For a couple of years now, outreach activities for animals in Québec have grown in numbers, popularity, and are more and more active. What is happening and does it really have an impact on the general public? During this panel activists from Québec such as Marion from Kebek Animal Rights Association, Rick from Ma Voix Pour Eux, Leah from Concordia Animal Rights Association, and Christiane, scholar and activist, will discuss the challenges of their work and its benefits.
Élise Desaulniers is the executive director of the Montreal SPCA. An independent researcher, she is also the author of three essays and of many book chapters on food ethics and animal rights. She is one of the co-organisers of the 21-Day Vegan Challenge since the first edition in 2014.
Marion Achoulias (Kebek Animal Rights Association) is co-initiator/organizer of KARA’s March to Close All Slaughterhouses and the Open Mic Series pour la Cause Animale to foster a Montreal culture of vegan/ antispeciesist rap, performance arts and slam poetry. She is a scholar of cultural studies and comparative religion with focus on the cultural aspects of speciesism and anti-speciesist advocacy and is co-initiator of the weekly Meditation at the YUL project, a bilingual mindfulness practice group for vegans and activists.
Christine Bailey is writing her thesis on animals rights in a feminist and relational perspective. She published several articles on the subject of non-human animas and regularly gives lectures and talks on ecofeminism, animal liberation within an anarchist approach, critic animal studies, and veganism as social and political movement through an intersectional perspective. She cofounded the JASE Network (Social, animal and environmental justice) that strives to further the different struggles together and to organize outreach actions on the animal issue in Québec. Her first book will be published November 2018
Juan Enrique (Rick) Hinojosa is the co-founder of MA VOIX POUR EUX in 2016 and the YUL Vegan CoOp in 2017.MA VOIX POUR EUX encourages the public to speak up on behalf of those we rarely listen to, mostly but not limited to Animals and adhering to a cruelty free lifestyle.Since 2016 MA VOIX POUR EUX has initiated and participated various animal rights events and fundraisers including the ongoing Anti Rodeo initiatives, Anti Specieist demonstrations and visibility in the Montreal LGBTQ PRIDE Parades.
Leah McCann is the current president of the established, Concordia Animal Rights Association (CARA) and leads a team of dedicated volunteers in their collective passion to raise awareness of the compassionate and sustainability benefits of a cruelty-free, vegan lifestyle. In addition to support from Concordia University, CARA collaborates with PETA, Lush Cosmetics, The Humane Society, Matt and Nat among others. As a Vegan herself, Leah’s own tireless passion is informed by her interest and experience in politics. In her third year of a Political Science program, this past Summer she served as an intern for Canada’s Speaker of the Senate’s Office where she was engaged in the political process.