Building Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation

Zane McNeill is a scholar-activist from West Virginia and was co-manager of the collective, Rights for Animal Rights Activists (RARA). They have published edited collections with Lantern Publishing & Media, PM Press, and Routledge.

Acknowledgments – Zane McNeill: Introduction – Catherine Oliver: Unfulfilled Resistance: The Labor of Not Surviving – S. Marek Muller: Violence Begets Violence: The Necessity of Solidarity with U.S. Slaughterhouse Workers – Ellyse Winter: Undercover Investigations and Carceral Veganism: The Limitations of "Removing the Veil" – Kelly Shanahan: Death or Deportation: A Nebraska-Based Study of the Exploitation of Immigrant Workers in Meatpacking Facilities and the Immigration Consequences of the Animal Protection Movement – Drew Robert Winter: Laboring for Nonhumans: An Autoethnography of an Animal Rights Non- Government Organization – Rajesh Reddy: Horses of a Different Color: Reckoning with Race in the March for Animal Rights – Hailey Huget: Abolish the Meat Industry: A Roadmap for Transforming Animal Liberation from a Single-Issue Cause into a Mass Movement – Will Boisseau: Animal Liberation, Class and Direct Action for Total Liberation – Dan Fischer: An Essay on Total Liberation: Marcusean Insights for Catalyzing Transformation – Nathan Poirier: Concluding Thoughts – Notes on Contributors.

Building Power through Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation is a necessary, timely collection. As the North American labor movement is finally building momentum again after decades of neoliberal divestment, the authors here persuasively argue that the animal liberation movement should embrace a truly intersectional, labor-focused theory of change. From theorizing the labor and resistance of individual animals to urging advocates to incorporate strategies from deep organizing, this thought-provoking collection will be a motivator for anyone interested in building a more just and equitable world.

Michael Swistara
Animal Protection lawyer, scholar, and activist

Relying on contemporary vegan, feminist, and critical race theories, Building Power through Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation examines the multispecies consequences that result from capitalist control over living (and dying). Emerging scholars specializing in social science, philosophy, and law consider how work and labor politics impact humans and other animals in co-occupied “work” spaces such as slaughterhouses, but also anthropocentric grassroots and professionalized workspaces that engage in rescue work and collective action. Constructions of race, class, gender, and species have historically been manufactured for the reproduction of oppression, but they can also be engaged for strategic resistance. Readers will be encouraged to question the utility of single-issue campaigning, the possibility of “ethical” consumption, and how to build bridges to adjacent human rights movements. With critical and theoretically informed analyses of everyday quandaries in anti-speciesist efforts, this is a book meant to be used and applied for multispecies emancipation and greater quality of life for all.

Dr Corey Lee Wrenn
Lecturer in Sociology, University of Kent

This collection of profound and poignant works illuminates the monstrous entangled oppression inherent in the slaughterhouse industry. It highlights the organizational and alliance-building work necessary for transcending the current oppressive social system. Brilliant, timely, and required reading for all pursuing a just and nonviolent future.

David Nibert
Author of Animal Oppression and Human Violence: Domesecration, Capitalism and Global Conflict

This anthology examines different ways power, oppression, and injustice affect both human and nonhuman animals, unfurling a rich tapestry of narratives to advocate for multispecies resistance. From community organizers to academics, these diverse perspectives represent a broad spectrum of lived experiences and professional backgrounds, uniting around the urgent need for change and creating avenues for genuine liberation for all.

Amber E. George
Assistant professor of philosophy and diversity, equity, and inclusion, Galen College

This timely volume brings together a select group of committed activist-scholars to address what is perhaps the central question facing the pro-animal movement today: How should we think about violent discrimination against animals in conjunction with other forms of social injustice? The essays highlight not only the entangled forms of oppression at work in slaughterhouses and related institutions, but also uncover subtle forms of marginalization and exploitation at the very heart of the animal rights movement itself. The authors collectively aim to do nothing less than bring these interconnected forms of oppression to the surface and find means for eliminating them. The book deserves to be widely read and its suggestions for change widely implemented.

Matthew Calarco
Professor of Philosophy, California State University at Fullerton

McNeill’s collection reveals, in important ways, how the “necropolitical” animal-industrial complex endangers the lives and interests of society’s most vulnerable human and non-human actors in problematic, intersectional, and illegal patterns. This collection forefronts stories and theories of resistance in the face of violence and oppression experienced by human and non-human laborers. It fleshes out a growing recognition of farmed animals as laborers, and their suffering as intersecting with those other human bodies that are rendered killable through white supremacy and racial capitalism. The scholar-activist authors provide brave personal accounts and inspirational tactics for multi-issue activism and total liberation which have interspecies solidarity at their heart. This is a vital and insightful contribution that will help readers locate the animal advocacy movement critically within its challenging social contexts

Iyan Offor
Senior Lecturer in Law at the School of Law, Birmingham, and author of Global Animal Law from the Margins: International Trade in Animals and their Bodies

Zane McNeill's Building Power through Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation is a pivotal collection illuminating the intersections of human and nonhuman labor within the necropolitical landscape of racial and carceral capitalism. From spotlighting the often-overlooked resistance of animals to scrutinizing practices in the animal advocacy nonprofit sector that reinforce systemic oppression, the activist-scholar contributors offer crucial insights for forging multispecies solidarity. Essential reading for social justice advocates, interdisciplinary scholars, and animal activists, this work provokes critical thought while charting a transformative path towards total liberation.

Sarat Colling
Author of Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era

Building Power through Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation draws on the work of some of the most important activist-scholars in the field at present. In foregrounding the violent landscapes of animal work, labor, and (resistance to) death, the book deepens our understanding of the interconnectedness of human and non-huma animal oppression in highly original and significant ways. Most importantly, these insights are drawn on to provoke new imaginaries into being - ones that might yet inform new approaches to interspecies solidarity that have potential to move us closer toward the liberation of all animals, humans included. It is an excellent, rigorous, and accessible publication, and one that deserves to be read widely.

Richard J. White
Co-Editor of Vegan Geographies: Spaces beyond Violence, Ethics Beyond Speciesism

Building Multispecies Resistance Against Exploitation: Stories from the Frontlines of Labor and Animal Rights edited by Zane NcNeill is a powerful captivating read from authors from around the world. This beautiful engaging collection of insightful writings from emerging international public intellectuals on animal and economic justice needs to be read by anyone interested in the state of agriculture and union organizing.

Dr. Anthony J. Nocella II, Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, Salt Lake Community College

Amidst a national renaissance of labor activism and rising class consciousness, this timely and necessary collection of essays calls the entire animal advocacy movement into the broader conversation about the disastrous effects of racialized capitalism. Incisive contributions from a diverse array of scholar-activists spotlight the dire need for animal advocacy organizations to recognize and respond to the inextricably linked hierarchies of oppression — including class, species, race, gender, and ability, among others — that form the foundations of capitalist exploitation. A vital intervention in the self-defeating politics and strategies of contemporary animal activism!

Elan Abrell
Instructor in Anthropology and Animal Studies, New York University