest, we wanted to make our inclusivity policy, not just something that lives on our website, but something that is like a badge that shows that we encourage diversity empowerment within our org that we are going to make it a safe space, with volunteers, anywhere we end up on stage at a vegan event doing speaking, or any sort of march that we go to. You know, before you and me got on this interview, I think I reached out to you saying I did want to discuss this subject. And you definitely were all for it. And you know, you have that anti oppression stance. We as a movement, need to be making sure that our activists are safe around other activists, we need to do a better job, and we need to empower their voices. And you know, take their victimhood away from their oppression and use it to veganize people or use it to call them a hypocrite. Right? We can absolutely do better. So with our policy right now, we’re actually working with people, if Black vegans from the movement who have been very hurt by this, and we want to make sure that if they’re part of our organization, that not just us but at an event, the event, let’s say it’s a veggie fest, needs to adopt these policies that say that groups or people that don’t believe in these things can’t come because it puts us all at risk. We as a movement need to understand do we literally preach things about justice constantly, right? And not even live it like in our lives, and if you’re an activist and you’re part of an organization or group and you need to think about your fellow activists standing next to you. Whether you hold a computer screen, whether you’re going to give you know pigs water before they’re at a slaughterhouse. Those activists next to you face all different types of oppression. Are you literally making them feel like they’re unsafe to do activism with you because you’re rejecting these things to be true? Is it making black males feel welcome to do activism especially when police come to activism events all the time? Do they feel safe? When you’re saying that police don’t aren’t over aggressive with the black community? If you say that they’ll never show up at your activism! It’s crazy to think that we wouldn’t protect the people in our own, that make up our own community. And it’s, it’s crazy to think that we want a vegan world and you think that you’re going to veganize somebody who you wouldn’t even protect. Like, what is that, what does that even say about us? We’re going to try to veganize someone to get their consumer dollars to save animals, but we wouldn’t protect that person? I mean, we have to do better. Every one of us has to do better. We can’t let people make us feel like we’re not hard core for animals simply because we support this civil rights movement and will do activism for it and speak out against it.
Hope
So we have to wrap it up now. Thank you so much for being with us and having this conversation. It’s been really incredibly educational. How can people support your organizations, learn more about what you do, and I believe, that they can even become a lobbying member of your group. Is that correct?
Connie
Correct! So, you can go to the vegan justice league.com or agriculture fairness alliance.org. And becoming a member helps us scale up. We absolutely need it. We went from educating the community and hoping we’d get a lobbyist right at, you know, and we actually got one faster than we thought. We earned enough donations and memberships to hire a lobbyist. 100% of our donations and memberships go to the lobbyist, so all of us are volunteers. We are super grassroots. We have about 500 paying members. That’s such a small fraction of the vegan movement. And for us being at one of the, you know, one of the few federal national level lobbying groups that speaks on behalf of animals and tries to push legislation to end these stockpiles and bailouts. We absolutely need to, you know, be onboard with this lobbying aspect, whether with my group or another. So memberships are super important. You know, sending a certain amount a month because we pay our lobbyist per month. I want to scale up to 5 lobbyists. I want to have a team of lobbyists playing offense and defense. Offense would be pushing new legislation. Defense is defending what all these other politicians who are owned by, you know, the agriculture system. I want them to defend those laws from being passed and drive animal liberation through and not allowing bills that help the agriculture industry grow stronger. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram under the handles that are Agriculture Fairness Alliance and Vegan Justice League. My Instagram handle is vegan_batgirl. B-A-T-G-I-R-L. I tell truths that across the board. Right now my post has the Philadelphia police just cornering activists into a fence. It’s one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen in my life of how our system acts toward protesters. And, so if you want the whole gamut of vegan activism, lobbying, data, outspoken across different forms of oppression, follow me. If that’s not your cup of tea, don’t.
Hope
Alright. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Connie Spence. It’s been a fantastic conversation.
Connie
Thank you. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk on this so much.
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