Photo credit: www.ourhenhouse.org
Our Hen House is a non-profit organization whose mission is to “effectively mainstream the movement to end the exploitation of animals.” However overt their agenda to promote animal welfare may be, they are indirectly connecting animal rights with other civil rights movements.
Our Hen House produces innovative multi-media resources to allow followers to “create change.” A large part of creating this change is collaborating with other advocacy groups in order to form a stronger foundation.
Jasmin Singer of Our Hen House paired with Mercy for Animals‘ founder, Nathan Runkle, and together they created a five minute video connecting two seemingly different causes: gay and animal rights.
According to video hosting site, Vimeo, the video is a part of “Our Hen House’s new Gay Animal series,” where Runkle, a “longtime animal rights activist and gay activist,” works “to bridge the connections between various social justice movements.”
On the Our Hen House blog, Jasmin offers some background to this project:
“The connections between the gay rights and animal rights movements has always been a very important theme in my own thinking about activism. Though I’ve written about it, and have even presented workshops at social justice conferences on the interconnections among social justice movements, my own thoughts on this subject are still a work in progress — something that I continue to explore and learn about. I’m very interested in others’ experiences with bridging social justice issues, including the LGBT/animal connection. In addition to the potential for awakening ourselves to others’ plights and fights — and having the opportunity to reach out to other communities with the animal rights message — exploring the connections can give us deeper insight (or perhaps our very first insight) into the dangers inherent in the “othering” mentality — you are different than me, which gives me the right to insert-the-blank.”
The Gay Animal: Nathan Runkle from Our Hen House on Vimeo.
Read more about The Gay Animal here. For more info about Our Hen House, visit their about page.
