Vegan Lobbying: A Voice for the Voiceless, or "Corporate Shills"?
23 November 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
a bad news yen but we had your 1.4 2
million u.s. dollars they spent this to create a seemingly independent charity to issue them with a license to kill that's what it is they really are in effect shills of whole foods they're representing a corporate interest and the bottom line is they're raising the value of those products they're raising the value of that pork beef eggs milk ultimately this is a sticker this is a label this is a controlled brand name and logo that raises the value of final product this is just not legitimate [Music] hobbies thing okay guys I'm gonna talk a little bit about veganism hope that doesn't freak anybody out maybe some of you are just here to watch the videos about a song of ice and fire maybe some of you are just here to hear me complain about my personal life about my love life aur bole earning Chinese or about Buddhist philosophy we've had a lot of different topics on this channel lately and we've had we've had some discussion of eating disorders a lot of diversity in the content but to talk about veganism for a change I'm just gonna read you a few paragraphs of this article and you'll see why I'm reading it this is from an article on humane watch org meet mian park she's a former vice president for farm animal welfare at the Humane Society of the United States in 2009 parks resume landed her a job as executive director of the global animal partnership ji AAP the organization administering a new five tier animal welfare rating system recently unveiled by whole foods market to judge from glowing reports of the new meat dairy and egg labeling scheme mian park sits at the Nexus of the animal welfare mainstream and America's foodie elite but Park and g AP aren't exactly what they seem g AP is beginning to show signs of a legitimate vegan takeover led by Park who as the farm animal vice president at Humane Society United States was crystal clear about her desire to eliminate as much livestock farming as she could so look this article hilariously is from the year 2011 at that time there was still some optimism apparently about this fundamentally welfarist move to label foods at Whole Foods Whole Foods is the name of a chain of grocery stores in it states and since then this has been thoroughly discredited I think not just in the eyes of vegans I think in the eyes of all kinds of normal consumers to now who actually pays for an institution like this to exist g AP this article doesn't get into all of the breakdown of their finances but it says for example in 2009 Whole Foods added another $100,000 to its support for g AP bringing the total to 1.4 2 million u.s. dollars so I do not know how many years that spread over but 1.4 2 million u.s. dollars donated from whole foods to this charitable agency and this agency is um uh supposedly existing I mean the the non-vegan standard term here is you know do you have the fox watching the chickens this kind of thing who watches the Watchmen who is the policeman and who is the criminal in this situation who is investigating who who is holding who to a higher standard so apparently the funding for this started in 2005 when Whole Foods was the only donor putting in more than 1.3 2 million u.s. dollars into this organization and one of the crucial people was a former corporate affairs consultant for Petta People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals named Stephen gross right so this is the we're talking about your the tiny number of people who basically live as financial parasites on the vegan movement and from an abolitionist perspective they earn their money by selling out the principles of the movement to the highest corporate bidders who want to see the green washing of their industries they want a label put on what the industry is doing that makes it seem ecologically responsible that makes it seem more morally acceptable I guess more enticing to consumers and ultimately that raises the value of their product that raises the ticket price of their product right an organic free-range egg is simply worth more money than a factory-farmed egg if it's blatantly advertised as such right so at the end thing there is also a very simple question of financial value this put that [ __ ] cuz I badge and a gun to be beaten up the phone in jail we could go go to tow a bit another set when I was here in China back in the year 2008 I met a young woman very peculiar memorable character edge in many ways this young woman and she had for years and years been trying to volunteer in this kind of humanitarian sector in the organic agriculture subset but you know the charitable scarf I guess in the the charities linked to making the transition to organic agriculture and in the end she was really crestfallen in her program because she found that here in China what was going on was a one hundred percent corrupt game of different companies arranging to put these labels on foods and basically you know brokering and bar negotiating the deals for how international agencies with license out these in effect brand names these labels that variously rendered a product fair trade or ecologically sound by some definition or ethical some definition so it's a this is a very peculiar demi-monde that involves a very small number of people and so as mentioned here um many of the people in this particular group the g AP group the global animal partnership group they're veterans of other similar jobs they've come from people to have ethical treatment of animals the woman who's being featured here mian park she is the only animal activists to have work for the Humane Society United States people for the ethical treatment of animals and also the Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine pcrm okay she also spent 10 years as president of compassion over killing COK a washington DC animal liberation group where she also worked with paul shapiro and john bulk so a small number of people who can afford rent in washington DC move around musical chairs between a small number of jobs and it mentions that when these people were younger they tended to be involved with more edgy and sometimes illegal groups such as the AL f the Animal Liberation Front and then kind of step by step they move into the mold of these kind of quasi corporates roles frankly selling out veganism to the highest bidder as I've said now you know it's not all bad it's funny I mean in a sense I can say I believe in lobbying but by the same token I look at these types of organizations and i do not think they are legitimate lobbying okay I this is this is really using a broad brushstroke but I can say that people for the ethical treatment of animals Humane Society United States and G ap which was new to me I learned about them today the I read about them just a few hours ago the global animal project GA p I do not I do not regard them as legitimate lobbying organizations now what is legitimate lobbying ok I'll give you an example from my own direct memory I remember one day I went to City Hall and there was a very passionate speech at city hall from a straight-up policy hack from a straight-up shill if you want to use the word shell from a totally cynical he might as well have been an actor in a play this guy got up at the microphone at City Hall and before he got up in the microphone the actual elected officials at City Hall so you know the councilmen or council women or you know the representatives of the people were sitting there and debating how much they should pay the cleaning staff it's a real question it's a real political question they were sitting there in debating how much should the janitors at City Hall get paid and whether it should conform to this standard of that standard would have you and then this guy who actually brought with him a clack he brought with him an audience he brought with him a group of people again completely cynical completely theatrical he brought with him a group of people just to applaud and Cheer his speech this guy got up at the microphone and gave this very well-rehearsed eloquent and well from denunciation of all the elected officials at City Hall saying they were missing the point and that the question of how much they should pay janitors and cleaning staff should not be based on City Hall trying to get the lowest wages possible for these people trying to beat down the working man to getting the lowest wage as possible that should instead take into consideration giving these people a decent quality of life in the city of toronto taking into account for example the cost of rent that these people had to pay or the cost of transport to get to a neighborhood where they could afford rent given the low wages beautiful beautiful one hundred percent cynical 100% corrupt politics but beautiful as a real democracy it's cynical and it's corrupt but that is real lobbying this guy is somehow being paid by the union of these cleaners these janitors these low-level workers at City Hall to come and give them a voice that's legit lobbying okay and I can say I believe in it in the same way that I believe in dentistry it doesn't mean it's a good thing doesn't mean it's a bad thing I think this is a really legitimate function within a Democratic Society right and at least the same stance vegans need dentists we need lobbyists we need people who can stand up at City Hall at provincial Parliament at the state legislature at the national parliament at the National Senate and in that way whether or not cynically give voice to our interests as a special interest group right and all kinds of people inside you have that uh the problem is when I look at this sort of thing you know you you get the the fallacy of instrumentalization um you know so what apparently a whole foods this for-profit company spent about 1.5 million u.s. dollars I don't know the total budget this is only covering a couple of years is only up to 2011 since then I assume it now exceeds 1.5 million u.s. dollars but I don't have the exact figures but we had here 1.4 2 million u.s. dollars up to em they spent this to create a seemingly independent charity to issue them with a license to kill that's what it is a five-tier animal welfare rating system for selling such products as beef and poultry and pork and eggs and milk right on five different tiers of how humane those those products are now you know already you have you can't even say conflict of interest then this is just not legitimate lobbying unlike the example i just used dry described as cynical unlike this guy who stood up at City Hall and gave a voice to the voiceless gave a voice to the janitors to the cleaning staff these people are not giving a voice to us they're not giving voice to me or you or the other vegans they're not they're giving a voice to their donors they really are in effect chills of whole foods they're representing a corporate interest and the bottom line is they're raising the value of those products they're raising the value of that pork beef eggs milk as I've already described sorry 10 minutes ago in this video ultimately this is a sticker this is a label this is a controlled brand name and logo that raises the value of the final product in the same way that made in France you know the French government has a very very tight labeling system for that for the specific province in France where our product is made if you have wine that is called champagne it has to be actually made in the Champagne region of France all that stuff is controlled and it raises the value raises the price of your product to have a proper official labeling so that's the kind of scheme this is the city [Music] eat up booties out of shape and when I'm finished bring me yellow tape to tape off the scene of the Swans you getting swallowed up a bread and water I don't know if that's over so try bigger down and grab an asst nuts was on the other hand without a gun they got number don't let it be your clerk and a white one go down through that Street town back pony show me now photo by cop now there's one sense in which we can't complain and there's one sense in which we can the sense in which we can't complain is we aren't paying them right we didn't give them the 1.5 million dollars sorry exactly one point for two million dollars but I assume it continued to increase after me live in a sense we can't blame them there is more than a million u.s. dollars sitting there on a desk when this scenario was created in the first place by corporate interests by corporate donors the outstanding donor being whole foods I don't know I could get the other numbers see what other corporations donated apparently some other companies did donate some money I don't know I don't know who um okay so there's more than a million dollars sitting there on a desk in Washington DC saying who's gonna take it who's gonna step up you know and honest I mean mian park I don't know how much her salary was we probably could look it up if there are real registered nonprofit in the United States system probably we can find out exactly how much money she may appear but maybe she made a hundred thousand dollars a year for five years maybe she only made seventy thousand dollars for five years I don't know but life is expensive in Washington DC you got to get a good salary to do this kind of job in Washington DC um all these other people who stepped up and said me too who said I want the money that's on that table who said they want this job they want this role it's it's very clear with it in their dynamics are now unlike a legitimate political party unlike the Green Party of the Republican Party Democrat Party it's not the case that I can complain hey I gave you my vote I gave you my donation you're supposed to work for me you're supposed to represent my interest there there's merely you know the appearance there's merely the false there's merely the illusion that these people represent veganism or represent the animals or represent ecology represent some higher ideal and they don't they represent a special interest group the problem is it's the wrong special interest group it's not us it's not me it's not you it's not youtube so my point in this video is I can understand that some people think some people imagine that because I have a diploma in political science because I understand lobbying that when i talk about lobbying government I'm talking about becoming this kind of figure within the vegan movement like me and park like the g AP the global animal partnership or like betta people with ethical treatment of animals in the role they've played and from my perspective absolutely nothing could be further from the truth this is not what i want to do this is nothing i'm going to do and impart just because I'm Canadian even if I wanted to sell out I never could I could never do this in Washington DC and believe me in Canada there wouldn't be a million dollars on the table there wouldn't even be ten thousand dollars in table this kind of money in politics just does not exist in canada not for this kind of tiny special interest so even if i wanted to sell out i couldn't um because I'm Canadian and the whole game is smaller and less money in Canada but this is not what I'm talking about this is not what i want i can say that i absolutely would be interested in cynically or not standing up and giving voice to the voiceless in the same way that i just described that labor union representative standing up and giving a giving a voice to the the cleaning staff at city hall right you know at that time many of the cleaning staff at City Hall were Portuguese speaking as it happens maybe that's changed maybe now they're korean i mean i have no clue you know the ethnic diversity within toronto is immense but i remember in the old days we had a lot of Portuguese people doing those kinds of jobs in downtown Toronto and at City Hall at my university and I'm sure over time that's that's changed but anyway you know there's a reason why there's somebody who's a professional well-spoken representative who does that and you don't just choose someone who may be a poor uneducated immigrant from Brazil or from Portugal itself I don't know coming on the microphone arguing with the government you know there's a reason why there's a specialized job for that um and you know we had a great example that's come up in passing in my conversations with mod vegan which is this business of standing up and giving a voice to being an interest in the education system because the education system is massively biased by donors from the meat dairy industry food processing companies just food companies just like craft just companies that want to market food to children to form their their consumer behaviour their patterns of consumption ties to die for a lifetime there's money in it for them they have a very clear interest apart from the fact they want to normalize what goes on at slaughterhouses and all the rest of it right um and I've seen some some of the most ridiculous examples I remember seeing in Australia in Australia their meat and dairy industry got organized at this kind of traveling exhibition to show children how wonderful it was the cows get exploited to produce milk but in most countries this is going on all the time at the school level somebody needs to stand up and be that voice no matter how boring or unrewarding the political process is someone needs to stand up at a hundred different you know uh you know parent teachers association meetings at a hundred different you know educational council meetings wherever you live the name for this may be may be different but I mean in every parliamentary system there's a different name for the Democratic arm of government education policy you know there's some kind of council there's some kind of city hall like meeting with the ministers of Education hear complaints from the public and they do hear the voices of special interest groups you know I've seen some examples of that where you know like the the Hindu community comes to those meetings and says look we feel were misunderstood we need education and Canada to explain to children who Hindus are because there are a lot of bad stereotypes about us or the Jewish community sends someone it says look we have a lot of problems with anti-semitism we need you know the package occasion system to address these misconceptions about our community all kinds of special interest groups get to say their piece and try to influence what actually gets taught to children and you know as some of those have been have been very successful obviously the battles over sexual education are some of the most extreme we should children be taught how to use a condom or what a condom is or not those get debated in the mainstream press but for every one issue like that that gets into the mainstream press trust me there were a million other issues that are much less interesting much less controversial that get debated in those public meetings with the board of education or e where you live it may not be called the Board of Education but there is some kind of semi democratic arm of government vegans need a voice there vegans need real advocates and real advocacy and that form of advocacy will never be subsidized by whole foods markets or any of these corporations Whole Foods is not going to give 1.5 million u.s. dollars to have a guy like me stand in front of the board of education and passionately explain to them why a children's book showing a happy cow on a farm being exploited to produce milk is not okay why this crosses the line why we however many hundred of us there are in Canada are gonna stand up and fight like hell to get this book taken off of the shelves of you know our schools to get these pamphlets to get this propaganda taken out because this is in a terrible way influencing the next generation right this is partly a cynical marketing ploy to get children to you know drink milk to buy meat etc it's partly normalizing and glossing over the unspeakable brutality of where milk actually comes from where eggs actually comes from etc etc right and there's there's a very obvious you know indoors industry lobby on the one hat one side of that debate and there is no Lobby on the other side right we had the Catholic Church going to school board meetings to debate those things with those industries in the same way that the Catholic Church really did go to debate the status of homosexuals you know in our in our poll education system the way the Catholic Church really did debate whether or not children should be told what a condom is or what birth control is those debates had more than one side represented so I don't know for the past 150 years or something there's only been a weight in one side of that balance and vegans desperately need advocates desperately need lobbyists in all of those completely unglamorous political forums giving voice to the voiceless and yes partly when I say giving voice to the voiceless I mean my fellow vegans but partly I of course mean the uncountable millions of animals that are living their whole lives on a concrete floor under a steel roof in a shed in cages living and dying to produce food that is unhealthy and unnecessary for an uncaring public of human beings who couldn't care less if their diet kills animals couldn't care less if their diet kills themselves and couldn't care less if this frankly leads to the end of the world in terms of ecological devastation somebody's got to bring that message to all these public forums and i don't mean once i mean a hundred times i mean a thousand times ice cube any mother [ __ ] in a beautiful just cuz I'm from the cpt boom police are afraid of me oh yah and when I'm finished it'll be a bloodbath I'll come flying in LA go drink I got something to say yo [ __ ] the police [ __ ] up all these and that my friends is the difference between real political lobbying and what I see when I look at people with the ethical treatment of animals and this alphabet soup love other I don't know more or less cynical ploy to get corporate money to create labeling schemes that you try to whitewash or if you like green wash the you know mass manufacture of animal products industry gave me up
million u.s. dollars they spent this to create a seemingly independent charity to issue them with a license to kill that's what it is they really are in effect shills of whole foods they're representing a corporate interest and the bottom line is they're raising the value of those products they're raising the value of that pork beef eggs milk ultimately this is a sticker this is a label this is a controlled brand name and logo that raises the value of final product this is just not legitimate [Music] hobbies thing okay guys I'm gonna talk a little bit about veganism hope that doesn't freak anybody out maybe some of you are just here to watch the videos about a song of ice and fire maybe some of you are just here to hear me complain about my personal life about my love life aur bole earning Chinese or about Buddhist philosophy we've had a lot of different topics on this channel lately and we've had we've had some discussion of eating disorders a lot of diversity in the content but to talk about veganism for a change I'm just gonna read you a few paragraphs of this article and you'll see why I'm reading it this is from an article on humane watch org meet mian park she's a former vice president for farm animal welfare at the Humane Society of the United States in 2009 parks resume landed her a job as executive director of the global animal partnership ji AAP the organization administering a new five tier animal welfare rating system recently unveiled by whole foods market to judge from glowing reports of the new meat dairy and egg labeling scheme mian park sits at the Nexus of the animal welfare mainstream and America's foodie elite but Park and g AP aren't exactly what they seem g AP is beginning to show signs of a legitimate vegan takeover led by Park who as the farm animal vice president at Humane Society United States was crystal clear about her desire to eliminate as much livestock farming as she could so look this article hilariously is from the year 2011 at that time there was still some optimism apparently about this fundamentally welfarist move to label foods at Whole Foods Whole Foods is the name of a chain of grocery stores in it states and since then this has been thoroughly discredited I think not just in the eyes of vegans I think in the eyes of all kinds of normal consumers to now who actually pays for an institution like this to exist g AP this article doesn't get into all of the breakdown of their finances but it says for example in 2009 Whole Foods added another $100,000 to its support for g AP bringing the total to 1.4 2 million u.s. dollars so I do not know how many years that spread over but 1.4 2 million u.s. dollars donated from whole foods to this charitable agency and this agency is um uh supposedly existing I mean the the non-vegan standard term here is you know do you have the fox watching the chickens this kind of thing who watches the Watchmen who is the policeman and who is the criminal in this situation who is investigating who who is holding who to a higher standard so apparently the funding for this started in 2005 when Whole Foods was the only donor putting in more than 1.3 2 million u.s. dollars into this organization and one of the crucial people was a former corporate affairs consultant for Petta People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals named Stephen gross right so this is the we're talking about your the tiny number of people who basically live as financial parasites on the vegan movement and from an abolitionist perspective they earn their money by selling out the principles of the movement to the highest corporate bidders who want to see the green washing of their industries they want a label put on what the industry is doing that makes it seem ecologically responsible that makes it seem more morally acceptable I guess more enticing to consumers and ultimately that raises the value of their product that raises the ticket price of their product right an organic free-range egg is simply worth more money than a factory-farmed egg if it's blatantly advertised as such right so at the end thing there is also a very simple question of financial value this put that [ __ ] cuz I badge and a gun to be beaten up the phone in jail we could go go to tow a bit another set when I was here in China back in the year 2008 I met a young woman very peculiar memorable character edge in many ways this young woman and she had for years and years been trying to volunteer in this kind of humanitarian sector in the organic agriculture subset but you know the charitable scarf I guess in the the charities linked to making the transition to organic agriculture and in the end she was really crestfallen in her program because she found that here in China what was going on was a one hundred percent corrupt game of different companies arranging to put these labels on foods and basically you know brokering and bar negotiating the deals for how international agencies with license out these in effect brand names these labels that variously rendered a product fair trade or ecologically sound by some definition or ethical some definition so it's a this is a very peculiar demi-monde that involves a very small number of people and so as mentioned here um many of the people in this particular group the g AP group the global animal partnership group they're veterans of other similar jobs they've come from people to have ethical treatment of animals the woman who's being featured here mian park she is the only animal activists to have work for the Humane Society United States people for the ethical treatment of animals and also the Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine pcrm okay she also spent 10 years as president of compassion over killing COK a washington DC animal liberation group where she also worked with paul shapiro and john bulk so a small number of people who can afford rent in washington DC move around musical chairs between a small number of jobs and it mentions that when these people were younger they tended to be involved with more edgy and sometimes illegal groups such as the AL f the Animal Liberation Front and then kind of step by step they move into the mold of these kind of quasi corporates roles frankly selling out veganism to the highest bidder as I've said now you know it's not all bad it's funny I mean in a sense I can say I believe in lobbying but by the same token I look at these types of organizations and i do not think they are legitimate lobbying okay I this is this is really using a broad brushstroke but I can say that people for the ethical treatment of animals Humane Society United States and G ap which was new to me I learned about them today the I read about them just a few hours ago the global animal project GA p I do not I do not regard them as legitimate lobbying organizations now what is legitimate lobbying ok I'll give you an example from my own direct memory I remember one day I went to City Hall and there was a very passionate speech at city hall from a straight-up policy hack from a straight-up shill if you want to use the word shell from a totally cynical he might as well have been an actor in a play this guy got up at the microphone at City Hall and before he got up in the microphone the actual elected officials at City Hall so you know the councilmen or council women or you know the representatives of the people were sitting there and debating how much they should pay the cleaning staff it's a real question it's a real political question they were sitting there in debating how much should the janitors at City Hall get paid and whether it should conform to this standard of that standard would have you and then this guy who actually brought with him a clack he brought with him an audience he brought with him a group of people again completely cynical completely theatrical he brought with him a group of people just to applaud and Cheer his speech this guy got up at the microphone and gave this very well-rehearsed eloquent and well from denunciation of all the elected officials at City Hall saying they were missing the point and that the question of how much they should pay janitors and cleaning staff should not be based on City Hall trying to get the lowest wages possible for these people trying to beat down the working man to getting the lowest wage as possible that should instead take into consideration giving these people a decent quality of life in the city of toronto taking into account for example the cost of rent that these people had to pay or the cost of transport to get to a neighborhood where they could afford rent given the low wages beautiful beautiful one hundred percent cynical 100% corrupt politics but beautiful as a real democracy it's cynical and it's corrupt but that is real lobbying this guy is somehow being paid by the union of these cleaners these janitors these low-level workers at City Hall to come and give them a voice that's legit lobbying okay and I can say I believe in it in the same way that I believe in dentistry it doesn't mean it's a good thing doesn't mean it's a bad thing I think this is a really legitimate function within a Democratic Society right and at least the same stance vegans need dentists we need lobbyists we need people who can stand up at City Hall at provincial Parliament at the state legislature at the national parliament at the National Senate and in that way whether or not cynically give voice to our interests as a special interest group right and all kinds of people inside you have that uh the problem is when I look at this sort of thing you know you you get the the fallacy of instrumentalization um you know so what apparently a whole foods this for-profit company spent about 1.5 million u.s. dollars I don't know the total budget this is only covering a couple of years is only up to 2011 since then I assume it now exceeds 1.5 million u.s. dollars but I don't have the exact figures but we had here 1.4 2 million u.s. dollars up to em they spent this to create a seemingly independent charity to issue them with a license to kill that's what it is a five-tier animal welfare rating system for selling such products as beef and poultry and pork and eggs and milk right on five different tiers of how humane those those products are now you know already you have you can't even say conflict of interest then this is just not legitimate lobbying unlike the example i just used dry described as cynical unlike this guy who stood up at City Hall and gave a voice to the voiceless gave a voice to the janitors to the cleaning staff these people are not giving a voice to us they're not giving voice to me or you or the other vegans they're not they're giving a voice to their donors they really are in effect chills of whole foods they're representing a corporate interest and the bottom line is they're raising the value of those products they're raising the value of that pork beef eggs milk as I've already described sorry 10 minutes ago in this video ultimately this is a sticker this is a label this is a controlled brand name and logo that raises the value of the final product in the same way that made in France you know the French government has a very very tight labeling system for that for the specific province in France where our product is made if you have wine that is called champagne it has to be actually made in the Champagne region of France all that stuff is controlled and it raises the value raises the price of your product to have a proper official labeling so that's the kind of scheme this is the city [Music] eat up booties out of shape and when I'm finished bring me yellow tape to tape off the scene of the Swans you getting swallowed up a bread and water I don't know if that's over so try bigger down and grab an asst nuts was on the other hand without a gun they got number don't let it be your clerk and a white one go down through that Street town back pony show me now photo by cop now there's one sense in which we can't complain and there's one sense in which we can the sense in which we can't complain is we aren't paying them right we didn't give them the 1.5 million dollars sorry exactly one point for two million dollars but I assume it continued to increase after me live in a sense we can't blame them there is more than a million u.s. dollars sitting there on a desk when this scenario was created in the first place by corporate interests by corporate donors the outstanding donor being whole foods I don't know I could get the other numbers see what other corporations donated apparently some other companies did donate some money I don't know I don't know who um okay so there's more than a million dollars sitting there on a desk in Washington DC saying who's gonna take it who's gonna step up you know and honest I mean mian park I don't know how much her salary was we probably could look it up if there are real registered nonprofit in the United States system probably we can find out exactly how much money she may appear but maybe she made a hundred thousand dollars a year for five years maybe she only made seventy thousand dollars for five years I don't know but life is expensive in Washington DC you got to get a good salary to do this kind of job in Washington DC um all these other people who stepped up and said me too who said I want the money that's on that table who said they want this job they want this role it's it's very clear with it in their dynamics are now unlike a legitimate political party unlike the Green Party of the Republican Party Democrat Party it's not the case that I can complain hey I gave you my vote I gave you my donation you're supposed to work for me you're supposed to represent my interest there there's merely you know the appearance there's merely the false there's merely the illusion that these people represent veganism or represent the animals or represent ecology represent some higher ideal and they don't they represent a special interest group the problem is it's the wrong special interest group it's not us it's not me it's not you it's not youtube so my point in this video is I can understand that some people think some people imagine that because I have a diploma in political science because I understand lobbying that when i talk about lobbying government I'm talking about becoming this kind of figure within the vegan movement like me and park like the g AP the global animal partnership or like betta people with ethical treatment of animals in the role they've played and from my perspective absolutely nothing could be further from the truth this is not what i want to do this is nothing i'm going to do and impart just because I'm Canadian even if I wanted to sell out I never could I could never do this in Washington DC and believe me in Canada there wouldn't be a million dollars on the table there wouldn't even be ten thousand dollars in table this kind of money in politics just does not exist in canada not for this kind of tiny special interest so even if i wanted to sell out i couldn't um because I'm Canadian and the whole game is smaller and less money in Canada but this is not what I'm talking about this is not what i want i can say that i absolutely would be interested in cynically or not standing up and giving voice to the voiceless in the same way that i just described that labor union representative standing up and giving a giving a voice to the the cleaning staff at city hall right you know at that time many of the cleaning staff at City Hall were Portuguese speaking as it happens maybe that's changed maybe now they're korean i mean i have no clue you know the ethnic diversity within toronto is immense but i remember in the old days we had a lot of Portuguese people doing those kinds of jobs in downtown Toronto and at City Hall at my university and I'm sure over time that's that's changed but anyway you know there's a reason why there's somebody who's a professional well-spoken representative who does that and you don't just choose someone who may be a poor uneducated immigrant from Brazil or from Portugal itself I don't know coming on the microphone arguing with the government you know there's a reason why there's a specialized job for that um and you know we had a great example that's come up in passing in my conversations with mod vegan which is this business of standing up and giving a voice to being an interest in the education system because the education system is massively biased by donors from the meat dairy industry food processing companies just food companies just like craft just companies that want to market food to children to form their their consumer behaviour their patterns of consumption ties to die for a lifetime there's money in it for them they have a very clear interest apart from the fact they want to normalize what goes on at slaughterhouses and all the rest of it right um and I've seen some some of the most ridiculous examples I remember seeing in Australia in Australia their meat and dairy industry got organized at this kind of traveling exhibition to show children how wonderful it was the cows get exploited to produce milk but in most countries this is going on all the time at the school level somebody needs to stand up and be that voice no matter how boring or unrewarding the political process is someone needs to stand up at a hundred different you know uh you know parent teachers association meetings at a hundred different you know educational council meetings wherever you live the name for this may be may be different but I mean in every parliamentary system there's a different name for the Democratic arm of government education policy you know there's some kind of council there's some kind of city hall like meeting with the ministers of Education hear complaints from the public and they do hear the voices of special interest groups you know I've seen some examples of that where you know like the the Hindu community comes to those meetings and says look we feel were misunderstood we need education and Canada to explain to children who Hindus are because there are a lot of bad stereotypes about us or the Jewish community sends someone it says look we have a lot of problems with anti-semitism we need you know the package occasion system to address these misconceptions about our community all kinds of special interest groups get to say their piece and try to influence what actually gets taught to children and you know as some of those have been have been very successful obviously the battles over sexual education are some of the most extreme we should children be taught how to use a condom or what a condom is or not those get debated in the mainstream press but for every one issue like that that gets into the mainstream press trust me there were a million other issues that are much less interesting much less controversial that get debated in those public meetings with the board of education or e where you live it may not be called the Board of Education but there is some kind of semi democratic arm of government vegans need a voice there vegans need real advocates and real advocacy and that form of advocacy will never be subsidized by whole foods markets or any of these corporations Whole Foods is not going to give 1.5 million u.s. dollars to have a guy like me stand in front of the board of education and passionately explain to them why a children's book showing a happy cow on a farm being exploited to produce milk is not okay why this crosses the line why we however many hundred of us there are in Canada are gonna stand up and fight like hell to get this book taken off of the shelves of you know our schools to get these pamphlets to get this propaganda taken out because this is in a terrible way influencing the next generation right this is partly a cynical marketing ploy to get children to you know drink milk to buy meat etc it's partly normalizing and glossing over the unspeakable brutality of where milk actually comes from where eggs actually comes from etc etc right and there's there's a very obvious you know indoors industry lobby on the one hat one side of that debate and there is no Lobby on the other side right we had the Catholic Church going to school board meetings to debate those things with those industries in the same way that the Catholic Church really did go to debate the status of homosexuals you know in our in our poll education system the way the Catholic Church really did debate whether or not children should be told what a condom is or what birth control is those debates had more than one side represented so I don't know for the past 150 years or something there's only been a weight in one side of that balance and vegans desperately need advocates desperately need lobbyists in all of those completely unglamorous political forums giving voice to the voiceless and yes partly when I say giving voice to the voiceless I mean my fellow vegans but partly I of course mean the uncountable millions of animals that are living their whole lives on a concrete floor under a steel roof in a shed in cages living and dying to produce food that is unhealthy and unnecessary for an uncaring public of human beings who couldn't care less if their diet kills animals couldn't care less if their diet kills themselves and couldn't care less if this frankly leads to the end of the world in terms of ecological devastation somebody's got to bring that message to all these public forums and i don't mean once i mean a hundred times i mean a thousand times ice cube any mother [ __ ] in a beautiful just cuz I'm from the cpt boom police are afraid of me oh yah and when I'm finished it'll be a bloodbath I'll come flying in LA go drink I got something to say yo [ __ ] the police [ __ ] up all these and that my friends is the difference between real political lobbying and what I see when I look at people with the ethical treatment of animals and this alphabet soup love other I don't know more or less cynical ploy to get corporate money to create labeling schemes that you try to whitewash or if you like green wash the you know mass manufacture of animal products industry gave me up