FREEDOM 4 ALL?

CaveLight Films
5 min readMay 27, 2021

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Liberal Hypocrisy Highlighted in New Animated Short

“Freedom 4 All?” | Watch Now

THE PROBLEM

Liberals have a huge problem. Wait. Let me restate that.

Liberals ARE the problem.

Or at bare minimum, they are a HUGE contributor to the very problem they’re desperately trying to fix.

Ok, let’s break it down.

Progressives love protesting. They protest everything from environmental destruction to human-rights violations, all of which they do with a determined and earnest passion that is certainly commendable. Yet amid their multi-layered intersectional wokeness they conveniently overlook one crucial group…

Animals.

The absurdity is hard to miss.

As they take to the streets (or more typically the keyboard), they vehemently proclaim “Stop The Violence,” “End oppression,” and/or “Save The Planet!”

Yet they’ll do so while chomping on the carcasses of tortured animals, which decimates our environment and causes unimaginable suffering to both animals and humans alike.

“Bacon didn’t fall from bacon trees. This willful denial that everybody’s in, is obscene!” — Jane Velez-Mitchell

Jane looks at her fellow protesters with confusion & overwhelmed exacerbation | Watch Now

MEET JANE: THE MESSENGER WE LOVE TO HATE

Our new animated short features Jane Velez-Mitchell, a nationally known TV journalist and best-selling author, as she rails against this progressive paradox.

In a nutshell, her point is, you can’t expect to achieve real justice, equality or peace while causing the very thing you’re trying to fix.

Yet here’s the real kicker.

When someone like Jane points out this blatant contradiction the reaction isn’t, “Oh my god, thank you so much for helping us be more efficient and effective social justice warriors!”

Instead, it is typically met with an anger or frustration that often leads to mocking of vegans as “militant-one-issue-agenda-seekers” trying to demean human issues.

“The arrogance of our species is so profound, that to even speak about animal suffering is to somehow denigrate humans.” — Jane Velez-Mitchell

Jane holds up sign as her fellow protesters start to freak out | Watch Now

THE SOLUTION TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS?

Social justice advocates often say, “you can’t compare human issues to animal issues, they are completely different!”

The harsh truth is they’re right.

Animals are very different.

But does being different mean their suffering doesn’t count? Or that somehow they are ‘less than’ or not worthy of being thought of as a ‘someone’?

Perhaps most importantly, does it make any sense to fight for justice for our fellow human beings while simultaneously treating a different living being as a thing we oppress, torture and kill for our own momentary pleasure?

The answer of course is, no. But it isn’t just hypocritical. Acting this way is not in our own long-term self-interest.

If we truly want to fix the root cause of injustice we need to embrace that difference and live in accordance with our core values now in order to create the future we envision later.

Don’t take our word for it. Tolstoy, Gandhi, Socrates, they all got it. This is nothing new or groundbreaking but there is no escaping it: The means and the ends need to be the same.

“I would urge everyone who cares about social justice issues to expand their sense of compassion, to include all sentient beings.” — Jane Velez Mitchell

Cartoon Jane encourages hipster protester to reassess his choices / Watch Now

TOP 5 REASONS ANIMAL RIGHTS & SOCIAL JUSTICE ARE INTERCONNECTED

  1. Superiority complexes always end bad:
    The belief that humans are a superior species meant to dominate over animals is consistently linked to the dehumanization of marginalized human groups. Simply put, this mindset directly and inherently harms the fight for racial, gender, and other social equalities. Now imagine the ripple effect of teaching our kids equality and compassion of all beings instead of dominance and violence!
  2. Environment:
    Eating animals is one of, if not the leading cause of most of our environmental concerns including GHGs, deforestation, fresh water depletion, waste, ocean dead-zones and so much more.
  3. Marginalized Communities / Environmental Racism:
    Animal Ag disproportionately affects minorities, people living in poverty, tribal communities, immigrants, and the elderly. Eating meat and dairy is directly funding a system that screws the very communities we are concerned about. For instance, communities with less resources are forced to live near animal ag related facilities which can have devastating impacts; such as illness from poor water and air quality. This is just the beginning. We could go on and on.
  4. World Hunger:
    Want to end world hunger and food insecurity? Great! Avoiding the mass breeding and killing of animals for meat will help fix that too. Meat and dairy are the most inefficient calorie and protein sources we produce. In the U.S. for example, 60–75% of our crops are grown to feed animals (about 30–40% worldwide). So instead of having everyone grow feed for the world’s insatiable appetite for animals, we could just grow food directly for humans. Of course the answer is more complex than this. Fixing our deeply flawed global food system will take time. But it’s also pretty simple; a plant-based diet uses less land, less water, less resources, less exploitation to feed more people. It’s just basic math.
  5. Worker Rights
    Imagine all the terrible conditions for farm workers who harvest our fruits and veggies… now double it, add in more injuries and deeper psychological trauma inherent in slaughtering and “processing” baby animals all day. Again, this is just the beginning, more resources below…

Sources/Resources:

Article: Good overview of the intersection of animal rights and social movements

Deeper research/intro to Will Kymlicka and his work on this subject

Animal Ag environmental impact overview with easy to follow graphs/data

For more info, any questions, links to more research and lots of additional content: www.cavelightfilms.com

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CaveLight Films

A documentary film production company founded by Jordan Ehrlich