When I was a college organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, I dismissed the welfare campaigners at The Humane League as sellouts. They thought I was a naïf. Neither of us was right — but it took years for me to understand why. In this classic essay, I argued that the old "welfarism versus abolitionism" divide was always a category error: every animal advocate is an incrementalist, just focusing on different increments. The more useful frame, borrowed from social movement theory, is the inside-outside strategy — and once you see it, the apparent contradiction between cage-free campaigns and restaurant disruptions starts to look less like a civil war and more like a playbook.

Sunday morning, I joined Chris Bryant’s popular Youtube stream for a wide-ranging discussion on all of my favorite topics: pragmatic campaigning, movement factionalism, and AI’s impact on animals.

This was a full-circle moment for me. When I started Pax Fauna without any research experience to speak of, Chris gave me some helpful advice. I was tickled to hear that my writing has helped him think about AI and even inspired him to drop thousands of dollars on Claude Max plans for his team.

Enjoy!

Please join me and 2,000 other people in Wisconsin on April 19 to tear a Beagle farm apart brick by brick and rescue every one of the 2,000 dogs still languishing inside. Sign up here.