Grassroots Victories: Banning Rodeo One City at a Time with Matthew King

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Foreign.

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Welcome back to In Behalf of Animals. I'm Nicole Arcello.

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It's hard to keep going when it seems like the world is on fire.

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That steady stream of mostly bad news on TV and social

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media, sometimes it's hard to find something good.

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The beginning of the year is sometimes a low point for

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me when some people are recharged and refocused. It's a time for

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me to. To kind of keep to myself and reflect. I try to

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find some downtime when I can stay away from the news cycle and social

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media, and I withdraw a little. And I guess that's how I recharge myself after

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a long year and gear up for a new one. So it might surprise

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you to learn that I don't always run full speed into the new year.

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I mean, I'm in upstate New York with concrete skies

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and cold weather. January is the month where these short days seem to go

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on forever. It's in February when I typically get

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my energy back and want to conquer the world.

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Sometimes we just have to focus on ourselves and our efforts and

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take some time to figure out what to do next. Now, I still do my

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work. I'm still advocating for animals and the horses.

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And I'm here talking to you right now, right? It's January 16,

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2026, and a lot has happened as

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this season unfolds. I'm astonished by the honesty from my guests.

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Whether it comes through telling their vegan story or how

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they deal with the ups and downs of this work. It's so authentic.

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And I hope that comes through for you all as well.

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Look, we're all just real, regular people with one common goal,

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fighting for animal liberation. But it's

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hard when there are articles stating veganism is dead and a

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rollout of a new food pyramid guideline that's as

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nonsensical as it is corrupt. It's hard to

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keep going. But here we are. You and

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me and so many more of us.

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This is why we need to lift each other up and keep going. We can't

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ever let anyone stop us. Our passion and compassion

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drive us, and that's so much more than most people have.

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We have to embrace it, no matter how much it hurts.

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Sometimes it's because of all of this that the animals have

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hope. Today I'm talking to Matthew King from Christian Animal

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Rights association, and you will hear that there are lots of things to celebrate

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when it comes to the fight for animals victories.

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And also just knowing your people are out there standing

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side by side with you in the fight. Hey. And by the

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way of people and community. Thank you for listening to me

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every other week and I would love to hear from you too.

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Comment, write a review, send me a message on our website,

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inbehalofanimals.org or send us a

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note in our substack chat. Community is important now

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more than ever. So thank you again for being here and

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giving the animals and me hope each day.

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Now, let's get to it. Here's my conversation with Matthew King.

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Hi Matthew. Welcome to in behalf of Animals. Hey Nicole, thank you

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so much for having me. I'm so, it's so great to have you here and

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there's so many great things that you're doing for animals. But I want to start

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with your vegan story, if that's okay. Oh sure, sure.

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I've actually told this story many times too. So some of your viewers or some

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of your listeners might have heard this already, but it's kind of a one.

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I haven't heard it. So I'm excited to hear it. Perfect. Perfect.

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Yeah. So it all started actually in. My wife

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and I are both nurses. We met in nursing school. We both started working

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at this like suburban hospital outside of Pittsburgh.

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And my wife, one day we were both like in our 20s and

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she picked up a 16 hour shift which she would like never do today,

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but. Wow. Yeah, exactly. That's a kind of

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like you only talk to like nurses and police officers that do shifts like that,

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right? Oh yeah. And it's, and that, that's, and that's what, what led to this?

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Actually she was, this is just after actually, I'm sorry it was 2013, but actually

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just gotten a Shel Shetland sheepdog. She brought this dog home because

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at the hospital they had these therapy dogs and she fell in

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love with shelties. And so we got the Shel and he's still with us today.

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Ripley. He's about, let's see, he was born in 2013 so it was.

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Yeah, he's, he just turned 12. But anyways, my wife

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had always loved animals growing up and I actually, I, I loved animals but I

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wasn't really allowed to have them like in the house or anything because my parents

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are Victorian furniture collectors and so that was always like a big no, no.

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So the, so yeah, my wife was working the 16 hour shift at the hospital

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and we had just gotten this dog and she was

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driving home the one day after the 16 hour shift and it was like nighttime,

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it was like three in the morning. She was driving on this really busy road

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and she kept feeling like, she was going to, like, fall asleep at the wheel.

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And so she was like, slapping herself awake and she saw this deer crossing sign.

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And then, you know, she made it home okay and everything like that. But then

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she woke up the next morning. She got home at like 3 in the morning.

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She woke up the next morning and she was like, I had this really awful

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dream where I hit a deer with my car because I was on this deer

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crossing road, and the deer looked up at me after I tried to

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help him. And he said, if you're going to eat me, you should eat my.

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Eat your dog too. And so she had this. Yeah,

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like this really vivid dream. Yeah. And I thought she was. And we had

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just gotten married in 2012, so we were married for about a year. And I

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was just like, what in the world is that? Like, what. Who has a dream?

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And then like. So she decided to go vegan after that. Or, I'm sorry,

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vegetarian after that. Actually, after I had this dream, I just could not eat meat

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ever again. And so I was like, you're crazy. Like, what is this? Yeah,

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that's. You told her vegan story too. So that's really interesting

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too. Wow. Our vegan stories are interconnected too. It's one of those things. Yeah.

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Can't escape it. And Nina. So she. She had this dream and I thought she

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was like, crazy for it. I'm like, all right, whatever. You know, be vegetarian.

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I don't care. And so then after a couple months of having our dog,

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Ripley the Sheltied, he, you know, I started to learn more about dogs.

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And I never had dogs growing up, even though I liked them and stuff.

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And I started to notice things about animals that I. Because in my mind,

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like, growing. Growing up, I always thought that animals were sort of like machines.

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Like, you know, I just thought of them as they eat, they poop, they play,

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or they eat and they poop and then they sleep and then that's it.

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And. Right. They didn't have like, unique personalities or anything like that. And yeah,

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we have. So I was watching Ripley the one day, and I had no idea

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what I was doing watching this dog. My, My wife was, know, working these 12,

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16 hour shifts and working a lot, and then stuck me with

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his dog. And so then I'm. I'm learning about him. When I would pick up

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his food bowl, I would notice that there was like peas at the bottom of

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the bowl. And I was like, that's really odd. And so then I was watching

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him the one day and he was actually spitting out the peas. And so after

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that, I was like, oh, my gosh. He actually has, like, preferences. You know,

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it's like sprouts. He doesn't like peas. So then after that, I. I sort

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of learned that, like, you know, animals really have personalities, and I started to understand

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dogs more, and I started to look at animals differently after that. And then I

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was watching this movie called Southern Comfort. I'm a big movie fan, you probably noticed

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from my Facebook. But I was watching this movie from the 80s called Southern Comfort,

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and it's kind of like a knockoff of Deliverance, which is.

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Okay, yeah, I know. Deliverance. Yeah, right. Everybody, you know,

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everybody knows. And it was kind of a knockoff of that. It's about the Marines

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that are down in New Orleans, and they're sort of, like, picking on these local

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people that, like, live in the woods. And the locals get back at them,

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and they kidnap them and then bring them to their village. And there's this really

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graphic scene where these locals, you know, they're about to, like,

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slaughter them, but they're slaughtering the pigs first. And I was watching

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this scene, and I thought maybe it was, like, fake or something because it was

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so graphic, but they actually slaughtered, like, actual pigs. And they

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were filming this movie, and the director was like, well, I mean, they're gonna do

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it anyway, so I might as well, like, capture it, because these are, like,

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real people, like, back in the woods. And he caught the scene, and it was

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just really, really graphic. And I was like, I. I can't even meet again after

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that. And so then I. I didn't eat meat, um, for a good while after

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that. I did have one moment, though, where I went to a restaurant. I started

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eating chicken wings, and it was one of. One of our favorite restaurants. And I

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remember holding the wing, and I was like, this feels so much like my dog's

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bones. And then after that, I. I never ate meat again after that.

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Yeah. So that started the vegetarian journey. Yeah.

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Wow. Everyone's stories are so different. I love that because,

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you know, a lot of people tell stories that they grew up with animals

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when they were young, and you didn't. So you had a different perspective, you know,

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on animals. And then a lot of people, they don't change as an

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adult. Right. But so many of us that are vegan do, you know. Because we

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do open our eyes to. To animals. So is there more to that story?

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A little more. Yeah. Well, there's a. So it's. Of course, it's the. The Vegetarian

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journey. So we did that. Yeah, we did. Vegetarian, right. That's always like,

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I'm always impressed when I meet people and they're like, oh, I've been vegan.

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You know, I went. I went like, meat eater vegan. I'm like, how did you

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do that? I know once in a while we have somebody like that, and it's

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like overnight, and it's like, wow. You know, it's like people that say that,

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like, they. They, you know, drink alcohol once and then they stop forever. And I'm

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just like, you didn't have any hiccups along the way or anything like that?

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Exactly. Right. And so the vegan journey started, too, because my wife

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and I were vegetarian for, like, 2014 to, like, 2016. 2013 to 2016.

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Somewhere in there. And then around 2016, she watched

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this documentary called Earthlings, which I'm sure a lot of of your listeners are familiar

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with. And if they haven't, they need to. Right. Funny you

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mentioned that too, because my wife watched it and she was like, yeah, I watched

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this movie about. Is Walking Phoenix narrated. And it's about, like, animal abuse within the

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milk and dairy, or the dairy and the. The egg industries as well as the

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meat industries. And I think I need to be vegan. And I was like,

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oh, my God. Like, this is nuts. Like, already, like, we've done enough.

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Vegans are crazy. Like, what are you talking about? I was sort

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of giving her the ninth degree about it. Yeah. And then she was like,

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she posed a question to me and I'll always remember this. And she goes,

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well, how about this? Like, will you watch the movie? And I was like,

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no, I don't need to watch it. Like, that's a bunch of vegan propaganda.

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Blah, blah, blah. She's like, if you want listen to me, will you at least

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watch the movie? And I was like, I don't need to listen to your propaganda.

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Whatever. And I was like, I'm not watching the movie. I stormed off into my

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office here, and I sat here for like 20 minutes and I was thinking about

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it, and I was like, you know, if I watch that movie, I know what's

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going to happen. I'm going to go vegan. And so then I'm going to

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be a crazy vegan, Right? Yeah, Right. I'm just going to absorb it. And so

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I was like, I'm just going to skip the movie and I'll just do,

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you know. And then she started making all these really delicious meals. Like, she.

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She like went and got, like, all these recipe books from, like, Colleen Patrick Goudreau

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and really, like, studied up on vegan. Vegan cooking

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and stuff and, yeah, making all these awesome meals. And I was just like,

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well, this is pretty easy, actually. So I transitioned pretty easily from vegetarian to

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vegan. I'm. I'm really astonished by the guests on this podcast,

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how everyone is really honest about their vegan stories and what

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they thought and. Because I always think we need to go back

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as activists to remember where we were at before we were

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vegan. Most of us weren't born vegan, you know, and I think it's.

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It's so important to be honest with ourselves and with telling those stories

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because that's. It's hard. It's. It was hard for us.

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You know, we're not especially. We have people on podcasts that are

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doing big things for animals and they're changing, making big changes,

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and they're heads of groups or whatever, and they're out there doing things.

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And I want people who listen to really. We all came from the same

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start, right? We had the same start. And we're all just regular people.

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We're not like super superheroes or whatever. I'm probably really

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repetitive on my podcast, but you know what? That's okay, because if someone's learning listening

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today for the first time. So how did you become. How did you go from

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vegetarian to vegan to Christian Animal Rights Association?

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Oh, sure. Yeah, that. That's a fun one, too. Well, I shouldn't say fun.

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That one was a little bit more dramatic, but as if it hadn't already been

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dramatic. Right. So in 2016, it was around actually, like 2015,

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I started to look more into, like, I, I grew up Catholic in Lutheran,

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and my parents were never, like, serious about religion. Like, they, they did the,

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like, hey, you know, let's go to church on Christmas and Easter. And then I

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got, like, baptized and I got communion and all the whole thing, but it was

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never like, a serious thing. But my wife's dad as a pastor, and so

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marrying into the family, I kind of knew that that was going to be something.

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But I was like, sort of like agnostic atheist through. Through college.

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And then I started to look at. At faith a little bit differently, like in

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like 2015ish. And yeah, I started to, like, for me,

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at least, my faith and my veganism have always been sort of intertwined because I

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started to become serious about investigating Christianity like, around 2015,

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and I read a lot of books. I'd always been fascinated by, like,

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a lot of, like, Christian history and things like that. And so I started to

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look into it more in depth. And then that also sort of coincided with my

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vegetarian vegan journey. And then I started to look at, like, around 2015, 2016,

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I started to look at, like, well, what is the Bible? Since I was.

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I started reading the Bible actually in 2015, and I was like, I'm going to

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read it from COVID to cover. And it took me from 2015 to 2018,

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so basically, like, three, four years to read it from,

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like, sort of COVID to cover. And I was looking for, like, what does the

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Bible say about animal rights? What does it say about veganism? Right. And along that

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journey, I sort of realized that, like, the Bible does have a very strong animal

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rights and vegan message. And so then after we became

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vegan in 2016, we started to get involved with the Christian Vegetarian association,

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cva. They're run by Steve Kaufman, who's. Who's great. He's actually on our board

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of directors. You might know of him. I've heard of him. Yes. Awesome guy.

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And we started learning more about that and we started, like,

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tabling with their events. We started doing, like, veg fests and stuff like that.

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And along the way, we. We sort of realized,

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like, there was a. Definitely a vegan message within the Christian community that was not

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being, you know, not being acknowledged and things like that.

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And then along the way, I. What got us really serious. Like, we were thinking

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along the way, like, as we were doing these CVA events, we were like,

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there's not really, like, a group that's doing anything, like, legislatively or, like,

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politically or, like, working with corporations to

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try to advance animal rights, like, you know, changing what companies do or changing what

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laws for animals and things like that from a Christian perspective. And so that was

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sort of brewing in our minds along the way. Like, if we ever wanted to

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create our own organization, we do have allcreatures.org who they do mostly, like,

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education as well, along with cva. But anyways, yeah, we thought

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about making our own group for a long time. We thought about, oh, maybe we

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should do like a dog rescue or something like that. But it never really came

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to fruition. And then what happened was late, like 2017, I got a really

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bad Crohn's flare because I. I got diagnosed with Crohn's in 2012.

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My uncle has it as well. So it was sort of like. It was.

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It was surprising at first, but then I learned that there's sort of a family

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history and that was actually backing up, too. That was sort of Another reason why

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vegetarian and vegan was sort of good for me too, because my doctor, the first

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thing he told me in 2012 was like, yeah, stop eating red meat and stop

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eating dairy or like, you know, don't eat, don't drink, like whole milk. And so

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I, I started drinking like almond milk back in 2012. So that was sort of

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an early moment for me as well where it's like, it's also connected to your

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health as well. And he even said too, he's like, yeah, people that don't eat

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red meat do much better. But anyways, I, I got diagnosed in 2012, started on

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medication and it was quiet for five or six years. And then 2017, 2018,

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I had a really bad flare, actually. That almost killed me. Yeah, it was.

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And it was. I lost 65 pounds. And so like, I'm usually like

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185, 190. I dropped down to like 120, 125 pounds. And I

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look at pictures from back then and I'm like, oh my God. Like it.

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Even when I see the year 2018, I'm like, oh, God. That, that whole,

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that year was memories. Yeah, right. And,

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and, and so then after that, I ended up surviving,

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obviously, and, and I got a bow resection. So I got like 5ft of intestines

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taken out. Oh my. But I did much better after that. And my

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doctor actually said too, he was like, yeah, definitely stick with the plant based diet.

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Definitely stick with the vegan diet. Like, patients do better on that. So it's also

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the, the health aspect as well. That's been really good. And he switched over some

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of my medications and he said that if you. He's like 90%

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of patients, they have one flare that requires a resection and then they never have

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a problem again. I'm hoping that I'm in that 90%. And so after

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that, after, after I survived that, I had this, like, I had this whole entire,

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like year, year and a half where I, like, didn't eat properly. And you know,

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I was, I had, you know, basically starved for, until I got the bowel resection.

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And then I started to have this like, moment where I was like, man,

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I really want to do something like, amazing. After I got through that and Nina

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and I were sort of thinking and we were like, yeah, we should make like

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a, an association that. Or an organization that works with companies and does

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like legislative work and also education. And so we formed a Christian Animal Rights

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association. And it was sort of a living embodiment of our faith as well.

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As basically, you know, trying to show Christians that God cares

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about animals and that animals deserve rights and God wants a, a paradise where

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humans no longer harm animals. Yeah. Wow. Like there's a whole,

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whole discussion in this because there's so, so many times people

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use the Bible against us vegans, don't they? Oh yeah, So I

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see, I see you have the book Dominion behind you on the bookshelf.

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And that's, it's exactly what I was thinking when you're, when you're talking is a

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lot of people say that's the argument is, you know, God gave us dominion over

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animals. And sometimes it's a hard thing to counter.

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I think maybe all activists, you know, like a lot of vegans are,

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you know, what do we say to that? You know, do you have something.

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Actually, yeah, that's probably my, the most common question we get is like, oh yeah,

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animals, right. Something quick. You could like, like, or not even quick. Go ahead,

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I'm sure. Oh no, it's actually, that one's actually pretty quick. Yeah,

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but so God gives humans dominion over animals. In Genesis

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1:26 to 28, there's that section and then what people always forget though because

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they're like, oh well, that means I can eat meat. It's like, no, actually DOMINION

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In Genesis 1:26, 28, the very next verse, Genesis 1:29,

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it says that humans are to only eat plants and as well as

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the animals are only to eat plants in Genesis 1:30. And so what dominion means

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is obviously this non violence. And so it means not actually using them for food.

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That's what dominion means in the context. And then if you, you know, anytime I've

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studied Hebrew quite a bit and one thing I've learned about it is like words

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will be reused and then you always have to look at how that word is

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used in a different context to really get an understanding of what that means.

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And dominion, the reason that's sort of been understood as,

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as difficult to navigate, especially from the vegan argument, is because

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in other places dominion is used sort of like violently.

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But it doesn't mean that you have to look at the context of the word.

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Like there's, you know, half the times that the Bible mentions dominion is violent and

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then the other half it mentions it's peaceful. And so you really have to look

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at the context of what that means. But in, in Obviously in Genesis 1 it

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means this non violent dominion. And then in Psalm 72, dominion is actually discussed

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and it talks about a righteous king. And so this righteous king will look after

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his, those who are under him, he will protect them from

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oppression. He will deliver them from justice. And it has this big, long psalm about

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what the righteousness of a dominion looks like. And so that's really what that means

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over animals. And then just to finally sort of like seal the argument I always

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talk about. Yeah. How it was in Eden is how it will be at the

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end of time. Like it's called the New Earth. And that's how Jesus will come

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back and restore the world to what it was in Genesis 1 and 2,

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where humans and animals were vegan and there was no violence whatsoever.

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That's restored at the end of time. And it's talked about in Isaiah 11,

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6, 9. And it says the most famous. Everybody knows this. The wolf

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will lay with the lamb, the lion will. The lion will graze

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like the cow. And then what it says about humans, it says a little child

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will take care of them. And so how that was at the end is how

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the beginning was. And so Genesis 1, when it talks about dominion, that's really what

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that means is caretaking. Right. And so that's really what the responsibility of

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humans are, is caretaking over the animals. And there's a theologian named Andrew Lindsay

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that you might have heard of him. He's. He's pretty well known in the Christian

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circles. But, yeah, he. He calls humans the servant species. And I think that's a

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really great way to put it. Is that like, one of my favorite things that

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Christians will say is, oh, well, God put animals for here for us. And I

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said, no, you actually have that completely backwards. Humans. Yes. People say that all the

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time. Right, right. And it's like, that's not the God of the Bible.

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That's. That's the narcissistic God that you follow of your belly. And yeah,

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it's this idea that humans were created for the animals. We were supposed to

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be. We're supposed to be the caretakers. And that's really what the vision God has

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for all of us. Right? Yeah. Like, we need that on a leaflet that we

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can carry with us. Because I think that

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if you, if you countered somebody who throws that out there as their only

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thing they've got, they wouldn't know what to do with that information.

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Right. Because you're proving them wrong. They're not. They're just taking out, you know,

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and I find these are people who, who, who will try to quote the Bible,

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but they're, they're not involved in any other way, shape or form when they're

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trying to Fight vegans with that, you know, dominion. The dominion argument.

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Um, but that's. That's a great amount of information on that.

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I love that. What. So what is your group doing right now? I know you're.

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You're. You have a. You have a lot going on. I want to talk about

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the bands on rodeos, because I know you're involved in that.

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Go ahead. Well, since. Since our inception, too, we. We always sort of, like.

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I had sort of the vision for the group as, like, you know, like,

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PETA talks about focusing on animals, harm for food experimentation,

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fashion, and entertainment. And when we first jumped into the organization,

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we really wanted to focus on food because it's like, you know, that's by far

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the most animals that are harmed. Yeah. I think I talked about, with you and

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Patrick about how we. We started out as sort of like, you know, how can

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we gain leverage over the meat industry? And. Yeah, in the. In the years

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that we've been doing this since 2019, we've noticed that, you know, things aren't really

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moving real well with the food part, unfortunately. Like, you know,

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we've had a couple of wins. Like, we partnered with an organization, Humane Action

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Pittsburgh now Humane Action Pennsylvania. And we got a band on foie gras in Pittsburgh.

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Yeah. That's awesome. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that was our. Our first

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big win. That was in 2022. And Pete actually did

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an interview with. With my wife and I about it, which was really cool.

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Oh, that's great. Yeah, thank you. And that was cool. And then we also worked

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on the foie gras band in Brookline, Massachusetts this year. So that was really good.

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But one thing that came to our attention and. And we

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had been working on, like, fashion, experimentation and entertainment throughout that, but it wasn't really

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our focus. And throughout the years, we've noticed that we're not really. We're not really

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making a dent in the food industry, unfortunately. And so we've sort of shifted on

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that. Not that we're not, of course, doing things, but, you know, it's kind of

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like. Speaking of broken record, it's just like, you know, you're saying the same things

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over and over again and you're not seeing. And we have some strategies upcoming for

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that. I'll talk about that later. But, yeah. Yeah, good. The one thing we've.

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We've shifted from was back in. So back in July of 2024, what really,

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that whole. Whole summer, like, changed my life, actually, because I

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heard this really great speech from Bruce Friedrich about the Future of food.

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And he talked about how, you know, sort of like lab grown meat is the

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future. And I said to Nina, I was like, I think that's something we need

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to start pursuing. But anyways, more on that later. But yeah, what I wanted to

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talk about was the. In 2024. So growing up in Pittsburgh,

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there had never been a rodeo anywhere near Pittsburgh. Just because back in 1990

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there was a rodeo event down at the old Civic arena, which was where the

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penguins play. And this animal, they had a. I'm not sure exactly what

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event it was, but it was a rodeo. It was like a full rodeo,

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like calf roping, the whole bed. And this bull actually broke his leg and

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had to be euthanized, like right in the arena. And so Pittsburgh was

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just outraged about it because, you know, there was like kids there and they're watching

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this bull suffer while he has to get euthanized. And it was just absolutely horrible.

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And so it created this outrage in Pittsburgh after that. And yeah, our mayor at

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the time was Sophie Maslov. She was, I think she was the first female mayor

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of Pittsburgh, actually. And Pittsburgh's a really progressive town, which I later found out.

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But anyways, we were the first city in the country to ban rodeo

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and that was back in 1992. And they created an ordinance and basically it

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didn't ban rodeos, it banned the tools of tormat, which was. It bans flank

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straps, electric prods, wire tie, downs and spurs.

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And so you could go to a rodeo in Pittsburgh, but you can't have those

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four items. And what that really showed was that these animals are tormented by those

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instruments because if you take away those instruments, you can't have a rodeo. Right.

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So that, that really proved that. And Pittsburgh.

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So as long as I've been in Pittsburgh, there's never been a rodeo anywhere near

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here. Now, there was a circus growing up, like I used to see ads for

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the circus and stuff. And then that got shut down later as well.

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Humane Action Pennsylvania got that banned in 2017, but yeah,

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it was really good. And 2024, what happened was totally

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in the dark. No one knew about it in Pittsburgh, but what happened was professional

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bull riders, they. They tried to. Actually, I think what happened was because of

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Los Angeles. Los Angeles has been trying to ban Rodeo since 2020 and the industry

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has been fighting it like pretty tooth and nail because they know the circus band

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started in LA and then they spread like wildfire after that. And LA

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banned it in like 2014, I think. And then now, you know, 10 years

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later, the circus Basically no longer exists except for in some rural areas. Right.

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And so the rodeo industry is worried about that. And so they've been fighting the

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Los Angeles ban. And so they saw where Los Angeles got their language from,

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and it was from Pittsburgh. And so then the radio industry came into Pittsburgh and

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then tried to talk to the city council to try to remove the law,

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actually. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so can never rest after we, after we

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00:24:50,210 --> 00:24:53,750
get, you know, after we get a ban on something. I always say that we

419
00:24:54,250 --> 00:24:57,950
can't, we celebrate, we go on to the next one. But we have to be

420
00:24:58,450 --> 00:25:02,069
aware that they could try to come back in. Right, yeah. And try to overturn

421
00:25:02,569 --> 00:25:05,710
it. You have a new, a new set of council members. You never know what's

422
00:25:06,210 --> 00:25:08,790
going to happen. So you always have to be aware of what's going on in

423
00:25:09,290 --> 00:25:12,310
the area you live in. But probably more on that later. Go ahead. That's right.

424
00:25:12,810 --> 00:25:16,030
That's right. Yeah. Stay vigilant. That's right. Yeah. And that's what happened is

425
00:25:16,530 --> 00:25:18,350
they tried to come into the city and try to get the law removed.

426
00:25:18,850 --> 00:25:21,710
And of course, and actually this is sort of rumors, but I heard the mayor

427
00:25:22,210 --> 00:25:25,390
actually was almost willing to do it and the city council like

428
00:25:25,890 --> 00:25:28,630
bulked out it. They were like, no, we haven't heard anything from constituents saying that

429
00:25:29,130 --> 00:25:31,350
they want this law removed and yada, yada. So it was, it was shelved.

430
00:25:31,510 --> 00:25:34,750
I didn't even hear about this actually, which goes to show you. So then they

431
00:25:35,250 --> 00:25:39,690
went to the state and they paid this lobbyist $40,000

432
00:25:39,850 --> 00:25:42,930
to try to get that law removed. And this

433
00:25:43,430 --> 00:25:46,130
is based upon what I've heard. They couldn't get the law removed. And so they

434
00:25:46,630 --> 00:25:49,890
were allowed to come into Pittsburgh with this forty thousand dollar lobbyist and they went

435
00:25:50,390 --> 00:25:53,490
to a senator to try to, to let

436
00:25:53,990 --> 00:25:56,810
them do this. And they slipped that into the state budget. And so it slipped

437
00:25:57,310 --> 00:25:59,250
into the state budget and then now they're allowed to come into Pittsburgh despite there

438
00:25:59,750 --> 00:26:02,210
being a ban. And you know, and it's one thing, you know, if it was

439
00:26:02,710 --> 00:26:05,490
something like where they said, hey, what do Pittsburgh, Pittsburghers think of this? And then,

440
00:26:05,990 --> 00:26:09,140
you know, 60% of Pittsburgh said, okay, yeah, sure, let them in. It would be

441
00:26:09,640 --> 00:26:11,260
like, okay, that sucks, but we can deal with that. But the fact that it

442
00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:14,420
was done in the dark, there was no memo whatsoever, no one knew about it.

443
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:17,140
It was all just done completely in the dark and under the table. That's what

444
00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:19,860
really. And my wife knows. I mean, I couldn't sleep about it for like two

445
00:26:20,360 --> 00:26:23,580
weeks. I was Just like, I cannot believe that that happened. And yeah, so we've

446
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:25,700
been dealing with that. We've been trying to get the rodeo out of Pittsburgh.

447
00:26:26,200 --> 00:26:29,260
And one of the strategies that I've been really dealing with is because I didn't

448
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,920
know that rodeo was so popular living here for so long. And so I started

449
00:26:33,420 --> 00:26:35,800
to look at like, okay, professional bull riders came into Pittsburgh, but where else do

450
00:26:36,300 --> 00:26:39,800
they go? And I found out how popular they were, actually, which I had never

451
00:26:40,300 --> 00:26:42,680
knew. And then I started looking and they went to New York City, they went

452
00:26:43,180 --> 00:26:46,280
to Chicago, they've been in la, they've been in all these different cities. And so.

453
00:26:46,780 --> 00:26:49,400
So what I started doing is they're here in Albany. We're. We're recording this in

454
00:26:49,900 --> 00:26:53,760
December. They're here in Albany tonight. And tomorrow night. We'll be protesting tomorrow night.

455
00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,480
And a little bit more about that later as well. Go ahead.

456
00:26:57,530 --> 00:27:00,570
Excellent. No, no, it's good. That's fantastic. Yeah, that's right. Albany is.

457
00:27:01,070 --> 00:27:04,370
Is a big city that they're in. And so I started contacting. I basically

458
00:27:04,870 --> 00:27:07,170
went on the war path and I started contacting, like every vegan group in every

459
00:27:07,670 --> 00:27:10,010
major city that they were at. And I was like, hey, anybody know a city

460
00:27:10,510 --> 00:27:13,530
council member? Does anybody want to see this band? And so in the last year

461
00:27:14,030 --> 00:27:18,290
and a half, I've been able to leverage a lot of different constituents

462
00:27:18,790 --> 00:27:21,810
to try to get bans in cities. And so right now our ministry is working

463
00:27:22,310 --> 00:27:25,050
heavily in Los Angeles because that's sort of like the battleground area.

464
00:27:26,460 --> 00:27:30,420
They've shifted that ordinance many times and we'll talk about that later. But since then,

465
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:34,700
I've. I've partnered with the members of Shark and we've managed to get a

466
00:27:35,100 --> 00:27:38,860
ordinance going in Chicago to band rodeos as well as New York

467
00:27:39,360 --> 00:27:42,980
City. That one. We're adjusting the language a little bit, but we ended up getting

468
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:46,660
37 council members to sign onto it out of 51. So we had a super

469
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,500
majority in New York City. In New York City, yeah. Yep.

470
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:53,490
There's been a lot of support for it. It's a ban on the tools of

471
00:27:53,990 --> 00:27:56,650
torment. And so right now, the way it's written, it goes after calf roping,

472
00:27:56,810 --> 00:28:00,130
flank straps and electric prods. But in the future,

473
00:28:00,630 --> 00:28:02,130
I think we're going to modify it and just make it some of the more

474
00:28:02,630 --> 00:28:05,690
tools instead of the calf roping part. And then we've also managed to

475
00:28:06,190 --> 00:28:08,970
get one very far in Worcester, Massachusetts. That's been good.

476
00:28:09,210 --> 00:28:11,850
Yeah, that's moving along really well.

477
00:28:12,170 --> 00:28:15,690
Yes. Yeah, they're. They're currently in the stages of writing it. And that one's actually

478
00:28:16,190 --> 00:28:19,450
kind of funny because we expected the rodeo industry to fight it and we,

479
00:28:20,900 --> 00:28:24,060
we brought it to Counselor King's attention. He's been really great about supporting it and

480
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,900
he's been all about the Tools of Torture band. And we got it. And they

481
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,500
needed to have a hearing in order to get an ordinance written. That's how Worcester

482
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,340
works. And it passed unanimously, actually. And the radio industry was there,

483
00:28:35,840 --> 00:28:38,100
actually. But they, it was only a half hour to talk about it and they

484
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:40,540
ended up not being in it. But they had a post the next morning on

485
00:28:41,040 --> 00:28:44,020
Facebook that said we weren't allowed to speak at this, at this meeting, blah,

486
00:28:44,520 --> 00:28:47,830
blah, blah. It wasn't just you, it was, it was the people. Everybody.

487
00:28:48,310 --> 00:28:51,510
Yeah. Because they ran out of time. Right, right. But they posed it as if

488
00:28:52,010 --> 00:28:54,470
they're being, you know, suppressed by their free speech or something ridiculous like. Of course,

489
00:28:54,790 --> 00:28:58,150
yeah, they're going to cry about it. Right, right. And so, yeah, that,

490
00:28:58,650 --> 00:29:01,390
that's the main cities. And then we're also working on, I, I sort of the

491
00:29:01,890 --> 00:29:04,990
plan right now. And my good friend Steve, he might be listening,

492
00:29:05,490 --> 00:29:08,790
but eventually. But he put it well, he was like, yeah, what you're doing

493
00:29:09,290 --> 00:29:11,830
is sort of creating many fires. And I was like, yeah, that's a really good

494
00:29:12,330 --> 00:29:14,550
way to put it. Is sort of like. Yeah, that's because that's really what I

495
00:29:15,050 --> 00:29:16,510
want to do is I just want to make it so many cities that they

496
00:29:17,010 --> 00:29:18,790
have to deal with or contend with that they can't possibly fight all of them.

497
00:29:19,290 --> 00:29:21,990
And they're very busy in Los Angeles right now. And I think the rodeo industry,

498
00:29:22,490 --> 00:29:25,030
they expected that. Oh, well, like, you know, we're going to, we're going to fight

499
00:29:25,530 --> 00:29:28,030
Los Angeles and then that'll dampen down and everybody else won't want to fight it.

500
00:29:28,530 --> 00:29:30,190
I want to show them that it's like, you know, Los Angeles, even though they

501
00:29:30,690 --> 00:29:33,550
lead the way, they don't have to, you know, we can do things. Even LA

502
00:29:34,050 --> 00:29:37,670
doesn't do it. Yeah. And that's really important to know that anybody can do

503
00:29:38,170 --> 00:29:41,920
this wherever they live. Right. So whatever city or town you live in, you know,

504
00:29:42,420 --> 00:29:45,840
and we'll, we'll walk people through that in a little bit. Did you want

505
00:29:46,340 --> 00:29:49,960
to talk a little bit more, more about la? Oh, certainly, yeah.

506
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:53,880
Yeah. And, and also too, what I wanted to touch on too was our ministry

507
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:57,080
after what happened in Pittsburgh. We decided to focus on rodeos because.

508
00:29:57,580 --> 00:30:00,600
Yeah. Being sunk into rodeo culture like for like the last year. I Mean,

509
00:30:01,100 --> 00:30:04,000
I could write a book. On it, on how much like us with horse racing.

510
00:30:04,500 --> 00:30:07,320
Right? You know, that's right. You know, we know every little detail about every little

511
00:30:08,210 --> 00:30:11,370
person almost in racing. Right? It's.

512
00:30:11,870 --> 00:30:14,570
Yeah, it's kind of. Well, you're the expert. Expect your life to go in that

513
00:30:15,070 --> 00:30:18,650
direction. Right? That's exactly right. I talk

514
00:30:19,150 --> 00:30:21,130
about that all the time with like, you know, I was telling her the one

515
00:30:21,630 --> 00:30:23,210
night I was like, you know, when I was in high school, I never imagined

516
00:30:23,710 --> 00:30:26,570
that I would be like the forefront of banning rodeos. Like, if you told me,

517
00:30:27,070 --> 00:30:29,650
like, be an anti rodeo activist, like, what the hell are you talking about?

518
00:30:30,450 --> 00:30:33,650
What's a rodeo? You know? Yeah, right. We haven't had

519
00:30:34,150 --> 00:30:37,660
that here since 1990s. Right. That's so

520
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:41,900
true. Unexpected directions. Yeah. And so what we realized too is

521
00:30:42,140 --> 00:30:45,700
as we were fighting the rodeo in Pittsburgh, we realized

522
00:30:46,200 --> 00:30:50,100
that a lot of the rodeo culture is surrounded by Christianity, which is really odd

523
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,980
because, you know, like, they start every. Every rodeo starts with a

524
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,460
prayer and it's like this cowboys prayer and all this nonsense. And then I was

525
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:00,940
thinking about it, like, I already knew this already, but it's like, what does the

526
00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:04,060
Bible have to say about hurting animals for entertainment? And there's a very actually strict.

527
00:31:04,500 --> 00:31:07,660
You know, it's a harder claim to, as, you know, to make a claim that

528
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:10,820
the Bible says you have to be vegan. It doesn't say that, but it's very

529
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:14,180
much encouraged is what we'll say. Yeah,

530
00:31:14,340 --> 00:31:18,060
but with. There's no tolerance whatsoever for hurting animals for Entertainment. Like Genesis

531
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,620
49, 6, it says, May I never join their meetings,

532
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,620
man. Never join their councils. For they, they murdered men and they crippled oxen

533
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:29,740
just for sport. And so it's this idea that like, you know, it's. God very

534
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,180
much condemns the idea of hurting animals just for the sake of entertainment. Right.

535
00:31:33,660 --> 00:31:36,460
So that's sort of something that we realized too is that our ministry is a

536
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,100
unique place to sort of advocate against rodeos because we have a lot of that

537
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:44,300
Christian culture surrounding it. Yeah, I didn't know that. I know having Jody and

538
00:31:44,620 --> 00:31:48,340
Steve Hindy from Jody Ridicard's team, Hindy from Shark.

539
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:52,180
On the podcast that they were talking about, a lot of the pushback

540
00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:56,860
they're getting in Illinois is like ethnic

541
00:31:57,360 --> 00:32:01,100
groups that are. But I didn't realize there was like prayers being in

542
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:05,220
the beginning of rodeos. Like, I didn't. Is that part of like ethnic thing

543
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:08,740
or is it like a. Because it's born out of the south, maybe for the

544
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:12,940
Professional bull riding. I have a theory. I think it's. It's mostly, you know,

545
00:32:13,440 --> 00:32:16,180
like, then you see this a lot, actually, with Christianity and as, you know,

546
00:32:16,680 --> 00:32:20,020
with the dominion argument. I think when people that they're doing something wrong, they have

547
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,940
to justify it somehow. Yeah. The Bible becomes sort of an easy thing to justify

548
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:26,660
it with. And then I think it's also. This is not. I don't mean to

549
00:32:27,160 --> 00:32:29,260
get political, of course. I'm just to put it out there. I'm, like, sort of

550
00:32:29,760 --> 00:32:33,080
a political moderate. I could, you know, go ahead. You can say whatever you want,

551
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,800
but. I think a lot of rodeo culture is sort of steeped in that conservativism,

552
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:41,040
and. Oh, yeah, conservativism is that, like,

553
00:32:41,540 --> 00:32:45,200
I. I respect authority. And so what is more authoritative

554
00:32:45,700 --> 00:32:48,360
than, hey, you know, God in the sky is telling me that this is okay?

555
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,600
And there's that idea, because a lot of them also begin with,

556
00:32:52,100 --> 00:32:56,040
like, patriotic, like, oh, hey, here's the flag. And, you know, we. We. America first.

557
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:59,400
All this other stuff. And then do they sing the national anthem before?

558
00:32:59,970 --> 00:33:03,090
Yeah. Rodeo events, too? Oh, yeah. And then they make, like,

559
00:33:03,590 --> 00:33:06,610
a flag spectacle and stuff like this. Yeah. Interesting.

560
00:33:07,110 --> 00:33:09,890
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty common. It's that sort of, like. I think it appeals to

561
00:33:10,390 --> 00:33:13,690
that sort of nationalism that, like, conservative nationalism, because that's really what it is,

562
00:33:14,190 --> 00:33:16,169
too. A lot of the people that go to that have this, like, you know,

563
00:33:16,669 --> 00:33:18,810
like, when we're outside of a lot of the rodeo protest, it's like, you know,

564
00:33:19,310 --> 00:33:22,930
you'll see a lot of conservative signs. Oh, yeah. You see.

565
00:33:23,430 --> 00:33:26,570
Yeah, you see a lot of that. Like, that's not. It's. It's different. It's more.

566
00:33:27,070 --> 00:33:29,490
They see it as a sport, I would say, you know, the kind of,

567
00:33:29,990 --> 00:33:33,490
like, horse racing is a sport in a different way. They see it. They call

568
00:33:33,990 --> 00:33:37,290
it that. But the circus wasn't a sport. They weren't doing

569
00:33:37,790 --> 00:33:40,690
a prayer before the circus. They weren't doing the national anthem before the circus.

570
00:33:41,190 --> 00:33:43,850
It was a show. So it's. It's. It is a little different when you,

571
00:33:44,410 --> 00:33:47,050
you know, frame it in that way. Yeah. And we. We actually had a sign.

572
00:33:47,550 --> 00:33:50,770
It was funny because we collaborated with Humane Action Pennsylvania, on a

573
00:33:51,270 --> 00:33:54,420
billboard outside of the arena. And I was like, yeah, I think we should have,

574
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:58,820
like, an, like, a Christian message. Like, we should say something like. Like Proverbs 12:10.

575
00:33:59,140 --> 00:34:02,580
Yeah. The wicked or cruel animals and, like, have that. And then they sort of,

576
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:04,420
like, were like, I don't know if we want to do that. And Then I

577
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:07,860
was like, most of that rodeo stuff is steeped in Christian culture. And then they

578
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:11,940
were like, yeah, yeah. You'Re in a unique position, you know, as your.

579
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,780
Your organization to, you know, match them on that level.

580
00:34:16,340 --> 00:34:20,520
But go ahead. No, it's good. Yeah. And. And, yeah, thank you. And the.

581
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,120
Yeah. And then the biblical aspect, too, it was actually funny because we did that

582
00:34:23,620 --> 00:34:27,040
protest outside of Pittsburgh, the stadium, and we had these

583
00:34:27,540 --> 00:34:30,240
signs, and it said, like, Genesis 49, 6, God hates bull riding. And then we

584
00:34:30,740 --> 00:34:34,080
had another one that says Proverbs 12:10, like, God hates animal cruelty.

585
00:34:34,580 --> 00:34:37,200
And we were shouting that stuff. And it was really funny because we got actually

586
00:34:37,700 --> 00:34:39,240
a lot of good responses. Like, a lot of people came up to us and

587
00:34:39,740 --> 00:34:41,880
they were like, wait, like, God doesn't like bull riding? And like, oh, well,

588
00:34:42,380 --> 00:34:44,320
like God thinks that this is animal cruelty. And so we got a lot of

589
00:34:44,820 --> 00:34:47,960
really good response out of that. We had this. It's a tough crowd,

590
00:34:48,460 --> 00:34:52,720
the people going into these rodeos. Like, you know, we've done protests

591
00:34:53,220 --> 00:34:56,400
over the years at rodeos, bull riding, and it is a tough crowd going in.

592
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:59,560
They do not want to see protesters. They're.

593
00:35:00,060 --> 00:35:03,280
It's a tough crowd, let me say. Let me put it that way. So you

594
00:35:03,780 --> 00:35:07,440
had people going in, coming and interacting with the things you were saying.

595
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,280
Yeah, actually, we had a lot of. We have one. It was actually really interesting.

596
00:35:10,780 --> 00:35:14,000
We had a couple. They were Catholic, and then they were like, yeah, we're Catholic.

597
00:35:14,500 --> 00:35:16,480
And like, we saw your signs, and we didn't realize that, like, bull riding was

598
00:35:16,980 --> 00:35:18,940
animal cruelty. And so we got. It's sort of like got a foot in the

599
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:22,540
door with them, which. Yeah, yeah, because you're kind of meeting them at the.

600
00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:26,380
At where they're at, in. In that way. Right. You know, in.

601
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,460
In a. In a religious type of way, which. Which doesn't happen in.

602
00:35:30,940 --> 00:35:34,260
In activism, typically. That's really interesting.

603
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:37,340
I didn't know that. Yeah. And it's. It's sort of like. And. And if you

604
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:41,340
guys going to the protest tonight, too, I can supply you with some. Some counterpoints

605
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,510
as well, too. Or, you know, things that you could say. Definitely. Because I think

606
00:35:45,010 --> 00:35:48,270
what happens to a lot of what those conservative crowds is that they hear like,

607
00:35:48,770 --> 00:35:50,910
oh, you know, this is animal cruelty. They don't care. You know, they're just like,

608
00:35:51,410 --> 00:35:53,590
that's not really a value of mine. But if you tell them God is telling

609
00:35:54,090 --> 00:35:56,950
them it's animal cruelty, they're like. Wait a minute, Wait a minute. Right.

610
00:35:57,510 --> 00:36:00,470
Because that's their argument. And. And then Also,

611
00:36:00,970 --> 00:36:04,310
I'd like to point out, too, because when you. I always

612
00:36:04,810 --> 00:36:07,870
like to point out when you. When you're protesting, it's not always the people going

613
00:36:08,370 --> 00:36:11,390
in. We're not always going to reach them. So maybe we. But it is the

614
00:36:11,890 --> 00:36:15,030
people driving by. So that's important too, because we want to.

615
00:36:15,190 --> 00:36:18,630
Those are the constituents, right? So when we're doing these fights,

616
00:36:19,130 --> 00:36:21,430
we want to educate them, let them know something wrong is going on here,

617
00:36:21,930 --> 00:36:25,630
because they would be going. Driving by these arenas, right? They're driving by

618
00:36:26,130 --> 00:36:29,550
these arenas. They're going out to dinner. It's December, you know, they're having a Christmas

619
00:36:30,050 --> 00:36:32,950
party or whatever. They have no idea what's going on in there. But if protesters

620
00:36:33,450 --> 00:36:36,710
are there, then they're like, oh, something's wrong here, you know,

621
00:36:37,210 --> 00:36:40,330
and then it'll at least brings up their interest. So if they happen to be.

622
00:36:40,490 --> 00:36:43,450
And I. I saw this when I was watching the.

623
00:36:44,650 --> 00:36:47,930
The. It was at the city meeting in. In Worcester.

624
00:36:48,330 --> 00:36:51,850
Oh, yeah. Um, so a man got up at the podium and

625
00:36:52,350 --> 00:36:55,490
he was. I don't think he was with you guys. He was talking about the

626
00:36:55,990 --> 00:36:59,730
drones and taxes. And then he said, the woman

627
00:37:00,230 --> 00:37:03,370
before him spoke. And I could be wrong here, but I hope I'm not.

628
00:37:03,690 --> 00:37:07,730
But the woman before him spoke about the. The bull riding

629
00:37:08,230 --> 00:37:11,330
ban or the tools. And he. So this man got up and spoke about.

630
00:37:11,830 --> 00:37:15,570
And then he said, and I agree with the woman before me that we should

631
00:37:16,070 --> 00:37:18,850
not have, you know, this kind of animal cruelty in our. In our city.

632
00:37:19,010 --> 00:37:22,690
And I said, I hope. I was hoping. I'm like, that he wasn't with us.

633
00:37:23,410 --> 00:37:27,530
And that's. That's awesome. I'm glad to hear that because I

634
00:37:28,030 --> 00:37:31,490
know I just bring this on you here, but. But I was like, wow,

635
00:37:31,990 --> 00:37:34,600
that's so great. And Patrick and I were watching and I said, that is so

636
00:37:35,100 --> 00:37:37,800
awesome. Like, that guy, I don't think he was with us. And it's so nice

637
00:37:38,300 --> 00:37:41,960
that we educated that one person. So you're always educating, no matter what

638
00:37:42,460 --> 00:37:45,680
you're doing in the process. And I think we get so bogged

639
00:37:46,180 --> 00:37:49,959
down as activists, you know, in what we're doing and

640
00:37:50,459 --> 00:37:53,720
who we're trying to reach. And we have to remember we're always reaching everybody all

641
00:37:54,220 --> 00:37:57,360
the time. We have the potential. So I just wanted to talk about that because

642
00:37:57,860 --> 00:38:01,150
that was really, really amazing. And he, you know, he probably didn't even

643
00:38:01,310 --> 00:38:04,670
know about that until he was listening to other people speak.

644
00:38:05,150 --> 00:38:07,630
So. And he jumped in on it, and that was. That was really great.

645
00:38:08,130 --> 00:38:11,030
And I hope everyone really Took a lot of pleasure in seeing that that are

646
00:38:11,530 --> 00:38:14,430
in this fight in, in Worcester. And the funny thing about that too is,

647
00:38:14,930 --> 00:38:16,990
which, you know, it was awesome to hear that, but it was also even funnier

648
00:38:17,490 --> 00:38:20,750
because the woman that first came out actually wasn't even with us either. Really?

649
00:38:20,910 --> 00:38:23,910
Yeah. We didn't even know who she was because there was a couple like now,

650
00:38:24,410 --> 00:38:26,790
not to say that what she said was bad because it was very like emotionally

651
00:38:27,290 --> 00:38:29,990
provocative, but there was a couple errors in there because I sort of sweating because

652
00:38:30,490 --> 00:38:32,410
I was like, oh God, please don't say anything stupid. You know, like. Yeah,

653
00:38:32,910 --> 00:38:35,810
I know. Because it's like, you know, that's the first thing the rodeo industry does

654
00:38:36,310 --> 00:38:39,210
is they're like, oh, these people don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. And you

655
00:38:39,710 --> 00:38:41,410
know, you really have to make sure that like what you're saying because like she

656
00:38:41,910 --> 00:38:45,490
talked about like how, you know, like they electric prod their testicles

657
00:38:45,990 --> 00:38:47,850
and all this other stuff and, and I was like, no, not. I did,

658
00:38:48,350 --> 00:38:51,250
I did. We caught that one. We were like, I don't think that happens,

659
00:38:51,750 --> 00:38:54,930
but. Right. Yeah, yeah. And you always want to be accurate with the things

660
00:38:55,430 --> 00:38:57,810
you say and like some of that emotional, provocative stuff. That's the first thing that

661
00:38:58,310 --> 00:39:01,260
the. Now, not that it's probably totally untrue, there probably is some sort of basis

662
00:39:01,760 --> 00:39:04,740
in it, but that's not like a standard practice. Right. Yeah,

663
00:39:04,820 --> 00:39:08,980
it's really important to stick to the script and you know, the, the whoever's involved

664
00:39:09,540 --> 00:39:12,900
in, you know, leading the charge on these, you know,

665
00:39:12,980 --> 00:39:16,900
when you're a person joining, stick to the script and trust

666
00:39:16,980 --> 00:39:20,220
in the people that are at the top of this because

667
00:39:20,720 --> 00:39:24,590
they are the ones, you know, that are working really, really hard. Like we

668
00:39:25,090 --> 00:39:28,710
were, you know, we've worked on different new horse racing proposals

669
00:39:29,210 --> 00:39:32,390
in Massachusetts and it's like, you know, stick to those talking points

670
00:39:32,890 --> 00:39:35,830
and don't veer off because that's when the industry is going to try to get

671
00:39:36,330 --> 00:39:39,190
you. And, and if you have a problem with the people at the top,

672
00:39:39,690 --> 00:39:42,830
go talk to them because we're all human. Just throw that out there too while

673
00:39:43,330 --> 00:39:46,070
I'm saying it. But I'm so glad you said that too because that's like,

674
00:39:46,570 --> 00:39:49,790
that was something I got really frustrated with. And Karen, Karen from

675
00:39:50,290 --> 00:39:53,450
PCA knows like me and her have done, we've like really made sure to get

676
00:39:53,950 --> 00:39:55,930
all of our talking points on the same page. And there was this one woman,

677
00:39:56,490 --> 00:39:59,730
you know, I really appreciate her speaking out, but she had like a comat in

678
00:40:00,230 --> 00:40:02,490
the in the. Not to throw her under the bus because this could happen sort

679
00:40:02,990 --> 00:40:05,170
of to anybody. But I think she sort of get the talking points because she

680
00:40:05,670 --> 00:40:08,250
was like, oh, well, you know, if you ban the tools, they're just going to

681
00:40:08,750 --> 00:40:11,410
come up with another tool. And I was like, oh, yeah, I. Heard that one,

682
00:40:11,910 --> 00:40:15,810
too. It's like, I know. Oh, you're killing me. I think sometimes people

683
00:40:16,310 --> 00:40:18,520
think you have to like, say,

684
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,560
was she trying to say, like, if, if. I don't

685
00:40:24,060 --> 00:40:26,840
know. I think she was saying like, oh, well, if you ban the electric prod,

686
00:40:27,340 --> 00:40:29,760
you'll. They'll just use like a baseball bat. It's like, well, no, the way the

687
00:40:30,260 --> 00:40:32,840
ordinance are usually written is like, you can't use an electric product flank strap or

688
00:40:33,340 --> 00:40:36,920
any other similar device that could. Cause, you know, it's sort of an extension and.

689
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,880
Right. But when she said that, it made us look like idiots because then it's

690
00:40:40,380 --> 00:40:43,080
like, oh, well, like, you know, we're, we're, you know, they're just going to use

691
00:40:43,580 --> 00:40:45,760
a baseball bat. Like, we didn't think of that, you know. Right. Or like,

692
00:40:46,260 --> 00:40:49,560
why bother? Like, what are. You know, And I think, I think, I think

693
00:40:50,060 --> 00:40:53,600
a lot of people do feel like that, you know, like, oh, you know,

694
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,160
a lot of us. And, and I think that's another reason why

695
00:40:57,660 --> 00:41:01,360
I'm doing. I do this podcast to try to get everybody on the positive

696
00:41:01,860 --> 00:41:05,520
end of things and not always be dragged down on the negative. Because I think,

697
00:41:06,020 --> 00:41:09,480
you know, like, like we were saying earlier that Pittsburgh had a

698
00:41:09,980 --> 00:41:13,140
ban and then something slipped through on the state level, you know, but it doesn't

699
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:17,380
mean you give up. And look what it did to you. You decided,

700
00:41:17,620 --> 00:41:20,660
I'm taking this on across the country now because,

701
00:41:20,980 --> 00:41:24,260
you know, I'm going to help everybody do this. And so, you know, take.

702
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,740
You took it as an opportunity instead of saying, oh, you know, this sucks.

703
00:41:28,240 --> 00:41:31,940
And, and we're always, always telling people, I really believe

704
00:41:32,340 --> 00:41:35,940
in the power of the people and constituents

705
00:41:36,180 --> 00:41:39,860
really making change. And I really do believe it. I love going to the Capitol

706
00:41:40,360 --> 00:41:43,990
here in New York. I love it, love it, love it. And even

707
00:41:44,490 --> 00:41:48,070
if we lose, I'm still so glad I was there because somebody was there

708
00:41:48,570 --> 00:41:51,990
speaking for the animals. Because if nobody's there speaking

709
00:41:52,490 --> 00:41:55,790
for the animals, if we're not doing it. So it's so important. So anyway,

710
00:41:56,510 --> 00:41:59,630
absolutely. So, yes, sticking to scripts,

711
00:42:00,350 --> 00:42:04,550
not being negative, it's really, really hard to stay, to stay positive.

712
00:42:05,050 --> 00:42:08,980
But that's why, you know, you have those support, those supports around you.

713
00:42:09,860 --> 00:42:13,340
Right. And I think also The. And what you said was. Was perfect,

714
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:16,060
too. It's like, you know, power of the people. And then also, I think another

715
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:19,060
thing that I think vegans, they tend to do this thing where they're like,

716
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:21,060
you know what? I'm going to try to reach people through what I do.

717
00:42:21,380 --> 00:42:25,100
But, you know, there's studies that have been done that shows that as legislation

718
00:42:25,600 --> 00:42:28,340
moves, opinions start to change. And so I think a lot of times we put

719
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:31,740
that sort of, for lack of a better term, cart before the horse. And we

720
00:42:32,240 --> 00:42:34,180
think like, oh, well, you know, we'll educate people and then the laws will change.

721
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:36,880
But it's kind of a. It's kind of a feedback where it's like, you need

722
00:42:37,380 --> 00:42:40,320
to change the laws and that's what changes people's minds. And it's like, I'm not

723
00:42:40,820 --> 00:42:42,640
one. And I think this might be because of the Bible. I'm not one to

724
00:42:43,140 --> 00:42:46,480
be very positive about human nature. You know, it's like, I think that. I think

725
00:42:46,980 --> 00:42:49,960
it's. A lot of animal activists are not exactly positive.

726
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:54,160
Right. My wife and I always say it's like, you know, we're nurses, we're animal

727
00:42:54,660 --> 00:42:57,320
activists, and we're Christians. It's like, you're bound to be negative about human nature.

728
00:42:57,820 --> 00:43:01,040
There's just no. Yeah. And some education on that.

729
00:43:01,540 --> 00:43:04,080
Actually. The Bible says in Genesis 8, 20, it says the heart of man is

730
00:43:04,580 --> 00:43:08,330
evil from his youth. And right after that actually is when God first

731
00:43:08,830 --> 00:43:12,850
allows meat consumption. And so that's fun little fact is that it's.

732
00:43:13,010 --> 00:43:16,450
Meat eating is associated with the heart of man's evil.

733
00:43:16,950 --> 00:43:19,850
And yeah, when I think about that, too, it's like, you know, an example I

734
00:43:20,350 --> 00:43:23,810
always think of is, would people, like, even though there was abolitionists

735
00:43:24,310 --> 00:43:26,970
throughout the centuries that were like, hey, you know, stop. Stop enslaving people. Do you

736
00:43:27,470 --> 00:43:29,850
think anybody would have listened if there wasn't a law against it or if they

737
00:43:30,350 --> 00:43:32,090
had some sort of fear of going to jail for it? You know, there would

738
00:43:32,590 --> 00:43:35,770
still be. There's still slave owners. Even though it's illegal. I mean, yeah, you can't

739
00:43:36,270 --> 00:43:39,210
say, like, just stop that. It's bad. Like, that's, that's what we do as vegans,

740
00:43:39,710 --> 00:43:43,330
right? We're like, stop eating animals. It's bad. It's bad. You know, animals are

741
00:43:43,830 --> 00:43:47,730
suffering. And, you know, and then people will come back, they'll just say, you know,

742
00:43:48,230 --> 00:43:50,010
no, I'm going to do what I want to do. Or they'll say, oh,

743
00:43:50,510 --> 00:43:54,210
well, we can make it better. Right? You know, so there's Always that argument.

744
00:43:54,710 --> 00:43:57,890
So. Yeah, but if you ban it, then they can't do it, right?

745
00:43:58,450 --> 00:44:01,590
That's right. And, and I think that's important. Like, we've,

746
00:44:02,090 --> 00:44:05,710
after we had a New York state ban on the retail

747
00:44:06,210 --> 00:44:08,790
sales of dogs, cats and rabbits here in New York.

748
00:44:09,270 --> 00:44:12,310
And it was, it's really interesting. We go to the park and we

749
00:44:12,810 --> 00:44:15,989
have our dog with us and we talk to other dog people and we'll tell

750
00:44:16,489 --> 00:44:18,790
them about that. The, you know, when the band was just going through, we told

751
00:44:19,290 --> 00:44:22,430
them about it and they had no idea. And then, you know, we said,

752
00:44:22,930 --> 00:44:26,230
but also calling up a breeder or going online for a breeder,

753
00:44:26,730 --> 00:44:30,230
that's bad too. Like, that's not banned, but it's the same as those pet stores.

754
00:44:30,730 --> 00:44:34,230
So it was an educate people from the awareness of that law, you know,

755
00:44:34,730 --> 00:44:38,030
and, and people really, they're, you know, so we actually interact with as many people

756
00:44:38,530 --> 00:44:42,190
as we can on that. It provides an opportunity. Yeah. And we

757
00:44:42,690 --> 00:44:45,470
can talk about. And you know, Patrick's always wearing in the summertime one of the.

758
00:44:45,970 --> 00:44:49,350
He's got a lot of the shirts from the. The Puppy Mill pipeline

759
00:44:49,850 --> 00:44:52,510
shirts. So a lot of people will talk about that. So then we're like,

760
00:44:52,590 --> 00:44:55,950
oh, this is an opportunity because you probably got your dog from a breeder.

761
00:44:56,450 --> 00:44:59,550
So let's talk about you not doing that next time, you know. Absolutely. So it's

762
00:45:00,050 --> 00:45:03,330
just a way to talk. And we did that too. Our dog first, Ripley,

763
00:45:03,830 --> 00:45:05,450
came from a breeder, actually. And then we tell people now we're like, we didn't

764
00:45:05,950 --> 00:45:08,770
know any better. Sorry. We got our second dog from a rescue.

765
00:45:09,270 --> 00:45:12,730
So. Yeah, yeah, I, I bought a dog from a pet store way before I

766
00:45:13,230 --> 00:45:16,210
was vegetarian, you know, and vegan. We, we had no idea. We actually thought we

767
00:45:16,710 --> 00:45:19,090
were helping that dog. Cause he was there for so long and his price was

768
00:45:19,590 --> 00:45:23,130
reduced and he was really sick and we thought we were doing the right thing.

769
00:45:23,630 --> 00:45:27,770
And then vegetarian, vegan, oh, we didn't do the right thing.

770
00:45:28,270 --> 00:45:31,580
You know, and we've really done believed we did. At the time, you know,

771
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:34,820
it wasn't just like, you know, we're just going to a pet store to buy

772
00:45:35,320 --> 00:45:38,460
that. We're. We were just went in the mall and went to the pet store

773
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:41,860
and then we were looking and we saw this poor dog and we knew he

774
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:45,380
had problems and they were trying to get rid of them and, you know,

775
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:47,980
so we really did think we were doing the right thing. And then we didn't.

776
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:51,260
And then, you know, we bought animals before that too, and we didn't know.

777
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:55,580
So it's what you do now that matters. Right? You know any better? And that's.

778
00:45:56,080 --> 00:45:58,700
Yeah, we're all in the. We all come from the same place, you know,

779
00:45:59,100 --> 00:46:02,340
so how could people get involved that are listening and

780
00:46:02,840 --> 00:46:06,100
they're saying, you know, I want to do this. I see professional bull riders,

781
00:46:06,600 --> 00:46:10,420
ppr coming through my town. I don't want this. What do I do? Sure.

782
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:14,539
Yeah, we did it with Albany. We contacted you, but go ahead. That's right.

783
00:46:14,620 --> 00:46:17,980
That's right. Yeah. Yep. And, And, And. And we've been friends ever since.

784
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,700
Yeah. Yes, that's right. That's how you make friends. You network throughout the country and

785
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:24,820
make friends, too, because we all need each other and lift each other up and

786
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:28,570
support each other. It's so true. Yeah. And it's like, I saw this one meme,

787
00:46:29,070 --> 00:46:32,450
actually. It's so true. It's like people bond over things they like, but people

788
00:46:32,950 --> 00:46:35,650
bond harder over things they don't like. That's right.

789
00:46:36,690 --> 00:46:40,250
We're right. And that's. That gives us a little bit of faith in humanity.

790
00:46:40,750 --> 00:46:44,170
The more vegan animal people around you and you

791
00:46:44,670 --> 00:46:47,850
surround yourself with, the more. That's how you extract

792
00:46:48,350 --> 00:46:51,770
that positive energy and you get it from each other instead of being negative all

793
00:46:52,270 --> 00:46:55,390
the time. Like, we have friends that get together and they. We. We try not

794
00:46:55,890 --> 00:46:58,350
to talk about animal issues at all when we get together. Was like, okay,

795
00:46:58,850 --> 00:47:01,910
let's try not to. You know, it's not a hard and fast rule, but we

796
00:47:02,410 --> 00:47:05,510
don't want to. Like, the mood starts going down, you know,

797
00:47:05,750 --> 00:47:09,190
and then we're like, okay, let's just. Let's find ways to just like,

798
00:47:09,690 --> 00:47:13,310
re. Energize ourselves. But anyway, so we're in. So somebody

799
00:47:13,810 --> 00:47:17,710
is in, you know, whatever city and they're hearing this and they're

800
00:47:18,210 --> 00:47:21,540
like, I. I can do this, so. Or I want to do this, so how

801
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:24,540
do. So how would they do that? They would contact you? First thing is probably

802
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:28,540
get in contact with me, which is I can be reached at info christiananimal

803
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:31,540
rights dot com. Yep. Everything will be in the show notes, too. So people have

804
00:47:32,040 --> 00:47:35,180
that, too. Yeah, Go ahead, ravel it all off here. But yeah, yeah,

805
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,620
and I'm also on Facebook, too. You can get in contact with me that way.

806
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:42,620
And then also I think that once you get in contact

807
00:47:43,120 --> 00:47:44,900
with me too, the first thing that I like to do is try to get

808
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:48,120
in touch with other constituents. Because, believe it or not, it doesn't really take much.

809
00:47:48,620 --> 00:47:50,720
And you know this, too. It really doesn't take much. To get the attention of

810
00:47:51,220 --> 00:47:54,680
the city council that you're in. Like, right. Like, I, I typically,

811
00:47:55,180 --> 00:47:57,560
it's like, at least five will do it. But I even had one time,

812
00:47:58,060 --> 00:48:01,240
like, I was St. Louis, I had one constituent say,

813
00:48:01,740 --> 00:48:03,560
hey, I don't like bull riding, and I think it should be out of St.

814
00:48:04,060 --> 00:48:07,640
Louis. And so I messaged a city council member and cc'd him

815
00:48:08,140 --> 00:48:10,240
on it. And she got back to me the next day and she was like,

816
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:13,040
you know, she's like, let's set up a Zoom meeting. I met with her,

817
00:48:13,540 --> 00:48:16,780
she said, tell me what's wrong, honey? And that's all it took, was one person.

818
00:48:17,020 --> 00:48:20,380
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. It doesn't usually work out like that, but,

819
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:24,020
you know, now, like, Worcester, I always say they. They're like rock stars up there,

820
00:48:24,520 --> 00:48:27,500
too, because, like, you know, usually, like, when it came to,

821
00:48:27,980 --> 00:48:31,460
like, Columbus, Ohio, we're working on something, like, with that. And we

822
00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:34,340
had, like, 24 constituents with that. That was the most ever. And then Worcester,

823
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,500
that was like, 50 people. I was like, wow, that's how many in Worcester?

824
00:48:37,820 --> 00:48:41,330
Like, 50. Wow. Wow. And they keep coming, too. Like,

825
00:48:41,830 --> 00:48:44,930
Karen keeps finding these people out of the. Yeah,

826
00:48:45,430 --> 00:48:48,450
she's pretty relentless. That's good. Oh, yeah, I love it. Yeah. I can't speak enough

827
00:48:48,950 --> 00:48:51,930
good about her, too, because she's like, I. I always do good. Like, if you

828
00:48:52,430 --> 00:48:54,490
can get me in the door, I can do a presentation and kind of educate

829
00:48:54,990 --> 00:48:57,250
people, but the problem is getting in the door. And Karen's like, here, here's 50

830
00:48:57,750 --> 00:49:01,170
doors for you. Yeah, that's right. That's. That's great. Yeah.

831
00:49:01,490 --> 00:49:04,290
And that's what we're. We're doing here in Albany. We're finding people that live in

832
00:49:04,790 --> 00:49:08,690
the city, so we're contacting them. And, you know, we'll probably be doing more this

833
00:49:09,190 --> 00:49:12,690
in January because it's like, December, everyone's busy.

834
00:49:13,190 --> 00:49:15,730
We don't want to, you know, we want to get people when they're fresh,

835
00:49:16,230 --> 00:49:19,570
after the holidays and be like, okay, here's what we're

836
00:49:20,070 --> 00:49:22,570
going to do. Here's our plan. And, you know, but it take. Gives us some

837
00:49:23,070 --> 00:49:26,650
time to gather, so we're not, like, doing this too quick, seeing if there's seats

838
00:49:27,150 --> 00:49:30,810
that are changing over, because there could be newly elected city council members

839
00:49:31,310 --> 00:49:33,970
being sworn in in January. So there's a lot of that stuff to think about.

840
00:49:34,470 --> 00:49:37,660
And that's what we're all here for, to help, too, people that

841
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:40,620
want to do this. That's what I was thinking, too, is probably a new Council's

842
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:44,060
coming in anyways. Yeah, it's funny, too. Like, I've noticed this, like,

843
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,980
November, December, I've reached out to city council members, and they don't even answer.

844
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:49,140
Like, when it comes to, like, the end of the month, they're just like,

845
00:49:49,640 --> 00:49:52,740
I'm out of here. Right. Yeah, actually there's. One of

846
00:49:53,240 --> 00:49:56,180
our state reps is having a town hall on 18 December,

847
00:49:56,580 --> 00:50:00,540
a state Rep. And I'm going, usually they're like, gone for

848
00:50:01,040 --> 00:50:04,160
the whole month of December. So I was actually surprised about that,

849
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:08,040
but. But yeah, it's either they're at the end of their term or they're just

850
00:50:08,540 --> 00:50:11,440
checked out for the holidays. So, you know, you never know. Right.

851
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:15,680
So timing can be a lot, I think, you know,

852
00:50:16,180 --> 00:50:19,400
anyway, you know, and also giving yourself time and. And everything

853
00:50:19,900 --> 00:50:23,080
has to be well planned. And I think that's something that people need to remember,

854
00:50:23,580 --> 00:50:26,960
too, is don't just kind of reach out on a whim and then,

855
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:31,000
you know, not planned, not. Don't have your email thought out or have a sample

856
00:50:31,500 --> 00:50:35,120
email, like, from you and your group. And then, you know, get disappointed

857
00:50:35,620 --> 00:50:39,600
because you didn't get an answer. And you have to keep contacting your

858
00:50:40,100 --> 00:50:43,320
representatives, whether they're at the low level or higher state level,

859
00:50:43,820 --> 00:50:47,000
or just keep contacting, contacting, contacting until you get something back.

860
00:50:47,500 --> 00:50:49,800
I think it's really important. They do care,

861
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:53,800
you know, and it's their job to care about what you have to say.

862
00:50:54,610 --> 00:50:57,410
Yeah. Persistence is key. It's like anything. It's just. Yeah. If you. If you don't

863
00:50:57,910 --> 00:51:01,330
hear back, just keep sending it every week or every month. That's what, that's what

864
00:51:01,830 --> 00:51:03,450
I always do. I just keep going until I get a response. There's one,

865
00:51:03,950 --> 00:51:06,970
actually, there's one woman in Pittsburgh. I haven't heard anything from her in nine months.

866
00:51:07,470 --> 00:51:09,330
I just keep sending her an email every month. There you go.

867
00:51:11,490 --> 00:51:14,530
Yeah, that's. And just keep doing it and doing it and doing it. And then

868
00:51:15,030 --> 00:51:19,170
eventually they're going to do, you know, eventually they're going to answer. Eventually they'll,

869
00:51:19,250 --> 00:51:21,730
you know, even if you got to know, then you can move on to somebody

870
00:51:22,230 --> 00:51:26,110
else, you know. Exactly. It's like, just let me know. Yeah. Yeah. I just

871
00:51:26,610 --> 00:51:28,430
started putting out an email. I'm like, by the way, it's okay if the answer

872
00:51:28,930 --> 00:51:32,510
is no. Yeah. But let's talk about this. And getting meetings is important,

873
00:51:33,010 --> 00:51:36,390
too. And now how important is it to go to your city council meetings?

874
00:51:36,890 --> 00:51:40,710
Should we encourage people to. And you can get probably most of Them are

875
00:51:40,790 --> 00:51:44,110
on zoom or something, so you don't have to leave the house, but start viewing

876
00:51:44,610 --> 00:51:47,830
the meeting, seeing how it goes, seeing the lay of the land. Is that important?

877
00:51:47,990 --> 00:51:50,830
Definitely, yeah. And I noticed too, like, with a lot of city councils now,

878
00:51:51,330 --> 00:51:54,630
one thing I've noticed too, is, like, with different city councils, cities operate differently.

879
00:51:55,130 --> 00:51:57,630
Like, even though they may all have city councils and things like that, they.

880
00:51:58,130 --> 00:52:00,430
The way that they introduce things and the way that they function is very different

881
00:52:00,930 --> 00:52:04,430
from each other. And it's never uniformly the same. Like the example I gave of

882
00:52:04,930 --> 00:52:07,470
Worcester, like, in New York City, we got an ordinance and then it was just

883
00:52:07,970 --> 00:52:10,830
introduced. Whereas, like, the council had to actually have a hearing on whether they should

884
00:52:11,330 --> 00:52:13,830
introduce the law. And so it's just little differences like that that aren't the same.

885
00:52:14,330 --> 00:52:17,910
But typically, one thing city councils will do is they'll say, like, either the first

886
00:52:18,410 --> 00:52:21,630
five minutes or the end five minutes of a meeting, they'll say, does anybody want

887
00:52:22,130 --> 00:52:24,670
to bring something to our attention at this city council meeting? And that's what we

888
00:52:25,170 --> 00:52:27,790
did at Columbus, actually. We were like, hey, there's this issue with rodeos. And then

889
00:52:28,290 --> 00:52:30,630
there was a council member that was willing to take it up. That's something I

890
00:52:31,130 --> 00:52:33,630
think that is really important too, is that, like, you know, attending the city council

891
00:52:34,130 --> 00:52:36,830
meetings and saying when, how they do things, and really look at, like, okay,

892
00:52:37,330 --> 00:52:39,590
if they're doing the first five minutes, if we can get five people there that

893
00:52:40,090 --> 00:52:42,190
can speak for one minute about the dangers of rodeos, you have all of their

894
00:52:42,690 --> 00:52:46,030
attentions. Right. And when people have to speak, they can bring

895
00:52:46,530 --> 00:52:49,750
a written statement. Right? And they can read it. Oh, yeah, yeah. We can actually

896
00:52:50,250 --> 00:52:52,990
write it for you, too. Yeah, that's good. That's good to know, because I know

897
00:52:53,490 --> 00:52:55,710
a lot of people are really nervous to speak or they're nervous to write it,

898
00:52:56,030 --> 00:52:59,830
but you don't have to memorize it. You can read something. You know, I think

899
00:53:00,330 --> 00:53:03,950
that's really important for people to know because it is. You know, I love

900
00:53:04,450 --> 00:53:07,070
it. I love going. You know, I love going to the Capitol. I love going

901
00:53:07,150 --> 00:53:10,190
wherever and talking to people and. But I

902
00:53:10,690 --> 00:53:14,510
know for some people it's. It's difficult. So, like, what we did in Albany

903
00:53:14,740 --> 00:53:18,340
is we would take people with us. So there's like one speaker.

904
00:53:18,840 --> 00:53:21,820
We'd split up. Sometimes we have one speaker going to offices. I know it's a

905
00:53:22,320 --> 00:53:25,260
little different. You know, this is state level, but. And then have like, five or

906
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:29,460
six people behind us. So this way they know, like, there's constituents

907
00:53:29,960 --> 00:53:33,220
standing behind us. You know, and then one person speaking. And then by the.

908
00:53:33,720 --> 00:53:36,580
I found by like the maybe seventh or eighth,

909
00:53:36,820 --> 00:53:39,660
a couple of the people behind me start speaking up a little bit because they

910
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:43,140
got the confidence, you know, to do that. So it's like,

911
00:53:43,380 --> 00:53:46,420
you know, and join these groups and join these zooms and,

912
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:50,180
you know, whenever you guys have any kind of updates, you know,

913
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:54,060
on your social media channels or something, people should definitely go look

914
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:57,660
and be empowered by all of that, by what's going on. I know Karen does

915
00:53:58,160 --> 00:54:01,340
for Wooster, she does a lot of, like, videos on her page. It's positive change.

916
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,060
Positive change for animals. Positive change for animals. And she does updates there. So she'll

917
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:08,180
kind of update everyone. This is how it went. And another thing too that I

918
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:12,270
think is really important too is that I. We started doing Pittsburgh

919
00:54:12,770 --> 00:54:15,870
here. We're always sort of thinking outside the box about what

920
00:54:16,370 --> 00:54:20,190
we can do as far as protests. And I think in

921
00:54:20,690 --> 00:54:23,990
my. My time spent doing activism in the last two years, one thing I've learned

922
00:54:24,490 --> 00:54:27,830
is that picking targets is really smart because, you know, you want to be selective

923
00:54:28,330 --> 00:54:30,950
in the targets that you hit when you. When you do protesting. But we protest

924
00:54:31,450 --> 00:54:34,230
like once every two weeks and we go and hit. Like, we're usually doing four

925
00:54:34,730 --> 00:54:37,110
or five campaigns and we just all do them in one day. But like,

926
00:54:37,610 --> 00:54:40,150
one campaign that we're working on right now is pbg Pace arena is hosting the

927
00:54:40,650 --> 00:54:44,390
stadium. Is. Is hosting the event. And if you can put pressure on that stadium,

928
00:54:44,710 --> 00:54:47,310
they're eventually going to be like, you know, that's one event that they have all

929
00:54:47,810 --> 00:54:49,750
year. They're eventually going to be like, you know what? This isn't worth it.

930
00:54:49,830 --> 00:54:53,750
And one thing that we've been doing sort of controversially is we've

931
00:54:54,250 --> 00:54:57,350
been protesting the employees houses for the stadium.

932
00:54:57,590 --> 00:55:01,350
Oh, nice. I love those kind of protest that they work.

933
00:55:02,590 --> 00:55:05,990
Those protests work. So I love that. Yeah, you're gonna

934
00:55:06,490 --> 00:55:10,950
get their attention. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's. I. I think that's how a

935
00:55:11,450 --> 00:55:14,110
lot of. There's been a lot of movement in the fur industry by doing.

936
00:55:14,190 --> 00:55:19,870
By doing that, by going to. I. Is the vogue.

937
00:55:20,370 --> 00:55:23,070
Was that done that way? So a funny story about that, actually. So.

938
00:55:24,030 --> 00:55:26,950
Actually, so there was a lot of protests going on in New York City.

939
00:55:27,450 --> 00:55:30,800
And then one of. One of the campaigns that's being run by

940
00:55:31,300 --> 00:55:35,040
CAFT Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, they're good friends with one of our activists

941
00:55:35,540 --> 00:55:39,400
and they reached out to him and said, he's from Pittsburgh, Animal Defenders. We work

942
00:55:39,900 --> 00:55:42,520
pretty closely with them. And he was like, yeah, there's a woman that work,

943
00:55:43,020 --> 00:55:46,080
that works for Vogue and she lives in Pittsburgh and could you guys protest her

944
00:55:46,580 --> 00:55:49,160
house? And I was like, let's do it. At the very next day, they announced

945
00:55:49,660 --> 00:55:53,040
a fur free policy. That's awesome. Yeah, I think we were the straw that

946
00:55:53,540 --> 00:55:56,710
broke the camel's back, for lack of a better term. Yeah, that's great. I mean

947
00:55:57,210 --> 00:55:59,750
that it really does work. I know it's not comfortable for everybody.

948
00:56:00,310 --> 00:56:04,150
Right. But that's, I mean, it. That. I feel like that makes really

949
00:56:04,470 --> 00:56:08,390
fast change when you're really hitting those people individually.

950
00:56:09,110 --> 00:56:12,710
Like here in Albany at the. It's called the MVP arena now.

951
00:56:13,210 --> 00:56:17,150
I'm not sure it keeps changing its name, but might have been the Times Union

952
00:56:17,650 --> 00:56:20,830
center back then, but that's when Ringling Brothers was coming. And then we had our

953
00:56:21,330 --> 00:56:25,320
governor did an elephant band and the.

954
00:56:25,560 --> 00:56:29,320
I think from all the years of us now when I was. We were taught

955
00:56:29,480 --> 00:56:34,040
from our original. From the original protest

956
00:56:34,540 --> 00:56:38,000
organizer Donna Reynolds, and she mentored us that if there

957
00:56:38,500 --> 00:56:41,720
was seven shows of the circus, you protested all seven shows.

958
00:56:42,040 --> 00:56:45,560
So it wasn't just opening night. So some groups used to do just opening night,

959
00:56:45,880 --> 00:56:48,760
but there were seven shows here in Albany. So they would have like a couple

960
00:56:49,260 --> 00:56:52,250
daytime shows. They'd have one for the kids, you know,

961
00:56:52,750 --> 00:56:56,170
school. The school buses would bring kids in, you know. So we

962
00:56:56,670 --> 00:57:00,210
were there for every single show, every single year. So the

963
00:57:00,450 --> 00:57:03,410
arena decided when the governor passed the.

964
00:57:03,910 --> 00:57:06,530
The elephant ban, the traveling elephant show ban,

965
00:57:07,010 --> 00:57:10,570
they decided that they would stop allowing the circus in.

966
00:57:11,070 --> 00:57:14,050
And I think it was a three year, like phase in for the bill,

967
00:57:14,290 --> 00:57:17,670
which was absolutely insane. Too long. But they

968
00:57:18,170 --> 00:57:21,190
decided like right after the bill was signed. Was signed, even though there was,

969
00:57:21,690 --> 00:57:24,270
you know, it didn't go into effect for a few more years, they decided to

970
00:57:24,770 --> 00:57:27,870
stop any, any events that had elephants.

971
00:57:28,030 --> 00:57:31,790
So that shut down Ringling for. For us before Ringling, you know,

972
00:57:32,290 --> 00:57:35,710
went. Went their way. So. And I think it had to be the protests.

973
00:57:35,790 --> 00:57:39,630
We were getting media coverage. We were out there for every single event.

974
00:57:40,270 --> 00:57:43,390
There were somewhere out there after the event to talk to people.

975
00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:47,480
And you would be surprised how many people came out saying the animals looked awful,

976
00:57:47,980 --> 00:57:51,120
they look sad. It was so terrible. You guys were right. So we did as

977
00:57:51,620 --> 00:57:55,200
much as we could on that arena in Albany and that was a big victory

978
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:59,120
that the arena made that decision. So hopefully we can work on them, you know,

979
00:57:59,620 --> 00:58:02,840
for PBR too because, you know, maybe if we get

980
00:58:03,340 --> 00:58:06,680
out there and really start giving them trouble, we could do that too. But go

981
00:58:07,180 --> 00:58:10,360
Ahead. What are your other. Oh, no, no, that's really great. It's one,

982
00:58:10,860 --> 00:58:13,680
it's, it's proven too that, you know, protests work. And I'm sure that was probably

983
00:58:13,950 --> 00:58:17,310
would got Albany, you know, to phase it out even sooner. Yeah.

984
00:58:17,870 --> 00:58:21,230
And the stadiums are particularly liable to pressure too. And another thing that is really

985
00:58:21,730 --> 00:58:24,750
important too, if you protest, the stadium sponsors, I think that actually has some potential

986
00:58:25,250 --> 00:58:28,430
as well. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, there's a, There's a group,

987
00:58:28,930 --> 00:58:32,750
New Hampshire Animal Rights League. They, they started doing protests at the stadium, which has

988
00:58:33,250 --> 00:58:36,550
been really good. And I think that's important too because if these events can't host

989
00:58:37,050 --> 00:58:39,910
at stadiums, then they can't host anywhere. Right. So. Or they got to go,

990
00:58:40,410 --> 00:58:42,510
you know, some parking lot out in the, in the middle of nowhere.

991
00:58:43,940 --> 00:58:47,660
And professional bull riding is not going to do that because. Talk about professional bull

992
00:58:48,160 --> 00:58:51,900
riding a little bit because we keep talking, mentioning them because they're really a lot

993
00:58:52,400 --> 00:58:56,140
of the problem, you know, like in Worcester and Albany and, and New Hampshire.

994
00:58:56,640 --> 00:58:59,820
Right. Because you're not seeing full on rodeos travel all

995
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:04,020
the time to these cities. But professional bull riding is like a whole thing.

996
00:59:04,580 --> 00:59:07,460
Right. And, and rodeo. So like one thing that,

997
00:59:08,500 --> 00:59:11,340
you know, it's kind of funny because PBR exists in this sort of vacuum where

998
00:59:11,840 --> 00:59:15,330
they're like, we're rodeo, but we're not rodeo. And so like, I've seen different

999
00:59:15,830 --> 00:59:19,610
conflicting things where their, their CEO, he'll often

1000
00:59:20,110 --> 00:59:22,810
say things like, oh, well, we're. And I'm sorry, he's like the spokesperson for marketing

1001
00:59:23,310 --> 00:59:25,650
or whatever it is, but he'll often feel like, oh, we're not rodeo. But then

1002
00:59:26,150 --> 00:59:28,570
when it's convenient, they'll say, oh yeah, we are rodeo. And so it's these different

1003
00:59:29,070 --> 00:59:32,770
things, but basically rodeo collectively is these six events. It's steer

1004
00:59:33,270 --> 00:59:37,010
wrestling, bronc riding, team roping, calf roping and bull

1005
00:59:37,510 --> 00:59:40,860
riding. And then saddle bronc riding is typically what they call it. But you'll.

1006
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:43,900
Those six events you'll see at a full rodeo. Full rodeos aren't typically done in

1007
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:48,420
cities because they're not very popular because. Right. It's sort of very obvious to

1008
00:59:48,920 --> 00:59:51,420
see the cruelty involved. And a lot of people, especially in urban areas, are very

1009
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:55,460
sensitive to that, which they should be. Yeah, but calf roping,

1010
00:59:55,960 --> 00:59:58,100
for instance, everybody looks at that, they're like, oh my God, that's horrible. Like I

1011
00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:02,340
saw this calf's eyes and like he got tied down and so such

1012
01:00:02,840 --> 01:00:06,500
blatant cruelty. It's terrible. You nailed it. Exactly right. If Anyone has like a

1013
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,680
dog or a cat, they know that that's just horrible.

1014
01:00:10,320 --> 01:00:13,720
Right. And it's actually been banned. Like, I think Rhode island actually completely banned calf

1015
01:00:14,220 --> 01:00:17,640
roping. And that, that one's definitely the most cruel. Like, visually, spear wrestling

1016
01:00:18,140 --> 01:00:20,240
is actually maybe worse, but it's. It's a little harder to see the cruelty,

1017
01:00:20,740 --> 01:00:23,360
but it's very obvious. Like, they grabbed the steer's head and then forced them to

1018
01:00:23,860 --> 01:00:27,520
the ground. And it becomes very obvious the cruelty involved with bull riding. Right.

1019
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:31,240
These guys had this idea back in 1992 that seems to be a popular year

1020
01:00:31,740 --> 01:00:35,280
for rodeo. Yeah. They had this idea to break away from the rodeo scene

1021
01:00:35,780 --> 01:00:38,930
because they were like, what if we just did bull riding? Only because bull riding

1022
01:00:39,430 --> 01:00:41,970
is definitely the most exciting competition for people. I think that one is the one

1023
01:00:42,470 --> 01:00:44,450
that people love the most. And they usually save that for the last in the

1024
01:00:44,950 --> 01:00:47,890
rodeo matches because people are like, okay. The other ones are like, interesting,

1025
01:00:48,390 --> 01:00:51,810
but that one is actually exciting. And it's like, especially with our attention deficit focused

1026
01:00:52,130 --> 01:00:55,690
lives, it's becomes. It's understandable why people would gravitate toward

1027
01:00:56,190 --> 01:00:59,810
it. Yeah. But it's also, I think bull riding is popular because it's the easiest

1028
01:01:00,310 --> 01:01:04,450
one to disguise the cruelty. And you really can't see the, the cruelty

1029
01:01:04,950 --> 01:01:08,290
involved in bull running unless you know what you're looking for. And one

1030
01:01:08,790 --> 01:01:10,730
of the things I always talk about is like, if you see a bull and

1031
01:01:11,230 --> 01:01:14,170
you pretty much see all of them having all summer, all of these symptoms of

1032
01:01:14,670 --> 01:01:18,009
they got these big eye whites, that's a big sign of, of they're in distress

1033
01:01:18,570 --> 01:01:21,970
as well as the excessive salivation. That's something

1034
01:01:22,470 --> 01:01:24,890
that you'll see a lot of. Like, and that it's actually interesting because a lot

1035
01:01:25,390 --> 01:01:27,370
of the fans are like, oh, they got bull snot. And like, they acted like

1036
01:01:27,870 --> 01:01:30,270
it's a cool thing, but it's like, no, that's. That bull's actually in distress.

1037
01:01:30,770 --> 01:01:33,670
That's a symptom of that. And then there's also,

1038
01:01:35,670 --> 01:01:39,390
oh, the, the. The tongue protrusion. If you see a, like a, a bull like

1039
01:01:39,890 --> 01:01:43,350
this, like, has his tongue out, that's definitely a sign of, of distress.

1040
01:01:43,850 --> 01:01:47,190
But the main thing too with bull riding is that it's easy to disguise the

1041
01:01:47,690 --> 01:01:50,830
cruelty, but it's also the cruelty is caused really by the instruments as well.

1042
01:01:51,330 --> 01:01:53,510
Because, like, if you didn't have those instruments, a lot of times those animals,

1043
01:01:53,590 --> 01:01:56,670
they wouldn't even do what they do. Like pdr. They love to

1044
01:01:57,170 --> 01:01:59,990
say, oh, well, these animals are bred to buck. And it's like, that's probably true

1045
01:02:00,490 --> 01:02:02,950
to some degree, but it wouldn't be nearly as exciting without that flank strap,

1046
01:02:03,450 --> 01:02:06,070
because they have a flank strap around their abdomen, and they're trying to kick that

1047
01:02:06,570 --> 01:02:09,510
off. And when that's not present, it's a pretty. It's a pretty lame ride.

1048
01:02:10,010 --> 01:02:12,030
The bull just, you know, kind of turn to the side and knock you off,

1049
01:02:12,670 --> 01:02:15,150
right? Yeah. It's a pain,

1050
01:02:15,310 --> 01:02:18,550
right? Yeah, the flank strap and it. It digs into their abdomen,

1051
01:02:19,050 --> 01:02:21,470
and then it also. It creates a discomfort. That's really what it is. And.

1052
01:02:21,970 --> 01:02:24,360
And, you know, the circus industry, when they were making their rounds, they would say,

1053
01:02:24,860 --> 01:02:28,320
oh, well, like, we use elephant goads or bull hooks. And like,

1054
01:02:28,560 --> 01:02:31,600
they. They just. They tickle, you know, they don't even hurt.

1055
01:02:32,100 --> 01:02:36,320
It's a guide, right? Yeah, guide. That's what they say. Yeah. Totally absurd.

1056
01:02:36,880 --> 01:02:40,360
Yeah. But, yeah, we know better. Afraid of it. It's.

1057
01:02:40,860 --> 01:02:44,160
It's fear, you know, pain. And fear is how they, you know,

1058
01:02:44,660 --> 01:02:48,240
they try to say, too, because bulls are these massive animals, right?

1059
01:02:48,690 --> 01:02:51,490
So they always try to say. They say this with horses and horse racing,

1060
01:02:51,990 --> 01:02:55,170
too. And they said it, I think, with maybe not so

1061
01:02:55,670 --> 01:02:59,290
much elephants, but maybe tigers and lions and animals like that. And circuses

1062
01:02:59,790 --> 01:03:03,050
like, oh, you know, they can kill us in a second, or, you know,

1063
01:03:03,550 --> 01:03:06,970
we have to do this to control these huge animals, you know, but it's all

1064
01:03:07,470 --> 01:03:10,690
pain and fear. And that's just what it comes down to every single time.

1065
01:03:11,190 --> 01:03:14,650
To have an. Any animal in entertainment and professional bull riding

1066
01:03:15,150 --> 01:03:18,770
is like a whole thing. Thing, right? There's, like, stats on these

1067
01:03:19,270 --> 01:03:23,410
riders, and they have different levels of competition and

1068
01:03:23,570 --> 01:03:26,730
standings and like a. I don't know, like a World

1069
01:03:27,230 --> 01:03:30,250
Series or Super bowl of. Of this isn't. Yeah, they have,

1070
01:03:30,750 --> 01:03:34,290
like, the. The. The finals are in Fort Worth, Texas. That's sort

1071
01:03:34,790 --> 01:03:38,290
of where they have it. And then they also have Vegas, the National Finals Rodeo.

1072
01:03:38,790 --> 01:03:42,210
I don't know if they go there or not, but that's something that. Yeah,

1073
01:03:42,710 --> 01:03:44,690
they. I mean, they have a big league about it. And then I think that's

1074
01:03:45,190 --> 01:03:47,850
another thing, too, that we. We collectively need to target. But I sort of need

1075
01:03:48,350 --> 01:03:50,250
a lot of people to do it in a lot of organization, but I hope

1076
01:03:50,750 --> 01:03:53,210
to do that over the years. But I would really like to see the protest

1077
01:03:53,710 --> 01:03:56,970
or the. The sponsors of PBR get protested, because a lot of them are

1078
01:03:57,470 --> 01:04:00,930
big companies that, you know, aren't necessarily really,

1079
01:04:01,010 --> 01:04:04,490
like, involved. Like, some of them, like, there's bass pro shops

1080
01:04:04,990 --> 01:04:06,970
like that. They're never going to I mean, their whole thing is animal cruelty.

1081
01:04:07,470 --> 01:04:10,540
That's exactly. Yeah, yeah, we have that. Yeah, we have

1082
01:04:11,040 --> 01:04:13,740
that in horse racing, too. Like, there's horse racing industry,

1083
01:04:14,060 --> 01:04:17,300
you know, sponsors. So we don't target those. We target, you know,

1084
01:04:17,800 --> 01:04:21,220
Pepsi and Ford and all of that, you know, but those are

1085
01:04:21,720 --> 01:04:25,060
the bigger ones and harder. Harder to work on, but, you know, but target those

1086
01:04:25,560 --> 01:04:28,780
other ones. Actually, there's. I came across a sponsor

1087
01:04:29,280 --> 01:04:32,780
of PBR by mistake because it's a product

1088
01:04:33,100 --> 01:04:36,050
that is vegan friendly. It's called El Element.

1089
01:04:36,130 --> 01:04:39,930
It's like one of those hydration packets,

1090
01:04:40,430 --> 01:04:44,210
you know, like drinks. And I was purchasing their

1091
01:04:44,710 --> 01:04:48,530
product for like, after exercise or whatever in the summer, and then

1092
01:04:48,690 --> 01:04:52,930
I saw on their social media that they had an ad and

1093
01:04:53,430 --> 01:04:57,370
it was a spokesperson from PPR talking about how he needs to hydrate

1094
01:04:57,870 --> 01:05:01,370
after he's bull riding. And I collected a whole bunch of contact

1095
01:05:01,870 --> 01:05:05,000
information, so we definitely should go after them. And I did go after some of

1096
01:05:05,500 --> 01:05:08,920
the vegan influencers who, you know, had their

1097
01:05:09,420 --> 01:05:11,800
discount codes for them. And I contacted them and said, do you know that they're,

1098
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:16,120
you know, promoting bull riding? You know, they're a vegan friendly,

1099
01:05:16,680 --> 01:05:19,880
you know, product, and it says vegan friendly. I know there may not be a

1100
01:05:20,380 --> 01:05:23,240
vegan product. They're not vegans that made the product, but, you know,

1101
01:05:23,740 --> 01:05:26,440
people need to be aware of that. And people that are vegan, that are in,

1102
01:05:26,520 --> 01:05:28,960
you know, that are buying this product, need to be aware of it too,

1103
01:05:29,460 --> 01:05:32,010
so they can boycott. But that's brilliant. Yeah, I'm really glad you did that,

1104
01:05:32,510 --> 01:05:34,690
too. I didn't even know that. That's. Yeah. So something I want to tell you

1105
01:05:35,190 --> 01:05:38,730
about, too. It's a. Because they sound like they're ripe for a protest.

1106
01:05:39,130 --> 01:05:41,810
Yes, I know we have to do something there. Yeah, I do have all the

1107
01:05:42,310 --> 01:05:45,450
information. I'll send it to you. Oh, and like, some of

1108
01:05:45,950 --> 01:05:48,250
the other ones, too, is like Progressive Insurance. It's like, I feel like they would,

1109
01:05:48,750 --> 01:05:51,930
like, why. Why are they even associated with that? You know, and same thing with

1110
01:05:52,430 --> 01:05:54,890
horse racing, too. It's like, why the hell was Ford even Ford? You would think,

1111
01:05:55,390 --> 01:05:58,270
like, being a car company would not want horses to come back. Yeah.

1112
01:05:58,670 --> 01:06:01,910
And then you have all these beverage companies and things like that. And actually we

1113
01:06:02,410 --> 01:06:06,350
found out through our research on sponsors

1114
01:06:06,850 --> 01:06:10,030
for. For the Triple Crown events. I was going on Twitter actually,

1115
01:06:10,110 --> 01:06:13,390
to get, like, their Twitter handle so we could do an action against sponsors.

1116
01:06:13,789 --> 01:06:15,950
And I saw that I had a whole bunch of, like,

1117
01:06:16,830 --> 01:06:20,030
followers that also followed this, like a wine company.

1118
01:06:20,830 --> 01:06:24,160
And I Went on Barnivore, which is the vegan website,

1119
01:06:24,660 --> 01:06:28,200
where you can see if your alcohol is vegan. And the that

1120
01:06:28,700 --> 01:06:32,000
particular wine was listed as vegan. So all of these vegans are following

1121
01:06:32,500 --> 01:06:36,360
them, buying their wine, but they are sponsoring the Kentucky Derby. And it's like,

1122
01:06:36,860 --> 01:06:39,879
whoa, wait a minute. So we did an action for that. I contacted Barnivore and

1123
01:06:40,379 --> 01:06:43,680
they did not answer me. I contacted them a few times saying, look, you can

1124
01:06:44,180 --> 01:06:47,640
say the ingredients are vegan. And the company says, but I think consumers

1125
01:06:48,140 --> 01:06:51,190
need to know that they're sponsoring the Kentucky Derby. Right. They never got back to

1126
01:06:51,690 --> 01:06:53,670
me. We may have to talk to them again.

1127
01:06:54,710 --> 01:06:58,670
Sounds ripe for a protest. They're vegan,

1128
01:06:59,170 --> 01:07:02,150
so. Right. They're supposed to be vegan.

1129
01:07:02,870 --> 01:07:06,309
But it's like, but if you're going to inform consumers on, you know,

1130
01:07:06,809 --> 01:07:10,390
the ingredients, then they need to know who they're sponsoring as well, because they sponsors

1131
01:07:10,890 --> 01:07:14,670
keep it going. You know, sponsors give a lot of money to

1132
01:07:15,170 --> 01:07:18,240
these, you know, event, to these companies, to these events and,

1133
01:07:18,740 --> 01:07:22,360
and through advertising and, you know, and if you take their sponsors

1134
01:07:22,860 --> 01:07:25,360
away, they don't have much left. That's right. That's right. You know.

1135
01:07:26,000 --> 01:07:29,000
Yeah, it's key is that. Yeah. And we actually had success with that too.

1136
01:07:29,500 --> 01:07:33,200
Like San Diego, the San Diego Rodeo. We've been contacting sponsors

1137
01:07:33,440 --> 01:07:36,960
for the last year. And then also we sent a big letter from a

1138
01:07:37,460 --> 01:07:41,000
lot of different groups to the sponsors of San Diego Radio. And Monster Energy has

1139
01:07:41,500 --> 01:07:44,110
dropped out yesterday, actually. Oh, awesome. Yes. That was a.

1140
01:07:44,350 --> 01:07:47,630
Yeah, yeah, that's really great. We'd like to see them drop

1141
01:07:48,130 --> 01:07:50,830
pbr, actually. That's really what I want to, I want to see them. Well,

1142
01:07:51,870 --> 01:07:55,310
but so that's the thing too, like with protest is like trying to find secondary

1143
01:07:55,810 --> 01:07:59,630
targets, tertiary targets, things that are like sort of loosely connected and then they can

1144
01:08:00,130 --> 01:08:02,750
probably easily drop off. And then the other thing I want to mention too was

1145
01:08:03,150 --> 01:08:06,670
so a lot of this rodeo is seeing an uptick right now too, in popularity.

1146
01:08:07,170 --> 01:08:10,760
That's sort of the only sport that is seeing that's sort of not having a

1147
01:08:11,260 --> 01:08:13,520
decline right now out of like. Because, you know, he did quote air quotes.

1148
01:08:14,020 --> 01:08:16,840
I saw it. Yeah,

1149
01:08:18,360 --> 01:08:21,800
I saw it. I'm a witness. Go ahead. Right. And this,

1150
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:25,080
that's the only one that's sort of like not having a decline. And rodeo is

1151
01:08:25,580 --> 01:08:27,960
actually on the incline right now. And a lot of it is because of the

1152
01:08:28,460 --> 01:08:31,800
show Yellowstone. Yeah. And I've never watched the show.

1153
01:08:32,300 --> 01:08:35,800
I, I, what show is it? Yellowstone. Yellowstone. Oh, yes. Okay.

1154
01:08:36,300 --> 01:08:37,960
I'm sorry. I talked over you. So I want to make sure you said it.

1155
01:08:38,680 --> 01:08:41,270
Go ahead. Yeah. And I think a lot of it is because of that,

1156
01:08:41,770 --> 01:08:44,430
too, because I think the uptick in surge in popularity in rodeo is because of

1157
01:08:44,930 --> 01:08:48,750
that. Because that show started a couple years ago and then, like, my sister watched

1158
01:08:49,250 --> 01:08:52,270
it and she was like, you absolutely hate the show. I think there's a guy

1159
01:08:52,770 --> 01:08:55,110
on there that's a rodeo guy, that's like a popular character. And so I think

1160
01:08:55,610 --> 01:08:59,110
now I'll sort of introduce this idea of, like, rodeos are cool. So does it,

1161
01:08:59,610 --> 01:09:01,150
like, romanticize that cowboy thing?

1162
01:09:02,830 --> 01:09:06,390
That's what it is. Yeah. And then this is sort of my pet theory as

1163
01:09:06,890 --> 01:09:09,759
well, too. That. And again, I don't mean to get political, but I think it's

1164
01:09:10,259 --> 01:09:12,519
sort of just the nature of what we're dealing with is. I think that with

1165
01:09:13,019 --> 01:09:16,479
the. The growing concern about, like, trans identities

1166
01:09:16,979 --> 01:09:20,199
and trans people and things like that. Yeah, I think there's now this backlash to

1167
01:09:20,699 --> 01:09:23,919
it that's going on where, like, for instance, like, Harrison Butler talked about,

1168
01:09:24,419 --> 01:09:26,559
like, you know, women need to get back in the kitchen and work and work.

1169
01:09:27,059 --> 01:09:29,919
Like, you know, like just these horrible, like, misogynistic things. He said.

1170
01:09:29,999 --> 01:09:32,239
All of a sudden his jersey was, like, really high selling.

1171
01:09:33,359 --> 01:09:36,439
And I think it's this idea of, like, people are looking for that traditional aspect

1172
01:09:36,939 --> 01:09:40,290
of women, and then on the corner aspect is the traditional aspect of men.

1173
01:09:40,790 --> 01:09:43,330
And so people are like, oh, rodeo guys, that's like a traditional band.

1174
01:09:44,370 --> 01:09:47,610
Right? We had the same reaction, like this macho thing. Yeah,

1175
01:09:48,110 --> 01:09:51,410
that's. That's awful, right? Yeah, I think it's like, just like.

1176
01:09:52,290 --> 01:09:55,650
Yeah, these things are. Are weaponized in different ways.

1177
01:09:55,810 --> 01:09:59,290
And so. Yeah, you're right. I think you're. You're spot on

1178
01:09:59,790 --> 01:10:03,050
with that. I think that's where it all comes from. Yeah. Yeah. And it's sort

1179
01:10:03,550 --> 01:10:05,250
of also. And I. I think another aspect of it, too, that I think the

1180
01:10:05,750 --> 01:10:09,020
reason rodeo is also popular was I think that there's also

1181
01:10:09,520 --> 01:10:12,580
this growing concern within all sports of making them safer. Like, you know, you're seeing

1182
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:16,540
it with football, hockey, soccer, baseball, like, a lot of this

1183
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:20,380
concern about concussions and trying to minimize head injuries and things like that. And then

1184
01:10:20,880 --> 01:10:24,020
I think because of that, there's been, you know, for every positive or sort of

1185
01:10:24,520 --> 01:10:28,380
progressive move, there's always a reaction that that's with trans people as

1186
01:10:28,880 --> 01:10:32,300
well as sports, because sports is seeing the safety

1187
01:10:32,800 --> 01:10:35,470
culture, and then rodeo's kind of going the other direction where they're like, like they.

1188
01:10:35,970 --> 01:10:38,750
The way they label it, they're like, oh, we're the toughest sport on dirt.

1189
01:10:39,070 --> 01:10:41,470
Yeah, it's like ski and. Yeah,

1190
01:10:42,190 --> 01:10:45,190
exactly. All these other sports are trying to get safer and they're trying to get

1191
01:10:45,690 --> 01:10:49,790
more deadly. Yeah. And it's dead. And it's. And it's extremely deadly to animals.

1192
01:10:50,750 --> 01:10:53,150
You know, most of the times the humans were walking away.

1193
01:10:53,630 --> 01:10:56,750
You know, they may have injuries or something, but these animals are just injured.

1194
01:10:57,250 --> 01:11:00,670
They're confined. So we, we have these bulls. Right. So I, this is

1195
01:11:00,750 --> 01:11:04,160
because we always talk about the confinement, you know, and horse racing wrongs

1196
01:11:04,660 --> 01:11:08,120
and, and for all animals, you know, whether it's chickens or

1197
01:11:08,280 --> 01:11:11,320
pigs and the extreme confinement, these unnatural.

1198
01:11:11,800 --> 01:11:15,240
So when there's animals that are traveling like this, these bulls

1199
01:11:15,740 --> 01:11:19,240
are in trucks, transport trucks. Right. They're being confined

1200
01:11:19,640 --> 01:11:23,040
the whole time. I'm sure they're chained, you know, under the

1201
01:11:23,540 --> 01:11:26,760
arena. Like they're rolling in here tonight and they have a show tonight

1202
01:11:27,260 --> 01:11:30,440
and a show tomorrow. So what's happening to these bulls, you know, during that

1203
01:11:30,940 --> 01:11:34,150
time, especially in the. Cold like that too? Like, you know, going trailer,

1204
01:11:34,650 --> 01:11:37,910
tractor trailers. And you know, one thing I will say too, and I think that

1205
01:11:38,410 --> 01:11:40,390
it's like, it's one of those things where, you know, I think a lot of

1206
01:11:40,890 --> 01:11:43,710
people have trouble with nuance, like where, you know, because the first thing I'll hear

1207
01:11:44,210 --> 01:11:46,550
from rodeo people is like, oh, well, those animals are pampered. They live like a,

1208
01:11:47,050 --> 01:11:49,670
this really great lifestyle. And that may be true. Like, you know, for instance,

1209
01:11:49,830 --> 01:11:52,870
they come from these ranches where, you know, the bulls are basically out in pasture

1210
01:11:53,370 --> 01:11:55,350
and, you know, they don't have it nearly as bad as factory farmed animals.

1211
01:11:55,590 --> 01:11:58,590
Now, don't take that as a, I'm not saying that as sort of a,

1212
01:11:59,090 --> 01:12:02,750
an endorsement, but what I always tell people is the problem is not outside the

1213
01:12:03,250 --> 01:12:06,270
arena. The problem is inside the arena. You know, you can pamper them all you

1214
01:12:06,770 --> 01:12:09,790
want, but the fact that you're tormenting them every weekend is the problem. And when

1215
01:12:10,290 --> 01:12:12,630
we hone in on that, that's really the issue. And I have heard when we

1216
01:12:13,130 --> 01:12:16,430
talk about transportation, actually, because they contract with a lot of stock contractors that will

1217
01:12:16,930 --> 01:12:19,990
ship those bulls, like sometimes across state lines, sometimes within the state. You know,

1218
01:12:20,490 --> 01:12:23,150
it's hard to say where they come from. But my one friend told me,

1219
01:12:23,650 --> 01:12:25,820
actually, and I don't know if he has a citation for this, and so don't

1220
01:12:26,320 --> 01:12:28,420
take this as gospel, but I did hear, and it makes a lot of sense

1221
01:12:28,920 --> 01:12:32,940
that these animals are actually, the bulls are actually dehydrated for 48 hours beforehand.

1222
01:12:33,020 --> 01:12:36,180
So they're not given any food or water. And it actually makes sense when you

1223
01:12:36,680 --> 01:12:40,380
think about it, because I've never seen any of them have or go

1224
01:12:40,780 --> 01:12:44,260
defecate or urinate within the arena. And so that kind of makes sense

1225
01:12:44,760 --> 01:12:47,020
is they probably don't want to make a mess in the arena. Right. And so

1226
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:50,980
they dehydrate them beforehand. Right. And it

1227
01:12:51,480 --> 01:12:55,100
could be just another tool to. Another way to aggravate them and torment them,

1228
01:12:55,400 --> 01:12:58,680
you know, to get them to do what they want to do. It's all about,

1229
01:12:59,000 --> 01:13:02,120
you know, getting them to put on the show. Yeah. And it could be too,

1230
01:13:02,620 --> 01:13:04,560
because it's like they. I. It's hard to say, too. I'd have to be.

1231
01:13:05,060 --> 01:13:08,240
Do more investigation on stock contractors. They have them all over the states. And who

1232
01:13:08,740 --> 01:13:11,679
they contract with is. Is hard to say, but I'm sure that, you know,

1233
01:13:12,179 --> 01:13:14,840
transporting the animals even overnight is a problem. I mean, it's like, you know,

1234
01:13:15,340 --> 01:13:18,200
they want to do that and. But anyways,

1235
01:13:18,360 --> 01:13:20,680
the other thing I want to talk about too was with that, the way that

1236
01:13:21,180 --> 01:13:24,490
they transport these animals, too. They use electric prods. Yeah. Which is a big

1237
01:13:24,990 --> 01:13:27,050
part of it, too, because when you get rid of that electric prod, these events

1238
01:13:27,550 --> 01:13:30,290
go away. Right. And you know, like PBR likes to say, like, oh, we don't

1239
01:13:30,790 --> 01:13:33,890
use electric prods within the chutes, but they're back. They're in back patents.

1240
01:13:34,130 --> 01:13:37,570
But the thing is, those animals are conditioned and they know that if they don't

1241
01:13:38,070 --> 01:13:40,170
do what they're supposed to do, they're going to get zapped. And so it's sort

1242
01:13:40,670 --> 01:13:43,810
of this coerced performance, you know. Yeah, it's that fear. Yeah.

1243
01:13:44,290 --> 01:13:48,290
Yeah. Just like with the Ringling elephants, where, you know, the bullhook,

1244
01:13:49,340 --> 01:13:51,700
you know, if the bull hook was just shown at them, they would do whatever

1245
01:13:52,200 --> 01:13:55,340
you wanted. So what other victories have you had? Any.

1246
01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:59,500
Any recent victories or victories you've had over the years since you started Christian Animal

1247
01:14:00,000 --> 01:14:03,460
Rights Association? Oh, sure. Yeah. I mentioned the. The foie draw in

1248
01:14:03,960 --> 01:14:07,460
Pittsburgh and Brookline. And then we also got. Locally in Pennsylvania,

1249
01:14:07,960 --> 01:14:11,660
we got a bill passed through the state that protects

1250
01:14:12,160 --> 01:14:15,900
animals from domestic. Domestic violence. Because one thing that we noticed

1251
01:14:16,310 --> 01:14:19,590
with Humane Action Pennsylvania, they did sort of the legwork on it, but,

1252
01:14:20,090 --> 01:14:23,350
yeah, they noticed that a lot of times women, they wouldn't leave an abusive situation

1253
01:14:23,850 --> 01:14:27,310
because the. The husband typically would say, like, oh, I'm gonna kill the

1254
01:14:27,810 --> 01:14:30,990
dog if you leave. Yeah. And so they have protection orders where if

1255
01:14:31,490 --> 01:14:33,670
a woman wants to leave an abusive situation, they could take the dog with them.

1256
01:14:33,750 --> 01:14:36,990
And so. Yeah, yeah, there's. There's. That was a really good one we

1257
01:14:37,490 --> 01:14:41,030
passed two years ago. And then we also helped with a couple federal legislations.

1258
01:14:41,530 --> 01:14:45,410
Like, we got the Big Cat Public Safety act passed that banned the

1259
01:14:45,910 --> 01:14:49,530
use or banned private ownership of big cats, which is like Tiger King and all

1260
01:14:50,030 --> 01:14:53,650
that stuff. Oh, yeah. And then the one we really worked hard on,

1261
01:14:54,150 --> 01:14:58,170
that FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which got rid of the

1262
01:14:58,970 --> 01:15:02,650
requirement to test on animals. So that sort

1263
01:15:03,150 --> 01:15:06,690
of started the rollout of, like, where the fda, they're now winding down animal testing

1264
01:15:07,190 --> 01:15:10,820
because it's no longer required. And so. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's going really well.

1265
01:15:10,900 --> 01:15:14,380
Yeah. Institutionally, we had a bunch of wins this year,

1266
01:15:14,880 --> 01:15:18,540
actually. We got Vogue to drop fur. That was really awesome. Yeah, we helped

1267
01:15:19,040 --> 01:15:22,100
out. That's a huge, huge win for fur. Absolutely.

1268
01:15:22,180 --> 01:15:24,740
Absolutely. We were really happy. That was the only time that we ever did a

1269
01:15:25,240 --> 01:15:28,100
protest. And something literally changed overnight. It was so funny. Yeah. That is,

1270
01:15:28,600 --> 01:15:32,300
like, really great. That's, like. That's really great. And it's.

1271
01:15:32,800 --> 01:15:35,980
I think it's so uplifting to people to see all these victories and hear about

1272
01:15:36,480 --> 01:15:39,410
them. And I feel like we have had so many victories this year, especially with

1273
01:15:39,910 --> 01:15:43,850
the fur industry. So many. And so. That's really good. Yeah.

1274
01:15:44,350 --> 01:15:47,610
For flag gras and animal experimentation are definitely a three that are moving really well,

1275
01:15:47,770 --> 01:15:51,490
is we also got. Oh, New York Fashion

1276
01:15:51,990 --> 01:15:55,050
Week. We did some protests. We did a protest for that where it was a

1277
01:15:55,550 --> 01:15:58,130
company out in Cleveland, img, that owns the trademark for New York Fashion Week.

1278
01:15:58,630 --> 01:16:02,090
We did a protest of them, and then they dropped. They dropped for. At New

1279
01:16:02,590 --> 01:16:05,580
York Fashion Week. So that was really awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. And then we also

1280
01:16:06,080 --> 01:16:09,340
helped out with closing Miami Seaquarium. That went well. Oh,

1281
01:16:09,840 --> 01:16:12,180
yeah. We've had so many wins this year, actually. It's been great.

1282
01:16:12,980 --> 01:16:16,420
That's great. That's. Yeah. See, wins happen all the time, and it's really important

1283
01:16:16,920 --> 01:16:20,220
to celebrate them. Whether they're big wins or small wins, it's always important

1284
01:16:20,720 --> 01:16:23,820
to celebrate them. Cause that's how we keep going, so. Which leads me to another

1285
01:16:24,320 --> 01:16:27,060
question that I ask a lot of our guests is how do you avoid burnout?

1286
01:16:27,780 --> 01:16:31,140
How do I avoid burnout? Yeah. Because it's a lot. So we're

1287
01:16:31,640 --> 01:16:34,770
doing a lot all the time, and it's hard to stay positive. So what do

1288
01:16:35,270 --> 01:16:38,450
you do? Do you have, like, certain things you do like to unwind?

1289
01:16:39,650 --> 01:16:42,730
Well, my wife and I love movies. We always. We always go to the theater

1290
01:16:43,230 --> 01:16:45,370
every weekend. We try to at least. Oh, that's good. Yeah. I think the first

1291
01:16:45,870 --> 01:16:48,649
time I met you I was like, we're going to the driver. Yes. Yeah,

1292
01:16:49,149 --> 01:16:52,170
you were. That's funny. Yeah. So that's

1293
01:16:52,670 --> 01:16:55,570
good. Yeah, I think it's good to do something outside of, you know, the work

1294
01:16:55,890 --> 01:16:59,250
of, of animal. Right. And you work. And you still work as a

1295
01:16:59,750 --> 01:17:03,060
nurse, right? Is that right? Yeah, actually, I, Yeah, I still do that. I,

1296
01:17:03,140 --> 01:17:05,780
I work three days a week, so it's pretty nice. I get to. Yeah,

1297
01:17:06,280 --> 01:17:08,780
I do three weeks at my nursing job and then four weeks. Four days.

1298
01:17:09,280 --> 01:17:11,980
I'm sorry, not three weeks. Three days on my job and four days on my

1299
01:17:12,480 --> 01:17:15,700
animal rights job. So you get. So you're away from the animal rights a little

1300
01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:19,380
bit too. That's good too, I think. Yes. And, and it's hard. And it's hard.

1301
01:17:19,880 --> 01:17:22,900
Do you do like 12 hour days? Yes.

1302
01:17:23,060 --> 01:17:26,420
Oh, okay. Well, that's good. Right. And it's a lot of stress, you know.

1303
01:17:27,640 --> 01:17:31,360
Is there anything else that we didn't. I have a couple extra questions, fun questions

1304
01:17:31,860 --> 01:17:34,760
at the end, but is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to

1305
01:17:35,260 --> 01:17:38,440
get out there? One thing I would like to tell people too is that

1306
01:17:38,940 --> 01:17:42,000
LA, I think LA's become sort of a battleground. And one

1307
01:17:42,500 --> 01:17:45,800
thing that they're doing too is they're taking comments from the public and they're

1308
01:17:46,300 --> 01:17:48,480
going to be doing that until probably the bill is passed. But the bill is

1309
01:17:48,980 --> 01:17:52,520
passed through various different phases because originally they borrowed

1310
01:17:52,760 --> 01:17:56,580
law, like I said, which banned the tools. Yeah. And the

1311
01:17:57,080 --> 01:18:00,540
issue too was that with, oh, with la,

1312
01:18:00,940 --> 01:18:03,380
they banned the tools, but then they found out that that was going to also

1313
01:18:03,880 --> 01:18:07,660
shut down the equestrians. And so then they pivoted to a

1314
01:18:07,820 --> 01:18:11,019
outright ban where it would ban like all the events of rodeo, basically, except for

1315
01:18:11,519 --> 01:18:15,300
barrel racing. And now they're coming out and saying that it's racist, it's culturally insensitive

1316
01:18:15,800 --> 01:18:19,460
and all this other nonsense. Yeah. And so one thing I would say

1317
01:18:19,960 --> 01:18:23,250
too is if you can submit comments to the LA City Council, I can give

1318
01:18:23,750 --> 01:18:27,010
you a link for it and everything. Yeah, that's really important that people comment about

1319
01:18:27,510 --> 01:18:31,090
that. And then also la, that's why I always focus on sort of the tools

1320
01:18:31,590 --> 01:18:33,610
of torment, because then they can't come out and say, oh, well, you know,

1321
01:18:34,110 --> 01:18:36,850
you're, you're violating our First Amendment right or some other nonsense.

1322
01:18:37,730 --> 01:18:41,010
Yeah, yeah, they're going to fight it however they, you know,

1323
01:18:41,570 --> 01:18:45,210
and that's very, it's a very dramatic

1324
01:18:45,710 --> 01:18:49,090
way that they fight it in that way. It's very dramatic.

1325
01:18:49,530 --> 01:18:53,090
Totally nonsense. Yeah. I mean, this is blatant animal cruelty. I mean,

1326
01:18:53,590 --> 01:18:56,890
how hard is that to see, you know, so you have to be

1327
01:18:57,390 --> 01:19:00,530
in the state of California to, to take action on that or any.

1328
01:19:01,030 --> 01:19:04,490
Or can you. Anywhere. Anywhere. Yeah, yeah. We, our team is always writing to them

1329
01:19:04,990 --> 01:19:07,730
every. And we're based out of Pittsburgh. They'll. They'll take comments from anywhere. Yeah,

1330
01:19:08,230 --> 01:19:11,410
I mean. Oh, that's the radio we. We just recently surpassed. Like, they want to,

1331
01:19:11,910 --> 01:19:14,170
they want to drive comments and see, like, the radio industry seems to think that

1332
01:19:14,670 --> 01:19:17,860
they have more comments. They're going to eventually defeat the ordinance and the animal rights

1333
01:19:17,940 --> 01:19:21,660
group or the animal rights collectively just surpassed them. And so they're very about

1334
01:19:22,160 --> 01:19:24,780
that. So just keep the comments coming. Keep them coming. Okay, cool. We'll put that

1335
01:19:25,280 --> 01:19:28,860
in the show notes and I'll make sure that I'm telling everyone I know

1336
01:19:29,360 --> 01:19:31,860
about it too. And if you share anything, let me know. We'll share it on

1337
01:19:32,360 --> 01:19:34,660
our social media too. So thank you for that.

1338
01:19:35,380 --> 01:19:38,180
All right, I have a couple. And I have a couple questions.

1339
01:19:38,900 --> 01:19:42,100
I think sometimes in our conversations we want people to get to know us a

1340
01:19:42,600 --> 01:19:44,220
little bit better. So that's why I do some of these. So sometimes I do

1341
01:19:44,720 --> 01:19:48,160
rapid fire ones, but yours aren't so like fast rapid fire. Fire. But one

1342
01:19:48,660 --> 01:19:51,400
of my questions was the first animal you ever bonded with. But you did talk

1343
01:19:51,900 --> 01:19:54,880
about that first animal you bonded with in your,

1344
01:19:55,380 --> 01:19:59,040
in your vegetarian leading up to vegan story. So I think

1345
01:19:59,540 --> 01:20:02,760
that was. So that was kind of built right into your story. Um, but what

1346
01:20:03,260 --> 01:20:06,920
is your activism? Superpower. My superpower, I would say,

1347
01:20:08,280 --> 01:20:11,760
I would say probably logic and like my pursuit

1348
01:20:12,260 --> 01:20:14,970
of, like, reason. Cause that's like one thing that I think a lot of us

1349
01:20:15,470 --> 01:20:18,610
are. Are guilty of is like a lot of times, like, emotional rhetoric works for

1350
01:20:19,110 --> 01:20:21,730
a lot of people. And not that that's of course, but I think it also

1351
01:20:22,230 --> 01:20:24,650
can be sort of weaponized where, like, what I always like to do is I

1352
01:20:25,150 --> 01:20:27,330
just get the studies and the facts and then whatever the facts say is what

1353
01:20:27,830 --> 01:20:31,170
I aligned with. And, and I sort of like, I've adjusted myself based on that.

1354
01:20:31,670 --> 01:20:34,370
Like, I think one thing is maintaining it. That's. That's actually maybe my superpower is

1355
01:20:34,870 --> 01:20:38,410
integrity. Because one thing I will always say is like, I used to always

1356
01:20:38,910 --> 01:20:42,150
comment and say, like, oh, like rodeo is animal cruelty. And I started doing that

1357
01:20:42,650 --> 01:20:45,190
on barrel racing. And a lot of these people were like, how is it cruel?

1358
01:20:45,690 --> 01:20:48,990
And I really couldn't find any studies that said that, like, the horses strongly dislike

1359
01:20:49,490 --> 01:20:52,230
this. Like, they do bull riding. Like, the bulls dislike bull riding. And so I

1360
01:20:52,730 --> 01:20:55,790
sort of stopped commenting, and I'm like, you know what? Maybe, maybe, maybe barrel racing,

1361
01:20:56,290 --> 01:20:59,550
even though it's sort of objectionable, it's actually not that bad. But bull riding

1362
01:21:00,050 --> 01:21:01,910
and steer wrestling and all these other things are terrible. So I focus on that.

1363
01:21:02,410 --> 01:21:06,110
And so I think integrity would probably be mine. What's one animal that you'd love

1364
01:21:06,610 --> 01:21:10,030
the world to understand better? One animal.

1365
01:21:10,530 --> 01:21:13,710
Okay. Yeah, I'd say probably raccoons because they. They sort of have

1366
01:21:14,210 --> 01:21:17,830
this, like, reputation that, like, you know, they're sort of, like, mischievous, but they're all

1367
01:21:18,330 --> 01:21:21,870
rabid. People think they're all rapid. Right, that too. That too. So.

1368
01:21:22,370 --> 01:21:25,110
But they're. But they're not. They're like little, gentle little creatures, aren't they?

1369
01:21:26,470 --> 01:21:29,790
They're funny, too. Like, they. My dad told me the story about

1370
01:21:30,290 --> 01:21:32,630
when he was a kid. My. My grandma used to make, like, banana bread.

1371
01:21:32,790 --> 01:21:36,230
And every time she would make banana bread, she'd put it, like, on this table,

1372
01:21:36,730 --> 01:21:39,310
and, like, the window would be open, and so the raccoons all come outside and,

1373
01:21:39,810 --> 01:21:40,770
like, start PA the glass.

1374
01:21:42,690 --> 01:21:45,010
What's the best advice you've ever received?

1375
01:21:46,050 --> 01:21:49,410
Oh, that's a good one, actually. So my. I. I sort of.

1376
01:21:49,910 --> 01:21:53,730
I. I touched on this, actually, earlier, but so I listened to a speech

1377
01:21:53,890 --> 01:21:57,490
we went to EA for Christians, which is Effective Altruism

1378
01:21:57,990 --> 01:22:00,650
for Christians. They had a conference in Washington, D.C. that we got invited to and

1379
01:22:01,150 --> 01:22:04,290
that I spoke at. And there was a speaker, I think I could say his

1380
01:22:04,790 --> 01:22:07,730
name, Bruce Friedrich. He's. He worked for PETA for a number of years. And he

1381
01:22:08,230 --> 01:22:11,890
had this really, really great advice. And he talked about how he advocated for veganism

1382
01:22:12,390 --> 01:22:14,570
for, like, 25 years. And he said that, like, you know, there's no movement on

1383
01:22:15,070 --> 01:22:17,330
it. Like, you know, people were sort of, like, against veganism, and it's because of

1384
01:22:17,830 --> 01:22:21,010
human nature. And, you know, he talked about how, like, you know, even though we

1385
01:22:21,510 --> 01:22:24,210
can try to suppress certain things, like, you know, war and all these terrible things

1386
01:22:24,710 --> 01:22:27,530
that we do, they still exist. And so meat is sort of always going to

1387
01:22:28,030 --> 01:22:30,450
exist in some form, and so what can we do about that? And he created

1388
01:22:30,950 --> 01:22:33,370
a Labrador and meat company. And I think that was just so great because it

1389
01:22:33,870 --> 01:22:36,460
was sort of like, you know, you can talk about ethics and morality till you're

1390
01:22:36,960 --> 01:22:39,540
blue in the face, but what it really comes down to is you can't fight

1391
01:22:40,040 --> 01:22:43,380
human nature. There's a. There's a quote from a movie, Watchmen. I don't

1392
01:22:43,880 --> 01:22:46,060
know if you've ever seen it. It's. I haven't, but I've heard of it.

1393
01:22:46,140 --> 01:22:49,420
It's a good one. It's a good one. Yeah. There's this one really great

1394
01:22:49,920 --> 01:22:53,420
quote from Dr. Manhattan. He's a superhero and he says

1395
01:22:53,980 --> 01:22:57,260
he's like all powerful and he says I can change almost anything,

1396
01:22:57,760 --> 01:23:00,780
but I can't change human nature. And I thought that that was sort of aligned

1397
01:23:01,280 --> 01:23:04,140
with what Bruce Friedrich was talking about because yeah, it's like put your, put your

1398
01:23:04,640 --> 01:23:08,060
effort and your energy into something that you can actually change rather than constantly,

1399
01:23:08,560 --> 01:23:11,020
you know, banging your head off the wall trying to fix. Something they're going to

1400
01:23:11,520 --> 01:23:14,500
change and it stops. Burnout. Burnout and giving up too.

1401
01:23:14,740 --> 01:23:18,260
Right, Right. Because I think, I really like that because I think a lot

1402
01:23:18,760 --> 01:23:21,860
of people give up because they're like, oh, I haven't made one vegan myself or

1403
01:23:21,940 --> 01:23:25,940
I just. People don't want to listen or you know, so then pivot,

1404
01:23:26,100 --> 01:23:29,820
do something, do something different. So if, you know, you're trying to go

1405
01:23:30,320 --> 01:23:33,620
out there and make a vegan world, then you know, keep,

1406
01:23:33,780 --> 01:23:37,060
keep doing that to an extent. But you know, try for a

1407
01:23:37,560 --> 01:23:40,820
bull riding ban or try for, you know, or work on, work on something else,

1408
01:23:41,320 --> 01:23:44,780
you know. What'd you say? Horse racing band? Horse racing band. I try not to

1409
01:23:45,280 --> 01:23:48,460
plug us like crazy, but you know, but yeah, it's true. Then, then, you know,

1410
01:23:48,960 --> 01:23:52,540
because there is that Patrick did a talk on single issue

1411
01:23:53,040 --> 01:23:56,740
causes because, and I think we talked to you about this before too, is that

1412
01:23:57,240 --> 01:24:00,410
there's, you know, there's, you know, we gotta end factory

1413
01:24:00,910 --> 01:24:04,650
farming. Got in factory farming. Well, that's a long way off. And there's

1414
01:24:05,150 --> 01:24:08,730
all these, there's the bulls and there's the horses and there's the elephants

1415
01:24:09,230 --> 01:24:12,370
and the. They still need us too. So you have to do some. Look,

1416
01:24:12,450 --> 01:24:16,010
if all the vegans said we're not going to do anything about

1417
01:24:16,510 --> 01:24:20,170
fur until we're. We have a vegan world, can you

1418
01:24:20,670 --> 01:24:24,260
imagine? Look, I mean fur is like 85% gone.

1419
01:24:24,340 --> 01:24:27,620
Right? Right. So there's so much progress

1420
01:24:28,120 --> 01:24:31,140
there. So that's why single issue causes are really important. And it does

1421
01:24:31,640 --> 01:24:35,300
take that pressure off of. And that burnout and that giving up, you know,

1422
01:24:35,800 --> 01:24:38,660
feeling, I think off of you too. So like, like you were saying,

1423
01:24:38,980 --> 01:24:42,020
I agree too. And I think that's another way we sort of avoid burnout too

1424
01:24:42,520 --> 01:24:46,100
is like, yeah, my wife and I talk about, with our ministry, like I

1425
01:24:46,600 --> 01:24:49,060
think we were experiencing a lot of burnout when we were just focusing on food.

1426
01:24:49,560 --> 01:24:52,070
But then when we shifted and said, like, maybe we can do something better with

1427
01:24:52,570 --> 01:24:55,750
entertainment, experimentation and fashion. And so now what I constantly am

1428
01:24:56,250 --> 01:24:58,950
doing is like, you know, still, still vegan, you know, still concentrating on how we

1429
01:24:59,450 --> 01:25:02,590
can help those animals with food. But there's, I think I talked about this with

1430
01:25:03,090 --> 01:25:05,950
you and Patrick actually, but there's a quote I always use which is, take what

1431
01:25:06,450 --> 01:25:09,710
the defense gives you. And so, you know, there's like this philosophy in football where,

1432
01:25:09,790 --> 01:25:12,310
you know, you don't have to throw the ball 80 yards down the field,

1433
01:25:12,810 --> 01:25:14,910
you just have to chip away. And, you know, if the defense is going to

1434
01:25:15,410 --> 01:25:17,510
give you five yards, take it. And then all of a sudden, five yards,

1435
01:25:18,010 --> 01:25:20,390
five yards, it comes into a touchdown. You know, you don't have to go for

1436
01:25:20,890 --> 01:25:23,430
it all at once. And that's sort of what we do with animal activism is

1437
01:25:23,930 --> 01:25:27,110
if we can just chip away at things that, that the communities are willing to

1438
01:25:27,610 --> 01:25:29,470
give to us, then all of a sudden, you know, we're making a difference.

1439
01:25:29,550 --> 01:25:32,310
Yeah. You know, the public might not be willing to give up meat, but they

1440
01:25:32,810 --> 01:25:36,230
are willing to give up fur. Foie gras experimentation. Right. Horse racing,

1441
01:25:36,730 --> 01:25:40,270
hopefully bull riding soon. Yes, yes, exactly. And, and it's

1442
01:25:40,770 --> 01:25:43,880
a way better alternative than giving up. And I think so many,

1443
01:25:43,960 --> 01:25:46,840
I've seen so many people there just give up. They're like, we're not going to

1444
01:25:47,340 --> 01:25:49,160
be able to do it. I'm just going to give up and just be vegan

1445
01:25:49,660 --> 01:25:52,720
all by myself. And there's, you know, the animals need us. All animals need

1446
01:25:53,220 --> 01:25:56,040
us. And I think that's really important. And if we can get that little five

1447
01:25:56,540 --> 01:25:59,720
yards, you know, it's better than giving up because you got somewhere, you know.

1448
01:26:00,840 --> 01:26:04,680
Yeah. Take some steps forward. Okay, so one last one.

1449
01:26:05,560 --> 01:26:09,170
What's one thing people can do right now, today to help animals?

1450
01:26:10,610 --> 01:26:14,610
I would say probably the most effective thing is to

1451
01:26:15,090 --> 01:26:17,650
investigate, especially like in your city,

1452
01:26:18,370 --> 01:26:21,610
who sells fur and who sells foie gras, because those are

1453
01:26:22,110 --> 01:26:25,010
sort of like the low hanging fruit right now. Like where. Great answer.

1454
01:26:25,330 --> 01:26:27,970
Yeah, that. And I think that's so important too, because a lot of times I'll

1455
01:26:28,470 --> 01:26:31,250
talk to people, like I was talking to some folks up in a city,

1456
01:26:31,330 --> 01:26:33,980
major city in Boston, and they were,

1457
01:26:34,460 --> 01:26:37,140
they're an animal rights group and they do great work, of course. And I was

1458
01:26:37,640 --> 01:26:39,660
kind of surprised, but I was like, yeah, you have a lot of restaurants itself,

1459
01:26:40,160 --> 01:26:43,380
foie gras. And then they were just kind of like, I don't know. And I

1460
01:26:43,880 --> 01:26:47,140
was like, what about fur? And they were like, yeah, maybe. And I was like,

1461
01:26:47,640 --> 01:26:49,619
I feel like those things, like, you know, we get, we get ourselves caught up

1462
01:26:50,119 --> 01:26:51,780
because we're just like, oh, you know, we want to end all these big things.

1463
01:26:52,280 --> 01:26:54,900
And yeah. There's things right in front of you that you can, that you could

1464
01:26:55,400 --> 01:26:57,820
absolutely take out and fur and foie gras. I mean, you probably just have to

1465
01:26:58,320 --> 01:27:01,340
tell a restaurant or a designer, like, hey, you know, we're going to protest you

1466
01:27:01,840 --> 01:27:04,860
if you still have that. They'd probably drop it. Yeah, yeah,

1467
01:27:05,420 --> 01:27:09,180
yeah. It's, it's, you know, it's there and it's doable. Right?

1468
01:27:09,260 --> 01:27:13,260
Yeah, right. And, and it's like, you know, society kind of is willing

1469
01:27:13,760 --> 01:27:16,460
to give those up too, because it's one item, you know, and it's like very

1470
01:27:16,960 --> 01:27:21,260
few fashion. I think pretty much every major retailer except Louis Vuitton doesn't

1471
01:27:21,760 --> 01:27:25,020
sell fur anymore. And so it's probably these small mom and pop shops that

1472
01:27:25,520 --> 01:27:27,820
like, you know, they probably don't make much money off of it anyways. Yeah.

1473
01:27:28,010 --> 01:27:31,650
And, and, and then with foie gras, too, a lot of these are like steakhouses

1474
01:27:32,150 --> 01:27:35,010
that sell, you know, a myriad of expensive dishes. One dish is not going to,

1475
01:27:35,510 --> 01:27:38,130
like, ruin their business, and it's not worth the test. And so that's something you

1476
01:27:38,630 --> 01:27:41,450
can change pretty much, you know, within a couple weeks within your city. Yeah,

1477
01:27:41,610 --> 01:27:45,130
that's great. Well, thank you so much for, for joining me

1478
01:27:45,210 --> 01:27:48,850
today. It was a great conversation with a lot

1479
01:27:49,350 --> 01:27:53,410
of uplifting things for people and, and activism and, and just

1480
01:27:53,910 --> 01:27:56,850
ways to keep going and not give up. So thank you so much for being

1481
01:27:57,350 --> 01:27:59,930
here with me and I'm sure we'll have you back on again because I think

1482
01:28:00,430 --> 01:28:03,970
there's a lot more that we want to talk to you about. So,

1483
01:28:04,210 --> 01:28:07,450
so thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for having me too,

1484
01:28:07,950 --> 01:28:10,570
Nicole. I, like I said when I first met you and Patrick, I was like,

1485
01:28:11,070 --> 01:28:12,850
I think we have to shut this conversation off because I think we're just going

1486
01:28:13,350 --> 01:28:16,730
to talk all day. If we don't. You guys are so easy to talk

1487
01:28:17,230 --> 01:28:20,660
to. And, and I agree, you both are uplifting. Yeah.

1488
01:28:21,160 --> 01:28:24,540
And it's great to be with like minded people, kindred spirits and,

1489
01:28:24,700 --> 01:28:28,420
and just talk about animals and the ways we can help them and to help

1490
01:28:28,920 --> 01:28:32,340
hopefully inspire other people to not give up and keep fighting. Absolutely.

1491
01:28:32,840 --> 01:28:36,220
Definitely. Yeah. And I look forward to talking to you soon. Yes. Thank you