Harassment: Vegan Activism and the Legal Definition of Harassment.
11 September 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
in many countries around the world
certainly english-speaking countries the concept of harassment has been legally defined from the top down by people and authority in order to restraint your freedom of speech and your right to protest when you look into the laws in the particular country live in you'll find that some of those restraints exists for good reason and some not so much I'm a Canadian citizen living in China the legal definition of harassment in Canada is actually quite good and useful and worth knowing even if you're not Canadian if for example you are British you will probably quite envious of how clear lucid and useful or legal definition of harassment is in Canada in contrast to the morass of really lousy laws that you have in England now the concept of harassment it comes up here on the internet basically when one internet opinion maker is trying to deprive another of the right to express their opinion something I find rather sad and pathetic almost all the time but also comes up in the world of real world activism street activism protests mmm organized dissent of almost any kind in every kind in England after about 1997 they had an extremely vaguely worded law that was used to punish protesters anti-war protesters environmental protesters all kinds of different to the political protesters but it included the caveat that a protester must speak to someone twice or give a you know a hand written notice or express themselves repeatedly to a person before what they did could be considered harassment and I read many articles complaining now i have to admit these were very biased articles and very biased sources in england complaining that at that time people were charged with harassment of people expressing their political opinions political dissent political protest for example by sending an email that went to the same recipient twice they could then be charged with harassment and one of the most extreme examples was allegedly again I was really from a biased source but allegedly a couple husband and wife who were standing on the street holding their baby well protesting against an arms show so you know weapons expo where the arms industry promotes their their products there were pro piece or anti-war protesters everyone say and they were charged with harassment for standing there on the street I think they had a sign and I think they were handing out leaflets under this law is that existed now again these were biased sources you have to be very careful one of the most extremist representations of a peaceful protest in the mainstream press was an ecological activist group called move mo ve you can very quickly find sources on the internet that claimed these were nonviolent protesters who were somehow very unfairly brutalized by police if you do a little bit of digging a little bit of reading of objective sources and the bare facts the police were facing against it was definitely not non-violence there were very real weapons charges and although the police ultimately did use violence against that groove if you go through step by step who did what at which time you'll find that basically supporters of the group published a lot of misinformation Internet so even that example I just gave that i read i read in an ostensibly honest article about that couple with a baby standing and peacefully protesting i don't really know how peaceful they were I only know this one kind of biased account I myself as a vegan back when I had a newborn baby I can remember going to political events with my wife who's now my ex-wife and I'm where I was literally holding a newborn baby in my arms attending political events related veganism so obviously that's a it's an example I sympathize with immediately it's very effective propaganda but is it really true you know that article maybe it just failed to mention that the same people were lighting bonfires you know something very simple like that might justify what the police did and might just not be mentioned in a biased account of these things so today with that caveat haven't been stated the laws that were in place in England around the late 1990s 1997 has ever call they were already absurdly repressive observed a restrictive of freedom of speech the right to to protest in dissent in the name of harassment and they left the concept of harassment incredibly legally defined that got even worse with a notorious law written in 2005 called the Serious Organised Crime and police act now I remember reading an article objecting to this legal act by George mom Bo a famous journalist before making this video I googled mom bo to see how many articles he had made following up on that and I could only find one article i could only been one article by mom bo that had the name of that law in it so it seems to me that he lost interest in it fairly quickly maybe I'm mistaken maybe he's written about it in books or in some format that I couldn't I couldn't find the internet with a quick Google search um however this relates back to vegans animal rights and ecology in many ways to quote Wikipedia itself the Serious Organised Crime and police act of 2005 according to Baroness Scotland of a shawl promoting the bill in the House of Lords this provision and the associated provisions of section 3a were intended to strengthen quote the protection afforded to the bioscience industry and those who work in it close quote including quote making it an offence to protest outside a person's home in a way that causes harassment alarm or distress to the residents of that home close quote now in an earlier video I made that was defending sorcerer merova because people have accused sir shimmer above being a militant vegan I talked a little bit about the history of real militant vegans in the United Kingdom animal rights extremists who from my perspective were pretty much lunatics and who really given us all a bad name people who engage in violent and non-democratic protest and it is true that they have also informed a generation of legislators of lawmakers of people in positions of power who are now incredibly strongly biased against us peaceful protesters democratic organized dissenters in my generation have to deal with the legacy of really lousy activism from the older generation and the writing of this law reflects that now section 1a so I hate this I hate reading text I really prefer do a completely spontaneous recording but let's get this right so serious organized crime police act pardon me now I'm gonna sneeze true you see how hard it is to be a youtuber I don't have to wear costumes or you know put on accents the way vegan gains does but still hard work anyway the actual wording that I'll remember for the rest of my life is that the it makes illegal as harassment any acts undertaken with the with the intention of persuading a person to do something they do not want to do or to not do something that they do want to do so i think i fixed that up so the law is so vaguely worded if you ask what really is harassment under this law harassment can be trying to persuade anyone to not do something they do want to do or to do something they do not want to do if they're legally allowed to do that thing so this was brought up in the old days there were protests against McDonald's in England in the United Kingdom and naturally a protest that tries to convince people do not eat at McDonald's would therefore be harassment under this law almost any expression of political dissent is an attempt to convince people to do something or not do something so these are sweeping laws that have terrible implications for us as vegans anyone interested in ecology or animal rights frankly anyone who's sincerely interested democracy and in making the world a better place it's terrifying now in contrast to this and look this is why I say many times I really do believe in freedom of speech I really do stick up for the freedom of speech of people like sorcerer merova and people like durianrider people who are not my friends for my fellow vegans freedom of speech is tremendously important understanding what harassment is and how it pertains to you as a vegan as it activists as a protester how it pertains to you on the internet how it pertains to you on the street etc in the country you live in is also tremendously important we live in an era where not on the one hand people in positions of real authority empower people in the political establishment vilify protesters try to punish political dissidents as if they were stalkers as if they were terrorists as if they were guilty of harassment in this incredibly vague definition of harassment and then the other hand we have this kind of really crummy subculture of people on the internet who don't want to engage in debate or uncomfortable with a debate simply trying to shut someone down by saying that they're guilty of harassment by expressing their opinion in a debate and I saw that I had comments coming in saying that that Sorcha Miraval was guilty of harassment um because what she called someone dumb she called someone the dumbest youtuber calling someone dumb is not harassment and you know you may say it's inarticulate you may say it's unintelligent you may say it's a poor argument okay fine you know continue the debate engage in critique maybe you have something deeper and more meaningful to say than just to call somebody dumb or what have you but it's not harassment and we as vegans should not be silencing one another in this way but calling things harassment that are not now some of you will know there's a totally phony controversy saying that some of the articles of my former blog or harassment I would like to state my informed opinion that not a single one of the blog entries on my blog qualify as harassment definitely under Canadian law I'll tell you Canadian legal definition of harassment just a moment because it's of interest to me as I'm Canadian I'm not British I'm not stuck with the really lousy definitions of harassment in England and by the way if you are a political activist of any kind vegan or non vegan you should get organized to change the laws in England so you have a responsible and meaningful definition for assmann oh and I wanted to say as a concession to the other side I sympathize with these legislators so what Baroness Scotland of a shall and the House of Lords these people may be [ __ ] I have no reason to sympathize of them but let me tell you I think there are real questions here most of the legislation about the right to public protest assumes that those protests take place in a public square to take place at they take place at City Hall at a local provincial Parliament at some kind of appropriate venue I think the rash is an open question of whether or not it should be legal to protest at someone's house and they were responding to the militancy and extremism and real violence of animal rights protesters and people like us people who were variously vegetarian vegan what have you animal rights protesters who were you know doing really unforgivable illegal and violent things to try to intimidate university professors and scientific researchers who were you know engaged in vivisection but the response again in my earlier video that talks about Sorcha and talks about who is a militant and what is the meaning of the word militant I you know I think I gave a really stirring example of that and really asked some of the tough questions we're vegans have to look in the mirror and look back to around history and realize we have a better reputation for a reason and we're stuck with it I'm not comfortably against violence I completely support only nonviolent protests working within the democratic system if you live in a democracy if you don't live in a democracy you know very different set of questions to ask yourself about how you're going to bring about social net loss you'll change it's very sad but speaking for the Western democracies of the world we need to be aware of what the legal definitions of harassment are we can change those legal definitions precisely by lobbying Parliament what have you but also if you're engaged in any form of protest that comes up close to the definition of harassment you need to really reconsider your strategy you need to reconsider your methods what you're doing and why you're doing it any case coming back to my blog I do not believe a single one of the written entries on my blog counts as harassment and none of them are even using coarse language or insults near the level of normal reddit conversation of these discussion forums like read it on the Internet none of them were all that racy or shocking but with that being said back when the blog was still ongoing back when this was new and people writing to me I remember there only being one person these are all anonymous people who wrote in with me to actually debate what I was doing on the book wrote and said that they you know to talk to me about whether or not this was harassment what I was doing in the blog I remember you know they lost the argument they lost the conversate they lost the debate I said very simply well you have to compare what I'm doing on this blog to what any newspaper new pardon me to what any newspaper did in the world of old media your claim this person writing to me their claim was that simply by taking a photograph of a person that's publicly available and putting a quotation on that photograph that is accurately quoting what the person said like a screenshot of something they said on on Twitter that you're claiming that is harassment and in the contrary that's what every newspaper in the world does every day now I think in different countries there might be an interesting debate to be had what if I take your photograph and then I modify it to make you look ugly or to make you look fat or to make you look sick newspapers do that also now should that be legal or illegal that's a different question in some countries it's legal in some hunters it's illegal to modify photograph in some countries it's legal only if you have a footnote at the bottom saying that you've you've modified the photograph that it's not accurate what if I have your photograph and then I put on top of it a quote that you didn't say what if I have a photograph of the Prime Minister of Canada but it's actually a quote from the Prime Minister of France what if it's a photograph of Obama but I have a quote from I don't know someone from the Republican Party I've Mitt Romney I have somebody else quoted it's not something Obama said is that harassment now actually I think almost nowhere in the world would that be considered harassment maybe in Singapore something maybe in some of the countries that have very very tight restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of expression but actually even if you did that even if you were distorting the photograph even if you were distorting what the person had said or misrepresenting what the person said it still isn't harassment but what I did in that blog and having a photograph of someone and then having a quote from them how could anyone possibly define that as harassment even in this world where as I've just described in England governments often have I think cynically passed laws that define harassment so broadly that anything can be harassment so I mean in England if I try to convince you to do something or not do something you know legally under under under an act given the absurd title the Serious Organised Crime and police act yes this is not serious organised crime this could be harassment and in fact people can be deprived with their freedom of speech and again some very biased articles of red had very stirring examples of people being given criminal records and having to face courts for what should be proper democratic exercise of their freedom of speech I'm not British probably some of the commenters below this video will know more but what I'm tell you because their lives have been more cut up in this sort of thing and I've also said at the same time I think there are debates to be had you know probably some countries should pass laws saying okay look it's okay to protests in a public place and define what a public place is but maybe it's not okay to protest on somebody's front lawn or to protest even in front of an apartment building where people are trying to sleep at night you know I I'm actually open minded about that I think different countries can come up with different practical solutions for where and when protests can happen when I was in Canada I did not feel that you should be able to protest where you would actually interrupt the flow of traffic in front of the hospital that you know ultimately you know an ambulance needs to be able to drive in and drive out of a hospital so when and where you can interrupt traffic I think legally and morally I think that's an important question asked and if you watching this if you're organizing a vegan group now or a political protest group you can resolve these problems yourself you don't have to wait for Parliament you don't have to wait for the Constitution your country to change write your own constitution for your political group and define say if you are a member of this group this is what's acceptable and this is what's not acceptable you should explicitly define that you embrace only nonviolent methods and you should explicitly define which methods of protests are acceptable and which are not acceptable so for your group if you make a moral commitment that you're not going to harass people at their home you're only going to protest in front of City Hall in front of parliament in these kinds of places but that's a commitment you can put in writing and you can have everyone who joins your group sign a memorandum or read and sign that they understand the Constitution for your political party for your for your group for your Lobby however you want to define it so I just say you don't have to wait for other people to define that from you for you from the top down it's very useful for us as activists and if you're forming a foundation of any kind define it for yourself you decide what's appropriate you decide your ethical commitments and then if you have a member of your group of sucks to get it a line you can remind them you made a moral commitment you join this group to only work within these guidelines so now if you're breaking the guidelines we could ask you to leave now in my own life in the last couple of years I have had to invoke the legal definition of harassment in Canada many times for the following peculiar reason when i was at the university of victoria i formally complained that the courses i was attending work garbage now legally I can come here and state on the record with no fear of being sued that the courses were garbage because I went through that complete complaints process I filled out all the forms and so on I did not protest I did not yell at anyone I did not interrupt the flow of traffic I went to the office of the ombudsman which is a formal bureaucratic way to complain I found out what the correct procedure was to complain that of course the university was lousy I took that complaint to the head of the program the head of the program took it to the head of the department the head of the department took it to the Dean so then I was in a complaints process a formal complaints process that involved the Dean head of my department ultimately the professors teaching the course and the Office of the Ombudsman a lot of paperwork a lot of stress now the Dean lost patience and the Dean tried to intimidate me into basically giving up on this complaint that the course was garbage and it's as real serious impacts for my life it does I went to that University just to learn Chinese is a language and the Chinese language courses were garbage and I gave detailed very responsible accounts of exactly why the course was garbage exactly what the course did not live up to the minimum standard that she live up to and the Dean responded to this by accusing me of harassment and saying that I could be punished or I could be kicked out of the university if I continue with this harassment this is a great example of how the concept of harassment is abused to shut down descent when the university should have been taking my feedback seriously and really looking at what was wrong with this course and how the course fixed because the course could be fixed really it would not be impossible all for them to have made very serious improvements of that course with very little effort very little money they didn't want to do that it was easier for them to try to silence the one student who was willing to really step forward and complaint the vast majority of students were much easier to intimidate into silence because they just wanted to get good grades they just want to get on with their lives even though I think every single student I talk to you about that course agreed that the course was absolutely terrible or was deeply disappointing they had slightly different opinions on it from different perspectives as you'd expect however I'm much older than the other students I'm much more confident I'm much more able to operate in a tense political atmosphere which is exactly what I had to deal with I had to go sit in a boardroom and look at the Dean in his face and present complaints on paper and present the complaints verbally and go through bureaucratic process now apartment the fact that it would be observed under any circumstances to accuse a student of being of be engaging in harassment when that student has followed exactly this process has done the paperwork I mean it's a student following the complaints process is guilty of harassment that nobody has the right to complain right it must be that you know the official complaints process can't be harassment by definition but I didn't even have to deal with that kind of argument all I did again and again was quote to him the law in Canada that defines harassment I said no this is not harassment this is me very properly and correctly complaining to your course is terrible and the law in Canada very nicely defines harassment as something that would cause the other person to feel fear and if you look at the precise wording it specifies that it would cause a reasonable person to feel afraid now there are many funny examples of the Sinister of the world I think when they wrote that in Canada they were really thinking of iconic biker gangs because many of our legislators in Canada are a bit obsessed with biker gangs as symbolizing organized crime but the point is if for example a biker gang brings a whole group of motorcycles in front of your house and just parks them there they may not be threatening you they may not state any threat but if this is in the context of you having a conflict with these biker gangs if for example a journalist has been writing articles about the biker gangs and their illegal activities and then mysteriously 50 motorcycles are parked in front of that journalists house the point is this law is worded in a way so this could be addressed as harassment if someone takes a snake and puts it on your desk or takes a snake inputs in your mailbox even if the snake is not venomous the snake couldn't actually harm you it may not be a threat but under this Canadian law it may be harassment now again we could use the example of a journalist if someone is trying to threaten a journalist they might indeed put a snake in their mailbox I remember one case of that happening specifically or put a snake on their desk now on the other hand the reason why it says that whether or not because a reasonable person to feel afraid in those circumstances on the other hand if you're a scientist who studies snakes maybe putting a snake on your desk is completely normal it happens every day at your office and you know the law shouldn't be applied in this way so it's written in a way to be somewhat flexible these the circumstances were living in in 2016 most english-speaking Western countries have extremely vague laws defining what harassment is and these impact veganism and all rights in ecology negatively in two different ways I've said it before but I'll say it again and that in this video one is the actual enforcement of these laws from the top down which is sporadic it's inconsistent it only happens once the while with no explanation but it's a major problem for us as a movement you know the fact that in England anything can be punished as harassment any political movement it doesn't mean that everything is publishers harassment but once in a while they can decide that any animal rights group or ecological group or someone who protests in front of mcdonalds trying to convince people not see them acknowledge that they are guilty of harassment under the serious organised crime and police act and it happens sometimes but the fact that these laws are not enforced all the time doesn't mean that a law this kite isn't having a chilling effect on the use of free speech at all times it does and the secondary knock-on effect which is something we can all solve today and we can all end tomorrow is exactly that vegans accuse other vegans of harassment and you need to stop and meditate on what that really means and what the implications really are what does it mean to accuse sorcerer mirada of harassment I've already said she's not guilty of being a militant to my knowledge she's not guilty of harassment I haven't seen every video she's made but someone making a comedy video that caused call someone else an idiot they call someone else dumb that is not harassment especially not under Canada's definition it's not a threat it's not something that would cause them to be afraid it's not something that would suppress their use of freedom of speech on the contrary we as vegans you may make you feel more intelligent to reproach someone like Sorcha by saying she's guilty of harassment but in reality what you're doing is stifling freedom speech you're stifling you know our potential for dissent for debate and ultimately to get organized and engage in real world activism
certainly english-speaking countries the concept of harassment has been legally defined from the top down by people and authority in order to restraint your freedom of speech and your right to protest when you look into the laws in the particular country live in you'll find that some of those restraints exists for good reason and some not so much I'm a Canadian citizen living in China the legal definition of harassment in Canada is actually quite good and useful and worth knowing even if you're not Canadian if for example you are British you will probably quite envious of how clear lucid and useful or legal definition of harassment is in Canada in contrast to the morass of really lousy laws that you have in England now the concept of harassment it comes up here on the internet basically when one internet opinion maker is trying to deprive another of the right to express their opinion something I find rather sad and pathetic almost all the time but also comes up in the world of real world activism street activism protests mmm organized dissent of almost any kind in every kind in England after about 1997 they had an extremely vaguely worded law that was used to punish protesters anti-war protesters environmental protesters all kinds of different to the political protesters but it included the caveat that a protester must speak to someone twice or give a you know a hand written notice or express themselves repeatedly to a person before what they did could be considered harassment and I read many articles complaining now i have to admit these were very biased articles and very biased sources in england complaining that at that time people were charged with harassment of people expressing their political opinions political dissent political protest for example by sending an email that went to the same recipient twice they could then be charged with harassment and one of the most extreme examples was allegedly again I was really from a biased source but allegedly a couple husband and wife who were standing on the street holding their baby well protesting against an arms show so you know weapons expo where the arms industry promotes their their products there were pro piece or anti-war protesters everyone say and they were charged with harassment for standing there on the street I think they had a sign and I think they were handing out leaflets under this law is that existed now again these were biased sources you have to be very careful one of the most extremist representations of a peaceful protest in the mainstream press was an ecological activist group called move mo ve you can very quickly find sources on the internet that claimed these were nonviolent protesters who were somehow very unfairly brutalized by police if you do a little bit of digging a little bit of reading of objective sources and the bare facts the police were facing against it was definitely not non-violence there were very real weapons charges and although the police ultimately did use violence against that groove if you go through step by step who did what at which time you'll find that basically supporters of the group published a lot of misinformation Internet so even that example I just gave that i read i read in an ostensibly honest article about that couple with a baby standing and peacefully protesting i don't really know how peaceful they were I only know this one kind of biased account I myself as a vegan back when I had a newborn baby I can remember going to political events with my wife who's now my ex-wife and I'm where I was literally holding a newborn baby in my arms attending political events related veganism so obviously that's a it's an example I sympathize with immediately it's very effective propaganda but is it really true you know that article maybe it just failed to mention that the same people were lighting bonfires you know something very simple like that might justify what the police did and might just not be mentioned in a biased account of these things so today with that caveat haven't been stated the laws that were in place in England around the late 1990s 1997 has ever call they were already absurdly repressive observed a restrictive of freedom of speech the right to to protest in dissent in the name of harassment and they left the concept of harassment incredibly legally defined that got even worse with a notorious law written in 2005 called the Serious Organised Crime and police act now I remember reading an article objecting to this legal act by George mom Bo a famous journalist before making this video I googled mom bo to see how many articles he had made following up on that and I could only find one article i could only been one article by mom bo that had the name of that law in it so it seems to me that he lost interest in it fairly quickly maybe I'm mistaken maybe he's written about it in books or in some format that I couldn't I couldn't find the internet with a quick Google search um however this relates back to vegans animal rights and ecology in many ways to quote Wikipedia itself the Serious Organised Crime and police act of 2005 according to Baroness Scotland of a shawl promoting the bill in the House of Lords this provision and the associated provisions of section 3a were intended to strengthen quote the protection afforded to the bioscience industry and those who work in it close quote including quote making it an offence to protest outside a person's home in a way that causes harassment alarm or distress to the residents of that home close quote now in an earlier video I made that was defending sorcerer merova because people have accused sir shimmer above being a militant vegan I talked a little bit about the history of real militant vegans in the United Kingdom animal rights extremists who from my perspective were pretty much lunatics and who really given us all a bad name people who engage in violent and non-democratic protest and it is true that they have also informed a generation of legislators of lawmakers of people in positions of power who are now incredibly strongly biased against us peaceful protesters democratic organized dissenters in my generation have to deal with the legacy of really lousy activism from the older generation and the writing of this law reflects that now section 1a so I hate this I hate reading text I really prefer do a completely spontaneous recording but let's get this right so serious organized crime police act pardon me now I'm gonna sneeze true you see how hard it is to be a youtuber I don't have to wear costumes or you know put on accents the way vegan gains does but still hard work anyway the actual wording that I'll remember for the rest of my life is that the it makes illegal as harassment any acts undertaken with the with the intention of persuading a person to do something they do not want to do or to not do something that they do want to do so i think i fixed that up so the law is so vaguely worded if you ask what really is harassment under this law harassment can be trying to persuade anyone to not do something they do want to do or to do something they do not want to do if they're legally allowed to do that thing so this was brought up in the old days there were protests against McDonald's in England in the United Kingdom and naturally a protest that tries to convince people do not eat at McDonald's would therefore be harassment under this law almost any expression of political dissent is an attempt to convince people to do something or not do something so these are sweeping laws that have terrible implications for us as vegans anyone interested in ecology or animal rights frankly anyone who's sincerely interested democracy and in making the world a better place it's terrifying now in contrast to this and look this is why I say many times I really do believe in freedom of speech I really do stick up for the freedom of speech of people like sorcerer merova and people like durianrider people who are not my friends for my fellow vegans freedom of speech is tremendously important understanding what harassment is and how it pertains to you as a vegan as it activists as a protester how it pertains to you on the internet how it pertains to you on the street etc in the country you live in is also tremendously important we live in an era where not on the one hand people in positions of real authority empower people in the political establishment vilify protesters try to punish political dissidents as if they were stalkers as if they were terrorists as if they were guilty of harassment in this incredibly vague definition of harassment and then the other hand we have this kind of really crummy subculture of people on the internet who don't want to engage in debate or uncomfortable with a debate simply trying to shut someone down by saying that they're guilty of harassment by expressing their opinion in a debate and I saw that I had comments coming in saying that that Sorcha Miraval was guilty of harassment um because what she called someone dumb she called someone the dumbest youtuber calling someone dumb is not harassment and you know you may say it's inarticulate you may say it's unintelligent you may say it's a poor argument okay fine you know continue the debate engage in critique maybe you have something deeper and more meaningful to say than just to call somebody dumb or what have you but it's not harassment and we as vegans should not be silencing one another in this way but calling things harassment that are not now some of you will know there's a totally phony controversy saying that some of the articles of my former blog or harassment I would like to state my informed opinion that not a single one of the blog entries on my blog qualify as harassment definitely under Canadian law I'll tell you Canadian legal definition of harassment just a moment because it's of interest to me as I'm Canadian I'm not British I'm not stuck with the really lousy definitions of harassment in England and by the way if you are a political activist of any kind vegan or non vegan you should get organized to change the laws in England so you have a responsible and meaningful definition for assmann oh and I wanted to say as a concession to the other side I sympathize with these legislators so what Baroness Scotland of a shall and the House of Lords these people may be [ __ ] I have no reason to sympathize of them but let me tell you I think there are real questions here most of the legislation about the right to public protest assumes that those protests take place in a public square to take place at they take place at City Hall at a local provincial Parliament at some kind of appropriate venue I think the rash is an open question of whether or not it should be legal to protest at someone's house and they were responding to the militancy and extremism and real violence of animal rights protesters and people like us people who were variously vegetarian vegan what have you animal rights protesters who were you know doing really unforgivable illegal and violent things to try to intimidate university professors and scientific researchers who were you know engaged in vivisection but the response again in my earlier video that talks about Sorcha and talks about who is a militant and what is the meaning of the word militant I you know I think I gave a really stirring example of that and really asked some of the tough questions we're vegans have to look in the mirror and look back to around history and realize we have a better reputation for a reason and we're stuck with it I'm not comfortably against violence I completely support only nonviolent protests working within the democratic system if you live in a democracy if you don't live in a democracy you know very different set of questions to ask yourself about how you're going to bring about social net loss you'll change it's very sad but speaking for the Western democracies of the world we need to be aware of what the legal definitions of harassment are we can change those legal definitions precisely by lobbying Parliament what have you but also if you're engaged in any form of protest that comes up close to the definition of harassment you need to really reconsider your strategy you need to reconsider your methods what you're doing and why you're doing it any case coming back to my blog I do not believe a single one of the written entries on my blog counts as harassment and none of them are even using coarse language or insults near the level of normal reddit conversation of these discussion forums like read it on the Internet none of them were all that racy or shocking but with that being said back when the blog was still ongoing back when this was new and people writing to me I remember there only being one person these are all anonymous people who wrote in with me to actually debate what I was doing on the book wrote and said that they you know to talk to me about whether or not this was harassment what I was doing in the blog I remember you know they lost the argument they lost the conversate they lost the debate I said very simply well you have to compare what I'm doing on this blog to what any newspaper new pardon me to what any newspaper did in the world of old media your claim this person writing to me their claim was that simply by taking a photograph of a person that's publicly available and putting a quotation on that photograph that is accurately quoting what the person said like a screenshot of something they said on on Twitter that you're claiming that is harassment and in the contrary that's what every newspaper in the world does every day now I think in different countries there might be an interesting debate to be had what if I take your photograph and then I modify it to make you look ugly or to make you look fat or to make you look sick newspapers do that also now should that be legal or illegal that's a different question in some countries it's legal in some hunters it's illegal to modify photograph in some countries it's legal only if you have a footnote at the bottom saying that you've you've modified the photograph that it's not accurate what if I have your photograph and then I put on top of it a quote that you didn't say what if I have a photograph of the Prime Minister of Canada but it's actually a quote from the Prime Minister of France what if it's a photograph of Obama but I have a quote from I don't know someone from the Republican Party I've Mitt Romney I have somebody else quoted it's not something Obama said is that harassment now actually I think almost nowhere in the world would that be considered harassment maybe in Singapore something maybe in some of the countries that have very very tight restrictions on freedom of the press and freedom of expression but actually even if you did that even if you were distorting the photograph even if you were distorting what the person had said or misrepresenting what the person said it still isn't harassment but what I did in that blog and having a photograph of someone and then having a quote from them how could anyone possibly define that as harassment even in this world where as I've just described in England governments often have I think cynically passed laws that define harassment so broadly that anything can be harassment so I mean in England if I try to convince you to do something or not do something you know legally under under under an act given the absurd title the Serious Organised Crime and police act yes this is not serious organised crime this could be harassment and in fact people can be deprived with their freedom of speech and again some very biased articles of red had very stirring examples of people being given criminal records and having to face courts for what should be proper democratic exercise of their freedom of speech I'm not British probably some of the commenters below this video will know more but what I'm tell you because their lives have been more cut up in this sort of thing and I've also said at the same time I think there are debates to be had you know probably some countries should pass laws saying okay look it's okay to protests in a public place and define what a public place is but maybe it's not okay to protest on somebody's front lawn or to protest even in front of an apartment building where people are trying to sleep at night you know I I'm actually open minded about that I think different countries can come up with different practical solutions for where and when protests can happen when I was in Canada I did not feel that you should be able to protest where you would actually interrupt the flow of traffic in front of the hospital that you know ultimately you know an ambulance needs to be able to drive in and drive out of a hospital so when and where you can interrupt traffic I think legally and morally I think that's an important question asked and if you watching this if you're organizing a vegan group now or a political protest group you can resolve these problems yourself you don't have to wait for Parliament you don't have to wait for the Constitution your country to change write your own constitution for your political group and define say if you are a member of this group this is what's acceptable and this is what's not acceptable you should explicitly define that you embrace only nonviolent methods and you should explicitly define which methods of protests are acceptable and which are not acceptable so for your group if you make a moral commitment that you're not going to harass people at their home you're only going to protest in front of City Hall in front of parliament in these kinds of places but that's a commitment you can put in writing and you can have everyone who joins your group sign a memorandum or read and sign that they understand the Constitution for your political party for your for your group for your Lobby however you want to define it so I just say you don't have to wait for other people to define that from you for you from the top down it's very useful for us as activists and if you're forming a foundation of any kind define it for yourself you decide what's appropriate you decide your ethical commitments and then if you have a member of your group of sucks to get it a line you can remind them you made a moral commitment you join this group to only work within these guidelines so now if you're breaking the guidelines we could ask you to leave now in my own life in the last couple of years I have had to invoke the legal definition of harassment in Canada many times for the following peculiar reason when i was at the university of victoria i formally complained that the courses i was attending work garbage now legally I can come here and state on the record with no fear of being sued that the courses were garbage because I went through that complete complaints process I filled out all the forms and so on I did not protest I did not yell at anyone I did not interrupt the flow of traffic I went to the office of the ombudsman which is a formal bureaucratic way to complain I found out what the correct procedure was to complain that of course the university was lousy I took that complaint to the head of the program the head of the program took it to the head of the department the head of the department took it to the Dean so then I was in a complaints process a formal complaints process that involved the Dean head of my department ultimately the professors teaching the course and the Office of the Ombudsman a lot of paperwork a lot of stress now the Dean lost patience and the Dean tried to intimidate me into basically giving up on this complaint that the course was garbage and it's as real serious impacts for my life it does I went to that University just to learn Chinese is a language and the Chinese language courses were garbage and I gave detailed very responsible accounts of exactly why the course was garbage exactly what the course did not live up to the minimum standard that she live up to and the Dean responded to this by accusing me of harassment and saying that I could be punished or I could be kicked out of the university if I continue with this harassment this is a great example of how the concept of harassment is abused to shut down descent when the university should have been taking my feedback seriously and really looking at what was wrong with this course and how the course fixed because the course could be fixed really it would not be impossible all for them to have made very serious improvements of that course with very little effort very little money they didn't want to do that it was easier for them to try to silence the one student who was willing to really step forward and complaint the vast majority of students were much easier to intimidate into silence because they just wanted to get good grades they just want to get on with their lives even though I think every single student I talk to you about that course agreed that the course was absolutely terrible or was deeply disappointing they had slightly different opinions on it from different perspectives as you'd expect however I'm much older than the other students I'm much more confident I'm much more able to operate in a tense political atmosphere which is exactly what I had to deal with I had to go sit in a boardroom and look at the Dean in his face and present complaints on paper and present the complaints verbally and go through bureaucratic process now apartment the fact that it would be observed under any circumstances to accuse a student of being of be engaging in harassment when that student has followed exactly this process has done the paperwork I mean it's a student following the complaints process is guilty of harassment that nobody has the right to complain right it must be that you know the official complaints process can't be harassment by definition but I didn't even have to deal with that kind of argument all I did again and again was quote to him the law in Canada that defines harassment I said no this is not harassment this is me very properly and correctly complaining to your course is terrible and the law in Canada very nicely defines harassment as something that would cause the other person to feel fear and if you look at the precise wording it specifies that it would cause a reasonable person to feel afraid now there are many funny examples of the Sinister of the world I think when they wrote that in Canada they were really thinking of iconic biker gangs because many of our legislators in Canada are a bit obsessed with biker gangs as symbolizing organized crime but the point is if for example a biker gang brings a whole group of motorcycles in front of your house and just parks them there they may not be threatening you they may not state any threat but if this is in the context of you having a conflict with these biker gangs if for example a journalist has been writing articles about the biker gangs and their illegal activities and then mysteriously 50 motorcycles are parked in front of that journalists house the point is this law is worded in a way so this could be addressed as harassment if someone takes a snake and puts it on your desk or takes a snake inputs in your mailbox even if the snake is not venomous the snake couldn't actually harm you it may not be a threat but under this Canadian law it may be harassment now again we could use the example of a journalist if someone is trying to threaten a journalist they might indeed put a snake in their mailbox I remember one case of that happening specifically or put a snake on their desk now on the other hand the reason why it says that whether or not because a reasonable person to feel afraid in those circumstances on the other hand if you're a scientist who studies snakes maybe putting a snake on your desk is completely normal it happens every day at your office and you know the law shouldn't be applied in this way so it's written in a way to be somewhat flexible these the circumstances were living in in 2016 most english-speaking Western countries have extremely vague laws defining what harassment is and these impact veganism and all rights in ecology negatively in two different ways I've said it before but I'll say it again and that in this video one is the actual enforcement of these laws from the top down which is sporadic it's inconsistent it only happens once the while with no explanation but it's a major problem for us as a movement you know the fact that in England anything can be punished as harassment any political movement it doesn't mean that everything is publishers harassment but once in a while they can decide that any animal rights group or ecological group or someone who protests in front of mcdonalds trying to convince people not see them acknowledge that they are guilty of harassment under the serious organised crime and police act and it happens sometimes but the fact that these laws are not enforced all the time doesn't mean that a law this kite isn't having a chilling effect on the use of free speech at all times it does and the secondary knock-on effect which is something we can all solve today and we can all end tomorrow is exactly that vegans accuse other vegans of harassment and you need to stop and meditate on what that really means and what the implications really are what does it mean to accuse sorcerer mirada of harassment I've already said she's not guilty of being a militant to my knowledge she's not guilty of harassment I haven't seen every video she's made but someone making a comedy video that caused call someone else an idiot they call someone else dumb that is not harassment especially not under Canada's definition it's not a threat it's not something that would cause them to be afraid it's not something that would suppress their use of freedom of speech on the contrary we as vegans you may make you feel more intelligent to reproach someone like Sorcha by saying she's guilty of harassment but in reality what you're doing is stifling freedom speech you're stifling you know our potential for dissent for debate and ultimately to get organized and engage in real world activism