The Animal Times

Project Animal Freedom’s official blog

Reparations: A Social Justice Imperative
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Reparations: A Social Justice Imperative

250 years of slavery. 90 years of Jim Crow. 60 years of separate but equal. 35 years of racist housing policy. At Project Animal Freedom, we pride ourselves on fighting for justice for all, no matter one’s sex, sexuality, skin color, site of origin, socioeconomic status, disability status, senescence, and even species. Learn more about our support for reparations below.

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2021 and PAF: A Year of Dramatic Growth
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

2021 and PAF: A Year of Dramatic Growth

At Project Animal Freedom, we are dedicated to building a fully vegan Midwest by 2056 through a strategic, chapter-based system. We have made enormous progress toward this ambitious goal over the past year, growing our member base dramatically, reaching millions of people on social media, and launching our first two chapters outside the state of Missouri—one in Lincoln, Nebraska, and another in Springfield, Illinois. Learn more about the victories supporters like you made possible in 2021 below.

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Are reparations to African people fanciful speculation?
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Are reparations to African people fanciful speculation?

For decades, politicians at almost every level of government have told us that when it comes to investing in the American working class, it is simply too expensive. But is this truly the case? Are reparations to African people, in particular, truly no more than fanciful speculations unbound by pressing economic realities?

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Animal Agriculture: Motherhood Betrayed
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Animal Agriculture: Motherhood Betrayed

This Mother’s Day, we not only commemorated the millions of more-than-human animals so cruelly separated from their mothers by the animal abuse industry, but also recognized an exceptional mother within our ranks at Project Animal Freedom: Jenna Luzynski.

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Project Animal Freedom: A Tale of Exponential Growth
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Project Animal Freedom: A Tale of Exponential Growth

Project Animal Freedom is now the largest, most active, and most successful we have ever been. Not only did over 100 people RSVP to our past two virtual events, including a full 124 people for our first annual Vegan Climate Summit, but we have now received 43 leadership applications as part of our Vegan Talent Search since the beginning of the year. Learn more about our exponential growth these past six months, and invest in the future of the Midwestern animal rights movement today!

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How to Mobilize the Midwestern Animal Rights Movement: A Manifesto
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

How to Mobilize the Midwestern Animal Rights Movement: A Manifesto

As we enter the second quarter of the year this Vegster, our team at Project Animal Freedom would like to announce that we have developed a more effective campaign structure that no longer revolves around monthly educational campaigns, but rather larger, more substantive quarterly campaigns that directly reflect our core strategic goals as an organization.

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The Ultimate Vegan Fish Sticks
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

The Ultimate Vegan Fish Sticks

Craving fish? Then look no further! We have the perfect recipe for you, one that manages to capture that uniquely fishy taste and texture you’re looking for using a little known ingredient: hearts of palm!

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How veganism supercharged my running endurance
Guest User Guest User

How veganism supercharged my running endurance

I ran my first marathon when I was 19 years old. At that point in my life, I ate an omnivorous diet and relied on meat products for my protein. Although my calorie intake was sufficient, I always felt exhausted following my runs, and I could not complete a long run without side cramps or having to stop multiple times. I altered my pace, sleep schedule, shoes, and anything I thought could be an issue, except my diet. But after a simple dietary change, my running endurance improved dramatically.

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How veganism helped my UTI’s and endometriosis
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

How veganism helped my UTI’s and endometriosis

Before I gave up consuming animal products and began advocating for a vegan lifestyle, I frequently ate chicken. Because I have an autoimmune disease, chicken was the only meat I could consume as part of an anti-inflammatory diet that did not negatively affect my body. Along with my autoimmune disease, I also struggled with endometriosis, a condition that affects me to this day. Little did I realize that switching to a vegan diet could dramatically improve both conditions.

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12 months of vegan activism
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

12 months of vegan activism

At Project Animal Freedom, we are not only committed to exposing animal agriculture; we are dedicated to abolishing it. Despite decades of activism, however, the scale of modern animal agriculture only continues to grow, driven by rising populations and increasing affluence around the globe. The moral catastrophe of modern animal agriculture therefore necessitates bold, sustained action if we are to convince billions of human animals to reduce and ideally eliminate their animal product consumption and call on world governments to ban factory farms and slaughterhouses once and for all. In this article, you can discover all 12 of our monthly campaigns directed toward our overarching goal of complete and total animal liberation.

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Our strategic plan for building a vegan Midwest
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Our strategic plan for building a vegan Midwest

“After falling asleep on the couch from sheer exhaustion on Thursday, unable to even speak in my semi-crapulous, catatonic state, struggling just to pause the final chapter of The Maze Runner series, let alone rise to prepare vegan spaghetti and meatballs for the rest of my family, I [shuddered] awake whereupon my mom began screaming at me about how I am such an incompetent leader, causing a grown woman to cry while my mother wailed, grief-stricken, until well past 2 a.m. in the morning, any attempt to console her backfiring in a cacophony of attacks.” Join us as we reflect on our tumultuous beginning—and our auspicious future.

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Meat: The Ultimate Betrayal
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Meat: The Ultimate Betrayal

“All the while I sat, petrified like stone, my left hand clenching the arm rest, my eyes fixed on the ever-turning update wheel, and my phone frozen to my ear. By the time my dad started conversing with me, my mouth seemed glued shut as I could barely form words, overcome by the same emotion I felt upon learning of Hillary Clinton’s shocking defeat on that tragic, groggy day last November. Several seconds passed between each painful, nondescript answer, until finally I revealed the truth—‘My presentation was a disaster,’ I mumbled, choking on suppressed tears.”

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The next pandemic is closer than you think
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

The next pandemic is closer than you think

During my first semester at St. Louis University, tragedy struck my family. It began with a severe cold featuring painful coughing fits that lasted, unabated, for an entire week. By the end of that week, my mom could no longer use her right arm to fill prescriptions at Walgreens, where she worked as a staff pharmacist of 23 years. Little did we realize her mysterious condition had a startling connection to a deadly pathogen harbored in factory farms.

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Our Midwest Mandate
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Our Midwest Mandate

Since our inception, we have dedicated ourselves to fulfilling the following core promise: launching a Midwestern revolution for animal rights in just three years. This World Vegan Day, we would like to discuss our progress toward this goal, as well as outline our plans for taking this revolution to the next level.

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The Need for Reparations: A Berniecrat’s Perspective
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

The Need for Reparations: A Berniecrat’s Perspective

As a self-professed Berniecrat, I naively imagined that Bernie was the best we could hope for in 2016 and 2020. He championed Medicare For All, tuition-free public universities, and, perhaps most importantly of all, a Green New Deal. I felt he was the best positioned to enact a mass WWII-style mobilization to tackle climate change, and I felt he sincerely fought for and ached alongside the working class. But there is one major, transformative policy he consistently overlooked: reparations to African people.

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Hollywood Comes to Life in an L.A. Slaughterhouse
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Hollywood Comes to Life in an L.A. Slaughterhouse

At its best, Hollywood acts as a harbinger of social change. Visionary directors seek to anticipate the future and, in so doing, introduce their audience to ideas previously beyond the public imagination. This dynamic played out a few weeks ago in L.A., where animal rights activists brought Okja—a 2017 film by Academy Award-winning Bong Joon-ho—to life.

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Columbus Day Is Dying. Indigenous Peoples’ Day Is the Future.
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Columbus Day Is Dying. Indigenous Peoples’ Day Is the Future.

This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we remember not only the millions of indigenous people who died at the hands of Western imperial interests, but also the legacy of imperialism, colonialism, and racism more generally, a bloody, tear-stained history that haunts millions of Americans to this day.

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Moral Progress: Three Feminist Perspectives
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Moral Progress: Three Feminist Perspectives

How does moral progress come about? From narratives of an aspirational future to the idea of the home as a repair shop, we discuss three different perspectives on the phenomenon of moral progress as developed by leading feminist thinkers.

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Today, we celebrate Mental Illness Awareness Week
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Today, we celebrate Mental Illness Awareness Week

At Project Animal Freedom, we strive to build a welcoming, thriving community no matter one’s sex, sexuality, skin color, socioeconomic status, senescence, species, or disability status. Today, I would like to highlight Mental Illness Awareness Week by discussing my own struggles with mental health.

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Here's What Meat-Eaters Really Think of Veganism, According to a New Study
Kyle Luzynski Kyle Luzynski

Here's What Meat-Eaters Really Think of Veganism, According to a New Study

Most people in the UK are committed meat eaters – but for how long? My new research into the views of meat eaters found that most respondents viewed veganism as ethical in principle and good for the environment. It seems that practical matters of taste, price, and convenience are the main barriers preventing more people from adopting veganism – not disagreement with the fundamental idea. This could have major implications for the future of the food industry as meat alternatives become tastier, cheaper and more widely available.

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