Saturday, July 23, 2011

Day 53: Animal Rights National Conference

       Today I decided to attend the Animal Right National Conference, held in the Westin Hotel in Los Angeles. Farm Animals Rights Movememnt (FARM) has actually been organizing this event since 1981, and is sponsored by many big vegan companies such as VegNews and Mercy For Animals. I really had no idea how such a big event this was until I attended and found that almost everyone I talked to was from another state or entirely different country! I was only one of the few that live in the area.



     People come from all over to attend this five day event at the Westin Hotel. These five days are packed with workshops, exhibits, movie premieres, and even early morning yoga. They have various concurrent tracks for people that come for different reasons. 

Various Tracks:
  1.  Issues Track  -covers different types of animal abuses and the underlying issues (they recommend this for newcomers).
  2. Organizational Track - Suggests improvements in personal and organizational effectiveness.
  3. Tactics Track - Addresses campaign tactics and outreach to various constituencies.
  4. Campaign Reports - Offer reports on activities and successes by leading national and local organizations.
  5. Rap Sessions - encourages participation in open discussions about controversial issues facing the movement.
  6. Videos - new video premieres with question and answer by their producers.

   
       Along with all these tracks they have a newcomer orientation, awards banquet, networking receptions, and  free exhibits. While I wish I was able to go to all of these, I only was able to make the free exhibits due to my budget. Next year though I am looking forward to trying to make the whole event. Since the registration for this event can be any where from $65 for a single day to $160 for all five days there a couple of ways to get into this event at a discounted rate or even for free.

Here are some options for those of you on a budget:

4 comments:

  1. What do they do exactly?? I mean its not like they can stop people or factory farming or anything!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Many of the people who attended this event work for nonprofit agencies, are authors, activists, or even just interest in the subject matter. People at this event are often political activists and/or lobbyists. They often seek to educate others as well as themselves, and hopefully change some laws in the process.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Suppose you're a vegan mother who has an infant child. You want to raise the child on a vegan diet. Do you give the child milk from your breasts or would you give them soy milk right from the beginning? Is it okay to give soy milk to an infant instead of breastfeeding?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The best way to go is breast feeding for it has all the nutrients a baby needs. There are also soy milk formulas, but they really should not be used to replace breast feeding until after the first year, for it does not contain the right nutrients for a new born baby. The soy milk formulas for babies is also a big controversy so I would do a little bit of research and decide for yourself what you think is best.

    ReplyDelete