Species and Class is a really good blog which describes itself as “Exploring the animal-human relationship from socialist and anarchist perspectives”. If you like this blog, then Species and class is for you as we cover a lot of the same ground.
The latest post discusses the need for a new anti-speciesist imagery and makes some interesting points, especially with a critique of the classic fist and paw design which the author reckons is “unnatural and anthropomorphic”. Mmmm, not sure about that. He has a point but I still think it’s a good design.
He then turns to which colour animal liberationists should adopt for their struggle and says he thinks green is unsuitable because its associated with environmentalism which is “in no way popularly understood to be synonymous with anti-speciesism”, before concluding “perhaps we are not a large enough movement to ‘claim’ a color for ourselves, as socialism has done with red, anarchism has done with black, and environmentalism has done with green.”
In fact the British AR movement did adopt purple as its colour back in the nineties at the time of the anti-live exports campaign. Over the years, however, that gradually fell into disuse and in recent times purple has been taken up by the right wing United Kingdom Independence Party, with whom we would never wish to be associated.
Personally I don’t have a problem with using the colour green for animal liberation. While it may not be synonymous with the wider green movement – especially the watered down and liberal environmentalism practiced by the likes of the Green Party – it does make sense because animals are part of nature and we are trying to stop the exploitation of both.
So for the time being at least I’ll be sticking with Red, Black AND Green!
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