Last week in Critical Animal and Media Studies, the class was joined by two guest speakers from the animal advocacy field as a panel complementing the week's theme of activism practice.

The session started with psychologist and former animal rights NGO director Daniela Romero Waldhorn, who made a presentation introducing problems related to nonhuman animals in our societies and her work as an activist. She explained why she chose to focus on advocating for farmed animals, considering three different factors: scale, neglect and tractability. She also detailed a very successful campaign in the European Parliament in which they worked to eliminate cages for rabbits used as food, in spite of the industries' considerable power and resistance to change. Part of the campaign consisted in working with kids and asking them how they would like the rabbits to live. A strategy they used was to send guidelines on rabbit welfare to EU Members of Parliament, including information about their suggested reform and the consequences of cages for the animals -- also adding drawings of free rabbits done by the kids in the frame of the same campaign. 

Animal advocate and communication expert Paula González Carracedo followed, talking about animal activism starting with her own story; she introduced her favorite people in the world: Elena Tova, the founder of El Hogar Animal Sanctuary, and Isis, her companion dog. During the session, Paula drew parallels between different animal species, different friendships, personalities and different ways to contribute to the animal liberation cause. She also explained why she decided to become a professional in the communication field and to focus specifically on the work of nonhuman animal sanctuaries, being the places where animals whose lives had been previously denied because of speciesism have a second chance. Their stories and the way we can know them in a space which is not full of power and oppression can change the way we consider them and change not just their world, but the world.

Thank you, Daniela and Paula, for joining us!