Despite strong pushback, BeFairBeVegan has also been lauded for its attempt to bring animal rights to the forefront of public awareness.
BeFairBeVegan, an animal rights advocacy collective that pairs an
uncompromising vegan message with striking imagery, launched its newest
chapter in Montréal, Quebec. The campaign was an advertising takeover of
Montréal’s Berri station along with 99 digital screens located in other key
stations and hubs around the city, and ran September 2nd through
September 29th, 2020.
The Berri Station campaign utilized print and digital media to display
messaging that is both touching and provocative. Commuters encountered
ads on the underground digital network, prompting them to learn more about
veganism and the organization’s mission. BeFairBeVegan launched their
Montréal campaign at the same time as a widespread, 8-week campaign in
Toronto. The Montréal and Toronto campaigns were the group’s first foray into
metro Canada.
"The truth is, the world can change,” says Joanna Lucas, the campaign’s
director. “Indeed, the world has changed many times before, and it has
changed in ways that seemed impossible at the time. The world will change,
but only if we confront the truths we go to great lengths to avoid or
distort: the truth that humane animal exploitation is a self-serving myth;
the truth that animal farm-ing on any scale is an ethical and environmental
disaster; the truth that fellow animals are not ours to own, use, and
‘harvest', but persons who happen to be nonhuman, individuals who have an
equal right to life and freedom from human oppression; the truth that being
vegan is not something we ‘try’ but something we owe our fellow animals.”
Since launching in Manhattan in 2016, BeFairBeVegan has undertaken similar
campaigns in seven other major cities around the world. The NYC launch
utilized a dramatic moving billboard in the middle of Times Square, inviting
onlookers to see the animals we use in a different light.
The advertisements aren’t always met with a warm welcome. In Melbourne, they
sparked talk of censorship after the government-owned Yarra Trams dropped
the campaign at the last minute. In St. John’s, Newfoundland, the ads were
rejected by the transit company Metrobus, even after evi-dence was provided
that the claims made were not “inaccurate or deceptive.”
Communications manager Angel Flinn explains: “The discomforting descriptions
our opponents would dismiss as being extreme are in fact accurate portrayals
of the violence that other animals endure every day, around the world.
Nonhumans everywhere serve as our unseen slave popula-tion, the unwilling
inhabitants of a degrading underground world, the specifics of which are
guard-ed by secrecy and protected by conveniently reassuring propaganda that
comforts its customers into believing that their everyday choices are not,
in fact, costing lives and liberties.”
Despite strong pushback, BeFairBeVegan has also been lauded for its attempt
to bring animal rights to the forefront of public awareness. The ads have
garnered attention from celebrities like actor and Academy Award nominee
Joaquin Phoenix, who praised BeFairBeVegan’s message that we need to
“address our speciesist attitudes.”
Return to: Animal Rights/Vegan Activist Strategies