Meat-Eating Grandmothers Blocked Trucks for Sheep. Can It Happen Again?

In search of the missing social movement for farmed animals.In 1995, thousands of people—disproportionately meat-eating moms and grandmas—laid their bodies across a road in a tiny English coastal town to stop trucks carrying live sheep to slaughter. For ten months, crowds of over a thousand showed up day after day, facing down riot police, in what remains the high-water mark of mass mobilization for farmed animals. Nothing like it has happened since. In this episode, I ask why. Drawing on my own years as an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, I work through the strategic mistakes that have kept the animal movement small and insular—from messaging that alienates the public, to campaigns designed for efficiency rather than inspiration, to an abolitionist philosophy that divided the movement over the very campaigns that could have united us. And I propose some directions for what it would take to trigger one more wave of mass protest for farmed animals before the window closes.This audio version of Sandcastles is produced using an AI clone of my voice. Please forgive mispronunciations. Read the original on Substack. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sandcastlesblog.substack.com