May 5, 2025 • 54 mins
🎙️ Truth Files with Jane Velez-Mitchell on UnchainedTV
In this inspiring episode, award-winning journalist Jane Velez-Mitchell spotlights Connect for Animals, a free, not-for-profit platform revolutionizing how advocates fight to end factory farming and protect animals. This powerful conversation reveals how this innovative community is empowering people to take action and create a more compassionate world.
Connect for Animals is like a purpose-driven LinkedIn—helping you discover local and virtual animal advocacy events, connect with over 1,800 users, and find high-impact actions you can take right from your phone. Whether you’re joining protests, attending conferences, or meeting like-minded changemakers, this platform makes it easy to stay engaged and inspired.
“Connect for Animals is designed to make animal advocacy accessible and effective,” says Founder and Executive Director Steven Rouk. In this interview, you’ll also hear from Events Data Manager Jeannie Walter and Marketing Manager Geetika Sripathi about how this community came to life—and why your voice matters.
✨ Get Involved:
-
Discover and join local and virtual animal advocacy events
-
Take quick, high-impact actions to help animals
-
Connect with compassionate people who share your values
Download the app on your cellphone or visit:
https://connectforanimals.com
🎧 Listen, subscribe, and learn how you can be part of the movement to end factory farming and build a better future for animals.
🎙️ About Your Host
Jane Velez-Mitchell is an award-winning journalist, TV producer, and New York Times bestselling author who created UnchainedTV, the world’s leading streaming TV network dedicated to the plant-based lifestyle, vegan living, and animal rights advocacy. Through UnchainedTV, Jane shares over 2,000 free documentaries, vegan cooking shows, sustainable living programs, and breaking news stories that empower audiences to make compassionate, conscious choices.
Watch UnchainedTV for free on any device, including Amazon Fire Stick, Roku, Apple TV, Samsung Smart TVs, or stream instantly on your phone. Discover more at UnchainedTV.
🎥 WATCH for FREE https://unchained.tv ✅ SUBSCRIBE to our channel! / @UNCHAINEDTV 📘 Facebook / janevelezmitchell 📸 Instagram / unchained_tv 🐦
X / Twitter / jvm
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to the Unchained TV podcast.
Animals are suffering by the billions in factory farms.
What can we do to speak for these voiceless animals?
There are people who go out there and get arrested.
There are people who use virtual reality tools
(00:21):
to go into factory farms
to document what's happening to them.
There are people who are writing books.
We just interviewed two last week,
trying to wake people up about the need
to not support factory farms in their consumer purchases.
Well, now we've got another breakthrough.
It's called Connect for Animals.
(00:43):
And those are the three leading team members
behind this new initiative
to speak up for factory farmed animals.
Have you heard about the amazing new platform
for animal rights events?
Connect for Animals is a user-friendly platform
where you can find and share animal rights events
in all of North America.
It's perfect for people who are trying
to find activism opportunities or share their own.
(01:05):
You can even find lectures, meditations,
and conferences on their website.
Empower the hundreds of thousands of people
who care deeply about ending factory farming,
but aren't sure where to start.
We're building a community
where anyone can learn about this movement,
discover events and organizations,
and find ways to get involved.
(01:38):
Welcome.
We are talking about Connect for Animals.
We're so delighted to have the three lead organizers
of this incredible breakthrough app
that you can download on your phone
and you can also get online at connectforanimals.com.
So let's get right to it.
The team is here and we are gonna talk to them.
(02:01):
Stephen Rook, you are the founder.
Why did you start this incredible app?
What inspired you?
Absolutely.
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having us here.
It's just a delight to be here.
And I do wanna give a shout out to the rest of our team
that couldn't be here today.
We have lots of amazing folks working behind the scenes.
So why Connect for Animals?
(02:22):
Essentially, I've been doing animal advocacy
for about a decade in various capacities
and have talked to so many people during that time
who care about animals, who are vegan or vegetarian,
wanna help end factory farming.
And this was my experience too,
where it's hard to get involved.
It's hard to find your place.
It's hard to find out how to take action,
what events there are, what organizations there are.
(02:44):
And after a long time of seeing this gap,
I wanted to do something about it essentially.
And so that was the seed of the idea
behind Connect for Animals and asking,
how can we make sure that if people care about this issue,
and there are a ton of people
who care about this issue globally.
If you care about this issue,
how can we make it as easy as possible to get involved?
And that's really the seed of the idea.
(03:04):
And then we created the Connect for Animals platform
as the answer to help people get involved
in ending factory farming,
which we think is one of the biggest ethical issues
on the planet today.
And there you are.
It's just amazing.
I did just sign up.
So excited that this exists.
(03:24):
I've been dreaming about something like this for a long time
but it takes a lot.
It takes marketing and it takes organizational skills.
So I wanna go out to Jeannie.
You are the person who is going to kind of
try to organize all this amongst other people as well.
(03:46):
How the heck do you do it?
Because I know just trying to organize 10 people
for a meetup could drive me out of my mind sometimes.
So this is gonna take a lot of organization.
Jeannie, take it away.
Well, I think, you know,
the biggest thing is that our group of volunteers
is super motivated.
I mean, we are all about meeting people where they're at.
(04:09):
Whether you're veg curious, if you're vegan already,
if you're a hardcore activist,
we want everybody to be part of Connect for Animals,
to join us on the platform
and to help out wherever you feel like you fit in.
We have a really solid volunteer team.
We have folks that do social media.
We just created a new blog.
(04:30):
So we have like writers.
I am in charge of events data management.
And what that means is I'm pretty much going through
and curating these events.
But like Stephen was saying,
our team is just rock solid
and we're just all about new ideas,
creating, you know,
(04:50):
just creating an enthusiasm for ending factory farming.
And that really helps grease the skids.
It makes our life, you know, not easy
because there is so much work.
Like Stephen was saying behind the scenes,
there is a lot of moving parts
and we just do the best we can to plug people in
where they need to be volunteers and, you know,
(05:11):
members alike, you know, whoever we can get involved,
that's what we're about.
All right.
And you can sign up at connectforanimals.com
and you can also just do my favorite way.
You go to the phone,
just like you've signed up for Unchained TV,
the world's only streaming TV network.
You can sign up, have these apps on your phone.
(05:33):
I signed up and you're gonna be like,
oh, there's Jane again posting some more
because I think this is fantastic.
So let me ask you, Katita,
how do you get the world to know that this app exists?
Because that's our challenge.
We've created the world's only vegan animal rights
(05:55):
streaming television network and fast channel network,
but we don't have a multimillion dollar advertising budget.
We can't have billboards all over LA.
We can't have TV commercials.
And I would assume that the challenge is the same for you.
How are you gonna counteract it?
Maybe I could learn a thing or two.
Totally, Jane.
And that's where we are right now.
(06:16):
I mean, so far, just Stephen's amazing work
leading this platform and developing it
into this app as well.
It's come such a long way
and there's been tremendous word of mouth,
which has gotten us to the place we are at now
up to almost 2000 users.
But now we're ready to really take it to the next level,
meet people where they're at.
So we're looking at, as Jeannie mentioned,
(06:39):
blog, new content creation for social media.
We're also branching out with some paid advertisements
that are really tested and targeted,
as well as extending out to events of all sorts,
local and potentially virtual as well.
So we really wanna just maximize
how we can get the word out
and do a lot of testing along the way to see what works.
(07:00):
Well, I love this.
I have to tell you that I feel it's very needed.
I literally have been dreaming of something like this
for a long time.
And one of the reasons is that veganism,
which obviously is connected to ending factory farming,
if everybody went vegan, we wouldn't have factory farming.
It's been under attack.
(07:21):
And I'm just gonna put up a couple of the,
I think, outrageous headlines
that are the headlines of outrageous articles.
Meat is back on plates and in politics
after years in which plant-based was the mantra.
Meat once again dominates the national conversation
about dinner.
That's the New York Times.
The middle one is new research is bad news for vegans.
Even if you eat plant-based protein,
(07:42):
that's the New York Post.
Yeah, to be expected, but still.
This one, BBC Science,
even protein-rich vegan diets may fall short
on key nutrients.
Studies suggest hogwash, or should I say,
maybe I shouldn't use the word phrase hogwash.
Could that be speciesist?
Nonsense, okay?
We have millions and millions of people
(08:04):
who are vegan for decades.
I know people who were born vegan.
Their health stats are better than the general public.
There's great documentaries like Game Changers
and documentaries about blue zones, et cetera.
We can't let this stand.
I was a reporter for more than 30 years.
If you start getting negative commentary
(08:25):
about your reporting, it usually results in a trip
to your immediate supervisor's office,
which is not pleasant, and you have to justify yourself.
So right now, these reporters, these journalists
are operating in a no-consequence zone,
and they feel like they can get away with saying anything
because nobody's gonna respond.
As soon as I saw your platform, I go, aha,
(08:47):
because we've already started tweeting responses.
In fact, today, we just did a donnymossoftheirturn.net
on his ex account, did a response to a New York Times
article bemoaning that laboratory animals might be killed
due to budget cuts.
(09:08):
It's like, hello, they were gonna be tortured
and killed anyway.
Can you at least mention that?
It was just mind-boggling, but we got whatever,
seven or eight retweets.
Imagine if these articles got 1,000 retweets.
Imagine if everybody who signed up to Connect for Animals
went on X and retweeted with a comment.
(09:30):
That would be a game changer,
and I'd like to get your thoughts on that, Stephen.
As somebody I know, you have a lot of background
in the animal rights movement,
having worked at Mercy for Animals,
and so you know the territory.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so, a lot of what you said really resonates with me
and sort of why we started Connect for Animals
in the first place, and that's because there are,
(09:52):
first of all, there are so many great actions and campaigns
that are happening all the time.
There are a ton of amazing organizations
that are trying to make progress on different parts
of the system related to factory farming animals for food.
There's also animal experimentation.
There's all kinds of different facets
at which you can look at animal ethics, right?
And there's so many amazing organizations.
(10:14):
And if you want to, for example,
there are a lot of people out there
who want to take action across all of these different areas
or these different organizations,
and if one of those people just wanted to ask the question
of where could I go to look at the campaigns
that are happening across all of the different organizations
that I care about, I mean, currently,
(10:36):
the best solution, I guess, before Connect for Animals
is like you sign up for kind of every email newsletter
on the planet and wait for those action alerts to come out.
And I know that some people do this,
and it's great that they do,
but we want to reduce the friction however we can.
So something that we started working on last year
and something that we're going to keep working
on going forward is pulling these campaign actions
(10:58):
from all the different organizations,
having them on Connect for Animals,
so that if people say, like,
what can I do to take action for animals right now?
And they just want to help.
They're not putting together the campaigns.
They're relying on these great organizations
to put together the campaigns,
and then they want to take action on them.
If we can have all of those actions together in one place,
(11:20):
which we're making progress towards,
then somebody can come to Connect for Animals
and say, here's a great action from Mercy for Animals
or from their turn or from PETA
or across all of these different areas,
and they can just go through and boom, boom, boom,
action, action, action, just run down the list
and make a difference across all of these things.
(11:41):
And I guess talking a little bit about that point
and something else you mentioned earlier
about there being this backlash against veganism
or against animal ethics,
I think that if people start caring about this issue,
but they're not fully committed,
like the people here, the people in this room right now,
like us doing this interview,
if people hear about it,
(12:02):
they start caring about the issue,
but these things always go in cycles,
and then suddenly there's this big media pushback.
If this person hasn't gotten connected
to the rich animal advocacy ecosystem,
if they do not have all the facts,
if they do not have the social support,
if they haven't taken the time to really learn,
they're gonna be swayed back into the mainstream
(12:22):
very, very easily,
or back into whatever the sort of talking points
of the day are, right?
So a lot of media outlets don't even necessarily care.
With the anti-vegan stuff, for example,
it's just like, oh, we've been pro-vegan,
pro-animal for a little while.
Well, now people are bored of that,
so the thing that's gonna be clickable
is like, oh, let's be anti-vegan, anti-animal
for a little bit.
It's like, can we find something that elevates
(12:43):
the problems of veganism,
because maybe people will love to click on that
if they've gotten bored of the,
oh, plant-based actually seems like
it's typically better for your health.
It's like, oh, that's boring now.
We need to get people to click on things.
So if we with Connect for Animals
can get people more socially connected,
more engaged in the animal advocacy movement,
then hopefully they can be more resilient
(13:05):
to these kind of media cycles that we live in as well.
And that's also a goal is just keeping people here longer
in the animal advocacy space.
I think you've made excellent points.
I will say, having been a journalist for more than 30 years,
journalists are pack animals, okay?
Is that speciesist?
No, I don't know.
(13:25):
I don't know that every reference to animals is speciesist.
It's only if it's a negative reference.
A lot of them are.
It's hard to tell, yeah.
It's hard to tell.
But the truth is that you're right.
It happens in waves and there's the swing of the pendulum.
So with the launch of Beyond Meat
as a public stock in 2019, there was a swing.
I even had people who used to dismiss me,
(13:47):
call me and text me and say,
wow, you were really ahead of your time.
Well, now it's swinging back,
but we can easily reverse that again
and make it even bigger.
I mean, if you look at social justice movements,
it was never just a straight lineup.
If you look at the LGBTQ movement,
(14:07):
and I speak as a member, it was going up slowly.
Then the AIDS crisis hit.
There was a lot of hate.
Then there was a resurgence.
And now, I mean, it's not static.
So I think what you're describing is absolutely correct,
but the question is,
(14:29):
how do we tell our side of the story
in this social media and mainstream media landscape?
And so I think that what you're doing is very important
and I will definitely, definitely use your app
to try to motivate people to respond
(14:52):
by just clicking on X.
Because one thing I've learned,
do you ask people to write a letter?
No.
And what PETA and other organizations,
including PCRM and Mercy for Animals
and these other big groups, they've automated it.
Now, I have to go back to you again.
I did look at your bio, which is very impressive.
And I noticed that you are a mathematician.
(15:13):
You graduated summa cum laude with a degree in mathematics.
And that's just the start.
You've done a lot.
How are you gonna use your math skills
to work with the algorithms to get,
that I think is the key.
I mean, I have a calculator, that's my math skill,
(15:36):
but you have some real math skills.
How are we gonna use those math skills
to hit the algorithms?
Yeah, I mean, I'll say a couple of things
and then actually I might wanna popcorn it over to Geetika
to see if she has any marketing insights here.
Because I very much math brain, right?
That's kind of my background,
math, data science, data engineering.
Like I was on the math team in high school
(15:57):
for all four years, competed at state level competitions,
like big nerd, right?
Big, big nerd.
Not really good at the social media thing.
That's never really been my space.
And so like social media, media,
I'm actually, I have kind of a hard time at that.
But I mean, when it comes to math,
when it comes to data, when it comes to AI, for example,
technology in general, that's a big part of NEC for Animals.
(16:20):
What we do is trying to make these things
happen at scale and get people connected
to the resources and the organizations and the events
that are gonna be a good fit for them.
And so, Jeannie and Geetika definitely have a view
under the hood here, but there is a lot of data involved.
There's a lot of technology.
(16:41):
I mean, with Unchained TV, I'm sure that you know as well,
the technology gets complicated really quickly.
And especially when you're dealing with a lot of data,
a lot of resources, opportunities, groups,
and users, and you're trying to connect one to the other,
you're trying to do this matchmaking process essentially
in general of like, okay, somebody comes in the door.
(17:02):
They're gonna be interested in certain things.
They're gonna have certain skills.
And how can we get them pointed to the spot
in the animal advocacy space that's going to be
a really good fit for them, right?
And so we actually try to be, you know,
even a little less like biased about where people end up,
(17:23):
like what organization maybe they end up supporting
or what campaigns they work on.
We just kind of want people to get involved, to get engaged.
And so on the mathy data side,
there's a lot of really interesting stuff.
Like I said, I'm a big old nerd,
data science and machine learning,
trying to do this matching,
this like recommendation algorithm, right?
Like of who would be interested in what.
(17:45):
We have a lot of really cool work
that we can do on that going forward.
And there's already a lot of interesting stuff
behind the scenes and under the hood.
But Geetika, I mean, from a marketing
and social media perspective,
feel free to chime in if you have anything else.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Steven.
I would just tack onto that.
The beauty of having a platform
(18:06):
is that everything is so centralized.
So, you know, when I first,
my first big vegan event that I attended
was in Portland, Oregon.
And it's a vegan hub
and there's a lot of access to things.
But something like Connect for Animals
would really allow someone
who doesn't have that access
to get involved on a much bigger scale
(18:26):
than they could otherwise.
And once we have all of that
sort of centralized data in a platform,
then we can start to understand
like what really supports people out there
to be advocates
and how can we better support them?
And also partner with bigger organizations
that are doing this work to say,
hey, like we have these learnings,
(18:48):
now you can use that for your advocacy campaigns.
And really just by that cohesion
and centralization,
I think it can be so much more powerful.
So where Connect for Animals
is allowing us to speak with one voice,
which I personally think is so important.
I have zero tolerance for infighting.
(19:11):
And unfortunately it does occur in our movement
and people try to drag Unshade TV or me into it.
I'm like, leave us alone.
We're just wanna speak for voiceless animals.
Keep us out of your infighting.
Anytime we're fighting amongst ourselves,
the other side is applauding
and saying, yeah, keep fighting.
So I tell people, for example,
(19:32):
you wanna be a raw vegan,
go right ahead,
but don't post and not meet alternatives.
Fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains
have always been there.
If we, everybody's always had the option to choose those.
Those products were created
because people weren't choosing those.
So that's number one.
And number two,
to speak with a unified voice
(19:54):
because there's strength in numbers.
And a lot of these meat industry organizations,
they have all sorts of associations.
You know, the Cattlemen's Association
and this association and that association.
I don't think we have the kind of grassroots association
where people can speak with one voice
when something happens that,
(20:14):
and being in the media,
I'm particularly attuned to the media,
which sets the tone for society.
Let's face it.
The New York Times is the most important newspaper
in the world.
When it says meat is back,
that telegraphs to everybody
and the intelligentsia,
the big money, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, meat's back.
We don't have to worry about that anymore.
So those are very dangerous articles
(20:35):
that have to be counteracted.
And I'll also say as a journalist,
if you see that another journalist
has gotten blowback for its reporting,
it sends a message to you,
maybe I should think twice about doing a very slanted,
badly researched piece about veganism
where I don't contact the other side.
I mean, the New York Times article,
(20:57):
why didn't they talk to PETA?
Why didn't they talk to PCRM?
Why didn't they talk to MercyFran?
Why didn't they talk to all these organizations?
They talked to one organization with one quote
that I could see.
That's not a balanced article.
And so I feel that this is super exciting
because it would allow if we had an action alert
(21:20):
and we use mathematics to make it simple,
not sit there and write a letter to your...
The other day I was at an event and they said,
everybody has to write to their city council person.
I'm like, good luck with that.
We don't live in that kind of era.
It's gotta be something where they boom and it goes out.
That's what PETA is so good at.
I mean, almost every day I get something from PETA
(21:42):
that says do Y or do X or do something
and it sends out letters.
And there's other organizations as well
that do that very effectively.
A small number.
The vast majority do not have the technology
or perhaps the funding and or the technology to do that.
But my question to you is,
are you gonna fill that space?
Because I think that would be,
(22:04):
first of all, incredibly effective.
And I also think it would put you on the map
and allow you to collaborate with other organizations
to be like that mouthpiece.
Because we've actually been looking for that.
We've been looking for the project
that Their Turn and Unchained TV works on
to challenge these reporters
who are writing these misinformed articles
in mainstream media is like,
(22:25):
okay, we've done an X response and we put it on X,
we put it on Facebook, we put it on LinkedIn.
Now how do we get other people to retweet it?
How do we get other people to say,
yeah, and blah, blah, blah.
And people are saying, agree with you.
So thank you.
Not always, but this time they're agreeing.
Okay.
What do you say?
No, no, no, of course.
(22:46):
I think, yeah.
Not always agree.
You know, it's good to have
a little vigorous debate every now and then.
I hear you on the infighting though.
And just to go back to one thing there really quickly.
I do think that healthy disagreement can be good.
I think that, yeah, the problem absolutely exists
when it descends into people
just tearing each other apart for no reason.
And as Connect for Animals,
(23:06):
since our entire goal is to help people find groups
and organizations and events and things,
we really do in general have to be kind of pro
the whole movement, support the whole movement.
I mean, that's our role here is to show people
all of the options that are available.
(23:26):
And unless we have a very good reason not to,
we're generally gonna try to show people
everything that's out there, right?
Which is a diversity of approaches, of strategies,
of theories of change.
And so I think that's a very healthy thing.
But when it comes to your question
about options and centralizing that,
absolutely, I do think, you know,
(23:48):
there's, first of all, like get people to care, right?
And then even if you have all these people who care,
how do you get them to take action?
Like you said, like getting people to sit down
and write a long letter to their city council people.
Some people will do that, absolutely.
Some people will invest however much time
and energy it takes, however difficult the task is.
(24:09):
But those people are few and far between.
Lots of us, I mean, myself included,
like I'm inclined to do certain things
and not inclined to do others.
If you make it really, really, really easy for me,
then I'm probably more likely to do it.
And I think that that is true
of pretty much everybody out there.
And so I think that, you know,
the question for us at Connect for Animals
is something that we have started working on,
(24:30):
is, you know, like I said,
pulling together these action alerts,
these campaigns from different organizations.
One problem that we run into pretty quickly,
and so this is gonna be a challenge for us going forward
and something that we're thinking through,
but if anyone in your audience has ideas also,
then we'd love to hear,
is the volume of possible actions
(24:51):
can get pretty big pretty quickly.
So for example, large organizations
will have specific campaigns,
maybe against specific companies,
and there maybe won't be a ton of those.
But if you go down to the individual activist level,
every single social media post
that every animal activist is putting out there,
if we count each one of those as a distinct action
(25:15):
of like amplifying a certain message,
then kind of the space of possible actions
can blow up very quickly.
And that's not a bad thing.
I mean, that's actually a very good thing
if we have so much work that's happening.
But then the question becomes,
and this is a challenge for us at Connect for Animals,
is how do we show the right thing to the right person?
And how do we present all of this information to people
(25:36):
without them getting overwhelmed?
And that's sort of related to the getting people
to sit down and write their city council members, right?
Is the question of not getting people to care
and not about the information itself,
but the presentation of the information,
the presentation of this stuff, nudging users,
getting people to be able to feel like,
(25:57):
oh, hey, this is easy.
Oh, like, I can do this.
This is not overwhelming.
I'm not in over my head.
And so it's a big challenge.
You know, it's much easier
to put a bunch of things on a website
than it is to get people to use those things
in the way that you might want.
And I think that a lot of people
who set out to build something like this,
(26:18):
and there have been other efforts,
you know, it's like the building of the thing is challenging
but then having people use it in a way that's easy
and it's effective and impactful
is a whole separate problem.
It's very difficult.
Yeah, I mean, but it's also very interesting,
which I think is good for us at Connect for Animals
because we get to work on it for a while.
Oh my gosh, yes.
I can imagine that you would be up all day and night
(26:40):
adding events because the irony is people think
that let's say going vegan
and getting involved in the animal rights movement
is some sacrifice.
It's literally a party every night.
Honestly, I could go to a party or an event
every single night if I wanted to.
But I can't afford the dog sitters to be honest with you
because not all are dog friendly.
(27:03):
But it's a social club.
And, you know, I try to tell people sometimes,
hey, it's not just a social club.
And, you know, it's really interesting
how we affect change.
I'm listening to this book right now called Change.
And it's super interesting talking about
the assumptions we make about how change happens.
(27:23):
And the book, the author actually challenges the notion
that really famous people saying things on social media
is the way because everybody wants those celebrities, right?
And what he seems to be saying is
that it's the connections that people make
and those connections are with family, friends,
(27:45):
coworkers, neighbors,
people that they meet in a social setting,
but that the best connections are weak connections.
Because if you're just talking to people
in your immediate circle who agree with you,
you're just, they call it reinforcement.
Yes, it's basically preaching the converted.
(28:07):
But when he talked about the six degrees
of separation approach is to start expanding
those weak connections.
So I'll give you a personal example on Facebook.
You know, I get requests for friends on my personal page.
And of course I'm thinking, well, the vegans, yeah.
But, you know, actually listening to this book now,
I'm gonna just click on the non-vegans
(28:28):
because those are the weak connections
that I need to get the information out to.
So it's a very complicated three-dimensional chess game
to affect change.
But I think, you know,
we have to get more scientific about it.
That's why my eyes popped out when I thought,
oh, Stephen has all this mathematical ability
because a lot of it is boiling down
(28:51):
to mathematical equations
of how we expand our circle of influence.
Each and every animal rights person,
vegan person who wants to end factory farming,
we have tentacles on social media
and those tentacles are the most important.
I do feel that our movement suffers
(29:12):
from preaching to the converted.
I can't tell you.
One of the reasons I started Unchained TV
is that I went to one too many documentary screenings
where everybody in the room is already vegan
and we're watching a video
with a lot of traumatizing footage.
And it's like, no, other people need to see this.
I'm not re-traumatizing myself.
(29:32):
Other people who say they love animals
and are eating, you know, bacon,
those are the people who need to see this.
And so how do you counteract,
and it's a provocative question,
and maybe you want to take it, Jeannie,
how do we counteract preaching to the converted
in this format that you've created,
which is so incredible?
(29:53):
Well, I think that is the beauty of Connect for Animals
is that we are accepting and welcoming to everybody
no matter at what level you are in this movement,
in our movement.
And that's what's so important is because when you talk
about, you know, going to a documentary,
everybody is vegan, it's the tribe, we're all together.
(30:13):
I don't want to underestimate the power of that.
No, we don't want to be watching traumatizing videos,
et cetera, but the power of having like-minded people,
especially in our movement, because there are so few,
even if you're a vegan who's been vegan forever,
it's still really hard for me to find like-minded people
right in my own town, and I live in a fairly big city.
(30:35):
And so that is, it is a provocative question,
and it is a little tough to address
because it's so multifaceted.
When we talk about the movement and, you know,
pro-animal advocacy, you know, we have people coming from,
I'm just against circuses, I'm against puppy mills,
I'm against, you know, animal testing,
and they have these niches, and I think, again,
(30:56):
that's why we're trying to be this clearinghouse.
And I don't want to say we're trying to do too much
or be too big, because we really do want to plug people
into where, you know, the pieces of the movement,
the pieces of the action
that they really want to get involved in.
And what happens is it is an organic process
where people meet somebody else,
(31:16):
or maybe they come on board, they're like,
I'm against puppy mills, connect for animals,
let me go here, let me find an event.
But what happens is they're on the platform,
they meet other people,
they find an event that's maybe tangentially related,
and they, wow, why not?
Why shouldn't I do that?
You know, it kind of expands people's, you know,
(31:37):
you have to be open-minded anyhow
to be able to want to do this,
but it kind of expands their horizons in a way.
And I think that that's the beauty of what we do
by, you know, having all of these different options,
these different actions, these different events.
We tag the events so that you,
if you are only interested in a certain type of event,
(31:59):
you can do that.
You know, I'm only interested in doing impactful events.
I'm only interested in socializing.
You can do that.
And I've kind of run out of where,
I'm gonna need somebody else from the team to step in
and help me out with this
because I'm going in too many different directions.
But-
No, you're great.
And I want to say for those just joining,
we're talking about this fantastic new app.
(32:20):
I downloaded it, filled it out,
and I'm gonna use it like crazy.
It's right there.
It's got three little birds.
Connect for animals.
There it is.
It's free.
It's a nonprofit, correct?
It's 100% nonprofit.
501C3, yep, absolutely.
Yeah, 501C3.
And this is just like,
on Shade TV is a nonprofit.
(32:41):
This is a nonprofit.
And it's using high tech to get the message out.
We're in the 21st century.
We've got to go high tech.
We've got to use every single technology available.
So if you're just joining us, here it is.
Have you heard about the amazing new platform
for animal rights events?
Connect for animals is a user-friendly platform
where you can find and share animal rights events
(33:01):
in all of North America.
It's perfect for people who are trying
to find activism opportunities or share their own.
You can even find lectures, meditations,
and conferences on their website.
Empower the hundreds of thousands of people
who care deeply about Indian factory farming,
but aren't sure where to start.
We're building a community
where anyone can learn about this movement,
discover events and organizations,
(33:23):
and find ways to get involved.
By the way, in an article
on some pro-meat industry publication,
(33:45):
Unchained TV was declared a threat.
I was thrilled.
I was like, oh, I'm so flattered.
So you could probably-
It's a badge of honor, right?
Is to be called out on one of those websites.
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
I'm sure that's in your future as well.
Let's break down some of the things you do specifically,
which I thought was great.
We've talked about the blog,
(34:06):
but here you can take courses.
Can you tell us about this?
Gadita, what is this course part?
So Connect for Animals,
in addition to allowing for you to find local events
and take action, it also is a hub for tons of resources.
(34:27):
So if you're interested in getting involved,
you can find access to a hub of available online courses,
job openings, you name it.
Anything that you need to basically equip yourself
with the type of advocacy you want to lead.
You can go to Connect for Animals
(34:48):
and search on the website or the app
and find the types of resources you need.
And again, it's just like the amazing work of the team,
just pulling together all of these incredible
existing resources that are available
and then centralizing them
so that somebody who's new to the movement,
somebody who's seasoned and has been doing it for some time,
(35:10):
they just have to go to one specific place
and they can have access to all these available things
out in the world.
Now there's also the events per city.
And I thought this was really good
being in Los Angeles myself, I popped on Los Angeles,
but you have, I'd look like hundreds of cities
around the world.
(35:30):
So Stephen, tell us how this works
and how do you find out all the events?
Because like I said, I literally cannot keep up
with all the events in LA alone.
There's something happening every single night
and there's some that I get on Eventbrite and Partiful
and Signal and, you know, I mean,
(35:52):
I get them through all these different platforms
that are coming at me, of course, Facebook as well.
How are you gonna be able to track all these?
It's a big old messy process.
And actually, Jeannie helps a ton with this.
This is really like one of her big domains,
but I'll give a little bit of background
into maybe some of the infrastructure that we have
(36:13):
that helps with it.
So first of all, we do not have 100% of all events.
That is our goal.
Our goal is to have every relevant event
that is related to ending factory farming and veganism,
to have it on Connect for Animals
so that people can find those things in their cities,
but they can also find the events that are happening online.
That's our North Star when it comes to events.
We do not have it because like you said, there are so many.
(36:36):
Some of them only exist in Signal chats,
WhatsApp groups, et cetera.
But we have built out some technical infrastructure
to automatically pull in as many events as we can
from relevant organizations.
We have a list of hundreds of different
animal advocacy organizations and local groups.
We try to automatically pull in
as many of those events as we can.
(36:57):
We are subscribed to basically every newsletter
on the planet as well.
And so this is where Vini helps out every single week,
goes through our inbox, looks through those newsletters,
looks for events, adds them to the platform.
And then people can submit their events as well.
So we have a lot of people who either work at
or volunteer at other animal advocacy organizations
(37:17):
or groups, nonprofit groups, as well as grassroots groups,
who will come and add their events to Connect for Animals
because they know that it's going to be on the platform
and that we're gonna send it out to our email newsletter.
And so we get events from all these different places
and it's our job to make sure that they all look clean,
that the data is good, that there's nothing inappropriate,
(37:39):
that it's all relevant, that if there's any duplicate events
that we go through and we take care of those.
It's a big old messy process.
Jeannie helped with a ton of that.
Jeannie, do you wanna give any more insight
into how we do it?
Yes, but thanks to Steven and the tech team,
we have something called scrapers that go.
(37:59):
And once we've pulled a group
and we know that they have regularly occurring events,
these scrapers will go in and they will actually
pull these events and fill out as much information
as they can.
And one of my jobs is to go into these events
that have been pulled automatically
and make sure that they're tagged correctly,
that like you were saying,
that has everything that is valid and needed
(38:20):
and filled out on the event.
So that whenever it pops up,
it's a clean event that anybody can click on.
So yeah, we go through, we do.
If we have all the groups,
we are following nearly everything that's out there.
We try to pull it in,
but there is so much more to be done.
And the city, the LA one is,
(38:42):
that's something that we've just been starting on.
So if you are from a certain city,
if you're from San Antonio and you go in
and you're like, gosh, there's no events at all,
it's coming.
It will be here, but we're building, building.
And there's so much in the background that's happening.
So just be patient or be like,
hey, I can add my own events.
All you have to do is create an account.
It's very simple, it's very easy.
(39:03):
And we're always looking to create partnerships
with pro animal groups that have their own media people
that are willing to go in and drop in their events,
make sure that they're on the platform.
And we love that too.
So Amira St. John says, I just downloaded the app.
I look forward to checking it out.
Excellent.
And you know, it takes about five minutes
to fill out the app so that it's successful.
(39:26):
And I know personally from running Unchained TV,
which is our TV streaming network,
that's also an app on the phone.
When people say they're gonna do it later,
doesn't happen that often.
Doesn't happen, yeah, yeah.
So do it now, people.
Just download it.
It's very easy.
You just go to your app store.
I did it.
And you just put in Connect for Animals in the app store.
(39:48):
It's free.
You just hit download.
And then you fill out some little information
about your city, your name, blah, blah, blah,
so that they can target.
Like let's say we just had somebody comment,
I'm gonna look for events in Chicago.
So let's take your app through that now.
So he's in Chicago, he's interested.
What does he do?
(40:09):
Aside from obviously download the app.
You can download it online.
You can also download it on your phone.
That's the easiest, obviously.
Go ahead.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, I mean the best thing to do, right,
is first of all, when you sign up,
make sure that you're subscribed
to the weekly Events Digest email newsletter.
(40:29):
We've had that going.
People love that because we send the events,
including local events.
So if you live in Chicago,
when you sign up, fill out your location,
say like I live in Chicago,
sign up for that Events Digest newsletter.
Every week, those events,
virtual events and conferences
and local events in your area,
straight to your inbox,
or at least as many as we know about, right?
(40:50):
So that's the biggest thing.
And fill out your location,
subscribe to the Events Digest newsletter.
Every week you'll get those.
And then on the platform itself, on the app,
when you go to your homepage,
you scroll down, you'll see those events in your area.
You'll see events in Chicago.
You'll see people who live in Chicago.
You'll see some of the local Chicago animal rights
or animal advocacy or vegan groups,
(41:12):
meetup groups and nonprofit groups and things like that.
So really, that's the biggest thing
is enter your location,
sign up for the newsletter,
and then you can go to the homepage,
scroll down, you'll see things.
And if you go to any of the other pages,
like you go and look at events specifically,
because you entered your location,
it'll show you those virtual events,
but it'll also show you the local events in your area.
And so it's really just as simple as that.
(41:34):
And then just keep up with it
anytime that you're interested in going to an event.
You can look through the email,
you can go to the app,
go online to the website,
connectforanimals.com.
So that's pretty much it.
Yeah, and how are you going to interact with social media?
Because so many people don't really use websites anymore.
(41:55):
They're just DMing each other.
And so how do you plan on handling that?
Should I throw that over to Katika?
Yeah, thanks, Jane.
I think to start,
and then I'll let Stephen take this one,
but I think to start,
this is something that between social media
(42:18):
is really like an amplification
of what's happening on the app.
So we definitely leverage it to,
if there are particular events that are of interest
or things that we really feel like should be highlighted,
it's a great channel for doing so.
But most of the information would be centralized on the app.
So that's like your first place to go
(42:38):
if you really want to get the specific information
that's relevant to you and your profile
in terms of your location and interests
and things like that.
But then we can definitely use that information
and push it out on various channels
as we see opportunity to get more people excited
and involved in different events.
(42:59):
Now, not everything is an event or a course.
Like sometimes, for example,
we will debut a new video.
We just wrapped up Vegan Creator Con,
the first two-day conference for vegan social media creators.
When I say we wrapped,
I was there videotaping and participating,
and I did a panel,
(43:19):
but it was done by the woman
who does Vegan Street Fair, Jessica Cruz.
It's a breakthrough.
I learned so much in this two days,
and we did a video.
Is there any way,
is there any portal within your organization
to publish videos about events?
Yeah, that's a great question.
(43:41):
And the way that I think about this, right,
sort of nerdy math brain,
is like different types of information
that people might want to know.
So people want to know about events
that are happening in their area,
about campaign actions.
People might want to know about organizations
they can volunteer for,
about courses they can take.
But then there's this big category
of just resources or videos or content.
(44:03):
Right now, the best place to find that stuff
is we have a resources page
where people can go to find some of that,
but it's focused mostly on the courses,
on some self-care and like burnout prevention,
resources and things like that.
So that's not something that we do
too much of right now,
is sort of this broader resource
and video and like content thing.
(44:24):
I know that there are other websites
that will try to host more of this,
or like on social media.
I know that people are constantly
reposting each other's things
and sharing things.
In the future, there might be space for us
to help surface some of this
really great content better.
It's just from a technical
and like a user perspective,
it's a difficult thing to do.
And we decided that we wanted to focus
(44:44):
on a few of these other things first,
like events, actions, groups, profiles.
So maybe in the future,
but right now, not so much.
We're focusing on these other features
that we've been developing.
Yeah, and you don't have to play the whole,
you can just have a link.
Like there could be a way to add links,
but let me ask you about sanctuaries.
Now, we have all been in this movement
(45:07):
for a long time.
And I remember when I started,
there were maybe three sanctuaries.
There was farm sanctuary,
there was animal play.
I mean, there were a small number.
Now there are hundreds.
And I think it's one of the greatest resources
is to, where are all these sanctuaries?
How can people visit?
Is that something that you're considering adding
(45:28):
and whoever wants to take it?
Yeah, I can, I'll talk to that really quick.
And by the way,
we were talking about social media earlier.
I do wanna give a quick shout out
to our social media manager, Hemena,
who manages our Instagram and our LinkedIn pages,
does a great job with those.
So social media is not really my realm,
but thankfully we have somebody who it is her realm.
So when it comes to sanctuaries,
(45:49):
we currently tackle that in having sanctuaries
listed as groups on Connect for Animals.
And so we have a lot of sanctuaries on the platform.
There are probably a ton that we do not have.
So if your favorite animal sanctuary is not listed,
then there's a way through Connect for Animals
that you can suggest a new group.
(46:10):
And so if you go to the groups page,
or if you're on your home page,
sanctuaries would be groups
and they're tagged with the animal sanctuary tag.
And so the best place to see that
would just be to go to the groups,
search by tagged as animal sanctuaries
and search in your location,
which I think it probably automatically
does filter down to your location specifically.
(46:33):
So that's the best way currently.
It would be nice to have a map of them.
I know that there are some websites.
There's a website that I don't know too well.
So I might get it wrong,
but Global Federation of Sanctuaries or something like that.
And there's a website called Open Sanctuary as well,
which provides resources.
I don't know if they provide a map per se.
But we do have that list,
even if not in like a map format necessarily.
(46:56):
And just listing that group as a link,
then it includes it.
That's the great thing about links
is that you could just add on and on and on and on.
And I just think it's very fascinating.
Like I said, I've even thought about doing this years ago,
but ran headlong into a whole bunch of issues that came up.
(47:21):
And my idea was just like a next door.
Like the reason being is that I have found
that there's a bunch of vegans in my neighborhood
and people who care about animals and animal rights,
not just dogs and cats.
Although I have two dogs and a cat,
so I care about them too.
And I stumbled upon these people.
(47:41):
And I was like, damn, if I'd only known they existed,
I could alert them to protests, meetups,
let's support a vegan restaurant
that's struggling, blah, blah, blah.
And the problem I ran into is that how small
the demographic and the area you're going to pick,
(48:02):
because you don't wanna get into a situation
where people can figure out where somebody else lives.
So how do you balance the privacy issue
with providing information to a particular locale
so that it's effective for that organization?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I'm happy to tackle this one unless anyone else wanted to,
(48:25):
but we take this very seriously.
And so just in general, user privacy, data privacy,
these are things that are very important
and they matter a lot to users
of online platforms like this.
So in general, we don't wanna know where people live.
We don't wanna know your address.
We give people the ability to add their location
at the city level, essentially, which we think is,
(48:48):
I think people might be able to input their zip code as well
if they wanna get down to a specific section of a city.
Like I used to live in Denver, for example,
and different zip codes can help you narrow in
on these different neighborhoods.
But there's not a place to enter your address.
We don't wanna know.
We don't wanna necessarily show any of that to other users,
but we want people to be able to enter their location
in a way where they can say,
(49:09):
hey, what's going on in my city
or what's going on in my zip code,
like my part of that city, right?
And so as time goes on, we'll see if people like that.
So far, and it doesn't get us
into any of these user privacy issues
about people having their addresses exposed
or things like that, while still giving people
(49:30):
that functionality that they want that's location-based.
And as time goes on, maybe we can update that.
But for right now, I think that that's kind
of a good compromise.
And then we let users do what they want to at that point.
If they wanna go to an event and meet people
and get to know people that way and share their phone number
and share where they live to hang out for potlucks
or for doing projects together or things like that,
(49:51):
that's kind of on the user side at that point.
But for right now, we try to stay away to just let people.
What about protests?
Because obviously mobilizing people to attend protests,
there's actually a protest coming up in a couple of days
here in Los Angeles against a supermarket
(50:11):
that allegedly uses animals from a factory farm
where cruelty has allegedly,
extreme cruelty has been documented.
I'll say that much.
I won't give it away.
But can you mobilize people to attend protests?
Yes, so protests are frequently listed
(50:31):
on Connect for Animals.
I know that, so by default, all of the events
on Connect for Animals are public.
So we do that so that people can find them from Google
and things like that.
So if people are searching for vegan events,
like they can come across,
kind of like you would on Eventbrite, right?
You can find specific events.
There are certain protests
(50:52):
that people are comfortable making public.
And I know that within the activism space,
there are certain protests that people
maybe don't necessarily want to make public
for whatever reason,
just because they want to have the element of surprise
or they're afraid of something negative happening
if it's made public ahead of time.
And so those types of protests currently
do not really live on the platform so much
(51:12):
because things are public by default.
In the future, there might be a way
to have some of those types of protests
that are private by default or things like that.
But for right now, yes,
there are protests on Connect for Animals
from different organizations that host them,
kind of happening all over the country.
So Jeannie and I, every week,
(51:33):
get to see all the events that are happening
everywhere across the US.
And frequently, pretty much every weekend, some weeks,
lots of protests in different cities
for different causes, different campaigns.
So yeah, it's very inspiring.
Well, I think this is so exciting.
Now, I'm urging everybody who is watching
(51:53):
and who will watch, just Connect for Animals.
Take a moment.
The animals cannot speak for themselves.
And there you are.
Connect for Animals, I signed up.
It's very easy.
And now I have the ability to add things
that are happening in our movement,
(52:14):
in Los Angeles, and globally.
I mean, there's a really important,
for example, I just got a notice this morning,
PCRM is having a Friday talk about new changes
in government to end animal testing,
and it's a breakthrough.
I'm registering for that.
That's something I think would be fantastic
(52:35):
for everybody to register for.
It's not directly connected to factory farming,
but it's all connected.
When one animal is abused, they say,
if one person is abused, we're all abused.
So it's part of that general umbrella.
And I wish you guys the best.
I think it's absolutely fantastic.
(52:55):
And this is the time when I talk about Unchained TV
at the end of our broadcast,
because there's a lot of commonalities.
We're also using an app.
You can also download it on your phone,
and it's on your TV behind you.
You can do Amazon Fire Stick, Roku device, Apple TV device.
It's on every Samsung TV, on every LG TV.
(53:17):
It's also on the phone.
You can just download it for free.
It takes 10 seconds.
Go to Unchained TV, right there.
2,000 videos, including this one's gonna be on,
and you can text the videos.
The great thing is when you get it on the phone,
somebody says, I could never give up cheese.
We have a whole category of all these vegan cheeses
(53:37):
that you could send to them.
You just go, boom, send it to them.
So I could never give up dairy, boom.
There's hundreds of videos about dairy alternatives,
and the list goes on and on.
So I hope that while you're having your download app day,
you include Unchained TV as well as Connect for Animals.
We're all trying to do the same thing.
(54:00):
We're using technology, in Unchained TV's case,
as the world's only vegan streaming network,
to change hearts and minds,
get out of the vegan echo chamber,
and reach people who need this information.
So it's a vegan Netflix.
Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained, Unchained TV.
(54:20):
Your life will change, it's just that easy.
Unchained TV has all sorts of content for everybody.
Unchained TV changed my life.
Unchained TV is crushing it.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained TV is my go-to.
Unchained TV, who knew?
Unchained, baby, yes!
Welcome to the Unchained TV podcast.
Animals are suffering by the billions in factory farms.
What can we do to speak for these voiceless animals?
There are people who go out there and get arrested.
There are people who use virtual reality tools
(00:21):
to go into factory farms
to document what's happening to them.
There are people who are writing books.
We just interviewed two last week,
trying to wake people up about the need
to not support factory farms in their consumer purchases.
Well, now we've got another breakthrough.
It's called Connect for Animals.
(00:43):
And those are the three leading team members
behind this new initiative
to speak up for factory farmed animals.
Have you heard about the amazing new platform
for animal rights events?
Connect for Animals is a user-friendly platform
where you can find and share animal rights events
in all of North America.
It's perfect for people who are trying
to find activism opportunities or share their own.
(01:05):
You can even find lectures, meditations,
and conferences on their website.
Empower the hundreds of thousands of people
who care deeply about ending factory farming,
but aren't sure where to start.
We're building a community
where anyone can learn about this movement,
discover events and organizations,
and find ways to get involved.
(01:38):
Welcome.
We are talking about Connect for Animals.
We're so delighted to have the three lead organizers
of this incredible breakthrough app
that you can download on your phone
and you can also get online at connectforanimals.com.
So let's get right to it.
The team is here and we are gonna talk to them.
(02:01):
Stephen Rook, you are the founder.
Why did you start this incredible app?
What inspired you?
Absolutely.
Well, first of all, thank you so much for having us here.
It's just a delight to be here.
And I do wanna give a shout out to the rest of our team
that couldn't be here today.
We have lots of amazing folks working behind the scenes.
So why Connect for Animals?
(02:22):
Essentially, I've been doing animal advocacy
for about a decade in various capacities
and have talked to so many people during that time
who care about animals, who are vegan or vegetarian,
wanna help end factory farming.
And this was my experience too,
where it's hard to get involved.
It's hard to find your place.
It's hard to find out how to take action,
what events there are, what organizations there are.
(02:44):
And after a long time of seeing this gap,
I wanted to do something about it essentially.
And so that was the seed of the idea
behind Connect for Animals and asking,
how can we make sure that if people care about this issue,
and there are a ton of people
who care about this issue globally.
If you care about this issue,
how can we make it as easy as possible to get involved?
And that's really the seed of the idea.
(03:04):
And then we created the Connect for Animals platform
as the answer to help people get involved
in ending factory farming,
which we think is one of the biggest ethical issues
on the planet today.
And there you are.
It's just amazing.
I did just sign up.
So excited that this exists.
(03:24):
I've been dreaming about something like this for a long time
but it takes a lot.
It takes marketing and it takes organizational skills.
So I wanna go out to Jeannie.
You are the person who is going to kind of
try to organize all this amongst other people as well.
(03:46):
How the heck do you do it?
Because I know just trying to organize 10 people
for a meetup could drive me out of my mind sometimes.
So this is gonna take a lot of organization.
Jeannie, take it away.
Well, I think, you know,
the biggest thing is that our group of volunteers
is super motivated.
I mean, we are all about meeting people where they're at.
(04:09):
Whether you're veg curious, if you're vegan already,
if you're a hardcore activist,
we want everybody to be part of Connect for Animals,
to join us on the platform
and to help out wherever you feel like you fit in.
We have a really solid volunteer team.
We have folks that do social media.
We just created a new blog.
(04:30):
So we have like writers.
I am in charge of events data management.
And what that means is I'm pretty much going through
and curating these events.
But like Stephen was saying,
our team is just rock solid
and we're just all about new ideas,
creating, you know,
(04:50):
just creating an enthusiasm for ending factory farming.
And that really helps grease the skids.
It makes our life, you know, not easy
because there is so much work.
Like Stephen was saying behind the scenes,
there is a lot of moving parts
and we just do the best we can to plug people in
where they need to be volunteers and, you know,
(05:11):
members alike, you know, whoever we can get involved,
that's what we're about.
All right.
And you can sign up at connectforanimals.com
and you can also just do my favorite way.
You go to the phone,
just like you've signed up for Unchained TV,
the world's only streaming TV network.
You can sign up, have these apps on your phone.
(05:33):
I signed up and you're gonna be like,
oh, there's Jane again posting some more
because I think this is fantastic.
So let me ask you, Katita,
how do you get the world to know that this app exists?
Because that's our challenge.
We've created the world's only vegan animal rights
(05:55):
streaming television network and fast channel network,
but we don't have a multimillion dollar advertising budget.
We can't have billboards all over LA.
We can't have TV commercials.
And I would assume that the challenge is the same for you.
How are you gonna counteract it?
Maybe I could learn a thing or two.
Totally, Jane.
And that's where we are right now.
(06:16):
I mean, so far, just Stephen's amazing work
leading this platform and developing it
into this app as well.
It's come such a long way
and there's been tremendous word of mouth,
which has gotten us to the place we are at now
up to almost 2000 users.
But now we're ready to really take it to the next level,
meet people where they're at.
So we're looking at, as Jeannie mentioned,
(06:39):
blog, new content creation for social media.
We're also branching out with some paid advertisements
that are really tested and targeted,
as well as extending out to events of all sorts,
local and potentially virtual as well.
So we really wanna just maximize
how we can get the word out
and do a lot of testing along the way to see what works.
(07:00):
Well, I love this.
I have to tell you that I feel it's very needed.
I literally have been dreaming of something like this
for a long time.
And one of the reasons is that veganism,
which obviously is connected to ending factory farming,
if everybody went vegan, we wouldn't have factory farming.
It's been under attack.
(07:21):
And I'm just gonna put up a couple of the,
I think, outrageous headlines
that are the headlines of outrageous articles.
Meat is back on plates and in politics
after years in which plant-based was the mantra.
Meat once again dominates the national conversation
about dinner.
That's the New York Times.
The middle one is new research is bad news for vegans.
Even if you eat plant-based protein,
(07:42):
that's the New York Post.
Yeah, to be expected, but still.
This one, BBC Science,
even protein-rich vegan diets may fall short
on key nutrients.
Studies suggest hogwash, or should I say,
maybe I shouldn't use the word phrase hogwash.
Could that be speciesist?
Nonsense, okay?
We have millions and millions of people
(08:04):
who are vegan for decades.
I know people who were born vegan.
Their health stats are better than the general public.
There's great documentaries like Game Changers
and documentaries about blue zones, et cetera.
We can't let this stand.
I was a reporter for more than 30 years.
If you start getting negative commentary
(08:25):
about your reporting, it usually results in a trip
to your immediate supervisor's office,
which is not pleasant, and you have to justify yourself.
So right now, these reporters, these journalists
are operating in a no-consequence zone,
and they feel like they can get away with saying anything
because nobody's gonna respond.
As soon as I saw your platform, I go, aha,
(08:47):
because we've already started tweeting responses.
In fact, today, we just did a donnymossoftheirturn.net
on his ex account, did a response to a New York Times
article bemoaning that laboratory animals might be killed
due to budget cuts.
(09:08):
It's like, hello, they were gonna be tortured
and killed anyway.
Can you at least mention that?
It was just mind-boggling, but we got whatever,
seven or eight retweets.
Imagine if these articles got 1,000 retweets.
Imagine if everybody who signed up to Connect for Animals
went on X and retweeted with a comment.
(09:30):
That would be a game changer,
and I'd like to get your thoughts on that, Stephen.
As somebody I know, you have a lot of background
in the animal rights movement,
having worked at Mercy for Animals,
and so you know the territory.
Yeah, absolutely.
And so, a lot of what you said really resonates with me
and sort of why we started Connect for Animals
in the first place, and that's because there are,
(09:52):
first of all, there are so many great actions and campaigns
that are happening all the time.
There are a ton of amazing organizations
that are trying to make progress on different parts
of the system related to factory farming animals for food.
There's also animal experimentation.
There's all kinds of different facets
at which you can look at animal ethics, right?
And there's so many amazing organizations.
(10:14):
And if you want to, for example,
there are a lot of people out there
who want to take action across all of these different areas
or these different organizations,
and if one of those people just wanted to ask the question
of where could I go to look at the campaigns
that are happening across all of the different organizations
that I care about, I mean, currently,
(10:36):
the best solution, I guess, before Connect for Animals
is like you sign up for kind of every email newsletter
on the planet and wait for those action alerts to come out.
And I know that some people do this,
and it's great that they do,
but we want to reduce the friction however we can.
So something that we started working on last year
and something that we're going to keep working
on going forward is pulling these campaign actions
(10:58):
from all the different organizations,
having them on Connect for Animals,
so that if people say, like,
what can I do to take action for animals right now?
And they just want to help.
They're not putting together the campaigns.
They're relying on these great organizations
to put together the campaigns,
and then they want to take action on them.
If we can have all of those actions together in one place,
(11:20):
which we're making progress towards,
then somebody can come to Connect for Animals
and say, here's a great action from Mercy for Animals
or from their turn or from PETA
or across all of these different areas,
and they can just go through and boom, boom, boom,
action, action, action, just run down the list
and make a difference across all of these things.
(11:41):
And I guess talking a little bit about that point
and something else you mentioned earlier
about there being this backlash against veganism
or against animal ethics,
I think that if people start caring about this issue,
but they're not fully committed,
like the people here, the people in this room right now,
like us doing this interview,
if people hear about it,
(12:02):
they start caring about the issue,
but these things always go in cycles,
and then suddenly there's this big media pushback.
If this person hasn't gotten connected
to the rich animal advocacy ecosystem,
if they do not have all the facts,
if they do not have the social support,
if they haven't taken the time to really learn,
they're gonna be swayed back into the mainstream
(12:22):
very, very easily,
or back into whatever the sort of talking points
of the day are, right?
So a lot of media outlets don't even necessarily care.
With the anti-vegan stuff, for example,
it's just like, oh, we've been pro-vegan,
pro-animal for a little while.
Well, now people are bored of that,
so the thing that's gonna be clickable
is like, oh, let's be anti-vegan, anti-animal
for a little bit.
It's like, can we find something that elevates
(12:43):
the problems of veganism,
because maybe people will love to click on that
if they've gotten bored of the,
oh, plant-based actually seems like
it's typically better for your health.
It's like, oh, that's boring now.
We need to get people to click on things.
So if we with Connect for Animals
can get people more socially connected,
more engaged in the animal advocacy movement,
then hopefully they can be more resilient
(13:05):
to these kind of media cycles that we live in as well.
And that's also a goal is just keeping people here longer
in the animal advocacy space.
I think you've made excellent points.
I will say, having been a journalist for more than 30 years,
journalists are pack animals, okay?
Is that speciesist?
No, I don't know.
(13:25):
I don't know that every reference to animals is speciesist.
It's only if it's a negative reference.
A lot of them are.
It's hard to tell, yeah.
It's hard to tell.
But the truth is that you're right.
It happens in waves and there's the swing of the pendulum.
So with the launch of Beyond Meat
as a public stock in 2019, there was a swing.
I even had people who used to dismiss me,
(13:47):
call me and text me and say,
wow, you were really ahead of your time.
Well, now it's swinging back,
but we can easily reverse that again
and make it even bigger.
I mean, if you look at social justice movements,
it was never just a straight lineup.
If you look at the LGBTQ movement,
(14:07):
and I speak as a member, it was going up slowly.
Then the AIDS crisis hit.
There was a lot of hate.
Then there was a resurgence.
And now, I mean, it's not static.
So I think what you're describing is absolutely correct,
but the question is,
(14:29):
how do we tell our side of the story
in this social media and mainstream media landscape?
And so I think that what you're doing is very important
and I will definitely, definitely use your app
to try to motivate people to respond
(14:52):
by just clicking on X.
Because one thing I've learned,
do you ask people to write a letter?
No.
And what PETA and other organizations,
including PCRM and Mercy for Animals
and these other big groups, they've automated it.
Now, I have to go back to you again.
I did look at your bio, which is very impressive.
And I noticed that you are a mathematician.
(15:13):
You graduated summa cum laude with a degree in mathematics.
And that's just the start.
You've done a lot.
How are you gonna use your math skills
to work with the algorithms to get,
that I think is the key.
I mean, I have a calculator, that's my math skill,
(15:36):
but you have some real math skills.
How are we gonna use those math skills
to hit the algorithms?
Yeah, I mean, I'll say a couple of things
and then actually I might wanna popcorn it over to Geetika
to see if she has any marketing insights here.
Because I very much math brain, right?
That's kind of my background,
math, data science, data engineering.
Like I was on the math team in high school
(15:57):
for all four years, competed at state level competitions,
like big nerd, right?
Big, big nerd.
Not really good at the social media thing.
That's never really been my space.
And so like social media, media,
I'm actually, I have kind of a hard time at that.
But I mean, when it comes to math,
when it comes to data, when it comes to AI, for example,
technology in general, that's a big part of NEC for Animals.
(16:20):
What we do is trying to make these things
happen at scale and get people connected
to the resources and the organizations and the events
that are gonna be a good fit for them.
And so, Jeannie and Geetika definitely have a view
under the hood here, but there is a lot of data involved.
There's a lot of technology.
(16:41):
I mean, with Unchained TV, I'm sure that you know as well,
the technology gets complicated really quickly.
And especially when you're dealing with a lot of data,
a lot of resources, opportunities, groups,
and users, and you're trying to connect one to the other,
you're trying to do this matchmaking process essentially
in general of like, okay, somebody comes in the door.
(17:02):
They're gonna be interested in certain things.
They're gonna have certain skills.
And how can we get them pointed to the spot
in the animal advocacy space that's going to be
a really good fit for them, right?
And so we actually try to be, you know,
even a little less like biased about where people end up,
(17:23):
like what organization maybe they end up supporting
or what campaigns they work on.
We just kind of want people to get involved, to get engaged.
And so on the mathy data side,
there's a lot of really interesting stuff.
Like I said, I'm a big old nerd,
data science and machine learning,
trying to do this matching,
this like recommendation algorithm, right?
Like of who would be interested in what.
(17:45):
We have a lot of really cool work
that we can do on that going forward.
And there's already a lot of interesting stuff
behind the scenes and under the hood.
But Geetika, I mean, from a marketing
and social media perspective,
feel free to chime in if you have anything else.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Steven.
I would just tack onto that.
The beauty of having a platform
(18:06):
is that everything is so centralized.
So, you know, when I first,
my first big vegan event that I attended
was in Portland, Oregon.
And it's a vegan hub
and there's a lot of access to things.
But something like Connect for Animals
would really allow someone
who doesn't have that access
to get involved on a much bigger scale
(18:26):
than they could otherwise.
And once we have all of that
sort of centralized data in a platform,
then we can start to understand
like what really supports people out there
to be advocates
and how can we better support them?
And also partner with bigger organizations
that are doing this work to say,
hey, like we have these learnings,
(18:48):
now you can use that for your advocacy campaigns.
And really just by that cohesion
and centralization,
I think it can be so much more powerful.
So where Connect for Animals
is allowing us to speak with one voice,
which I personally think is so important.
I have zero tolerance for infighting.
(19:11):
And unfortunately it does occur in our movement
and people try to drag Unshade TV or me into it.
I'm like, leave us alone.
We're just wanna speak for voiceless animals.
Keep us out of your infighting.
Anytime we're fighting amongst ourselves,
the other side is applauding
and saying, yeah, keep fighting.
So I tell people, for example,
(19:32):
you wanna be a raw vegan,
go right ahead,
but don't post and not meet alternatives.
Fruits, vegetables, nuts and grains
have always been there.
If we, everybody's always had the option to choose those.
Those products were created
because people weren't choosing those.
So that's number one.
And number two,
to speak with a unified voice
(19:54):
because there's strength in numbers.
And a lot of these meat industry organizations,
they have all sorts of associations.
You know, the Cattlemen's Association
and this association and that association.
I don't think we have the kind of grassroots association
where people can speak with one voice
when something happens that,
(20:14):
and being in the media,
I'm particularly attuned to the media,
which sets the tone for society.
Let's face it.
The New York Times is the most important newspaper
in the world.
When it says meat is back,
that telegraphs to everybody
and the intelligentsia,
the big money, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, meat's back.
We don't have to worry about that anymore.
So those are very dangerous articles
(20:35):
that have to be counteracted.
And I'll also say as a journalist,
if you see that another journalist
has gotten blowback for its reporting,
it sends a message to you,
maybe I should think twice about doing a very slanted,
badly researched piece about veganism
where I don't contact the other side.
I mean, the New York Times article,
(20:57):
why didn't they talk to PETA?
Why didn't they talk to PCRM?
Why didn't they talk to MercyFran?
Why didn't they talk to all these organizations?
They talked to one organization with one quote
that I could see.
That's not a balanced article.
And so I feel that this is super exciting
because it would allow if we had an action alert
(21:20):
and we use mathematics to make it simple,
not sit there and write a letter to your...
The other day I was at an event and they said,
everybody has to write to their city council person.
I'm like, good luck with that.
We don't live in that kind of era.
It's gotta be something where they boom and it goes out.
That's what PETA is so good at.
I mean, almost every day I get something from PETA
(21:42):
that says do Y or do X or do something
and it sends out letters.
And there's other organizations as well
that do that very effectively.
A small number.
The vast majority do not have the technology
or perhaps the funding and or the technology to do that.
But my question to you is,
are you gonna fill that space?
Because I think that would be,
(22:04):
first of all, incredibly effective.
And I also think it would put you on the map
and allow you to collaborate with other organizations
to be like that mouthpiece.
Because we've actually been looking for that.
We've been looking for the project
that Their Turn and Unchained TV works on
to challenge these reporters
who are writing these misinformed articles
in mainstream media is like,
(22:25):
okay, we've done an X response and we put it on X,
we put it on Facebook, we put it on LinkedIn.
Now how do we get other people to retweet it?
How do we get other people to say,
yeah, and blah, blah, blah.
And people are saying, agree with you.
So thank you.
Not always, but this time they're agreeing.
Okay.
What do you say?
No, no, no, of course.
(22:46):
I think, yeah.
Not always agree.
You know, it's good to have
a little vigorous debate every now and then.
I hear you on the infighting though.
And just to go back to one thing there really quickly.
I do think that healthy disagreement can be good.
I think that, yeah, the problem absolutely exists
when it descends into people
just tearing each other apart for no reason.
And as Connect for Animals,
(23:06):
since our entire goal is to help people find groups
and organizations and events and things,
we really do in general have to be kind of pro
the whole movement, support the whole movement.
I mean, that's our role here is to show people
all of the options that are available.
(23:26):
And unless we have a very good reason not to,
we're generally gonna try to show people
everything that's out there, right?
Which is a diversity of approaches, of strategies,
of theories of change.
And so I think that's a very healthy thing.
But when it comes to your question
about options and centralizing that,
absolutely, I do think, you know,
(23:48):
there's, first of all, like get people to care, right?
And then even if you have all these people who care,
how do you get them to take action?
Like you said, like getting people to sit down
and write a long letter to their city council people.
Some people will do that, absolutely.
Some people will invest however much time
and energy it takes, however difficult the task is.
(24:09):
But those people are few and far between.
Lots of us, I mean, myself included,
like I'm inclined to do certain things
and not inclined to do others.
If you make it really, really, really easy for me,
then I'm probably more likely to do it.
And I think that that is true
of pretty much everybody out there.
And so I think that, you know,
the question for us at Connect for Animals
is something that we have started working on,
(24:30):
is, you know, like I said,
pulling together these action alerts,
these campaigns from different organizations.
One problem that we run into pretty quickly,
and so this is gonna be a challenge for us going forward
and something that we're thinking through,
but if anyone in your audience has ideas also,
then we'd love to hear,
is the volume of possible actions
(24:51):
can get pretty big pretty quickly.
So for example, large organizations
will have specific campaigns,
maybe against specific companies,
and there maybe won't be a ton of those.
But if you go down to the individual activist level,
every single social media post
that every animal activist is putting out there,
if we count each one of those as a distinct action
(25:15):
of like amplifying a certain message,
then kind of the space of possible actions
can blow up very quickly.
And that's not a bad thing.
I mean, that's actually a very good thing
if we have so much work that's happening.
But then the question becomes,
and this is a challenge for us at Connect for Animals,
is how do we show the right thing to the right person?
And how do we present all of this information to people
(25:36):
without them getting overwhelmed?
And that's sort of related to the getting people
to sit down and write their city council members, right?
Is the question of not getting people to care
and not about the information itself,
but the presentation of the information,
the presentation of this stuff, nudging users,
getting people to be able to feel like,
(25:57):
oh, hey, this is easy.
Oh, like, I can do this.
This is not overwhelming.
I'm not in over my head.
And so it's a big challenge.
You know, it's much easier
to put a bunch of things on a website
than it is to get people to use those things
in the way that you might want.
And I think that a lot of people
who set out to build something like this,
(26:18):
and there have been other efforts,
you know, it's like the building of the thing is challenging
but then having people use it in a way that's easy
and it's effective and impactful
is a whole separate problem.
It's very difficult.
Yeah, I mean, but it's also very interesting,
which I think is good for us at Connect for Animals
because we get to work on it for a while.
Oh my gosh, yes.
I can imagine that you would be up all day and night
(26:40):
adding events because the irony is people think
that let's say going vegan
and getting involved in the animal rights movement
is some sacrifice.
It's literally a party every night.
Honestly, I could go to a party or an event
every single night if I wanted to.
But I can't afford the dog sitters to be honest with you
because not all are dog friendly.
(27:03):
But it's a social club.
And, you know, I try to tell people sometimes,
hey, it's not just a social club.
And, you know, it's really interesting
how we affect change.
I'm listening to this book right now called Change.
And it's super interesting talking about
the assumptions we make about how change happens.
(27:23):
And the book, the author actually challenges the notion
that really famous people saying things on social media
is the way because everybody wants those celebrities, right?
And what he seems to be saying is
that it's the connections that people make
and those connections are with family, friends,
(27:45):
coworkers, neighbors,
people that they meet in a social setting,
but that the best connections are weak connections.
Because if you're just talking to people
in your immediate circle who agree with you,
you're just, they call it reinforcement.
Yes, it's basically preaching the converted.
(28:07):
But when he talked about the six degrees
of separation approach is to start expanding
those weak connections.
So I'll give you a personal example on Facebook.
You know, I get requests for friends on my personal page.
And of course I'm thinking, well, the vegans, yeah.
But, you know, actually listening to this book now,
I'm gonna just click on the non-vegans
(28:28):
because those are the weak connections
that I need to get the information out to.
So it's a very complicated three-dimensional chess game
to affect change.
But I think, you know,
we have to get more scientific about it.
That's why my eyes popped out when I thought,
oh, Stephen has all this mathematical ability
because a lot of it is boiling down
(28:51):
to mathematical equations
of how we expand our circle of influence.
Each and every animal rights person,
vegan person who wants to end factory farming,
we have tentacles on social media
and those tentacles are the most important.
I do feel that our movement suffers
(29:12):
from preaching to the converted.
I can't tell you.
One of the reasons I started Unchained TV
is that I went to one too many documentary screenings
where everybody in the room is already vegan
and we're watching a video
with a lot of traumatizing footage.
And it's like, no, other people need to see this.
I'm not re-traumatizing myself.
(29:32):
Other people who say they love animals
and are eating, you know, bacon,
those are the people who need to see this.
And so how do you counteract,
and it's a provocative question,
and maybe you want to take it, Jeannie,
how do we counteract preaching to the converted
in this format that you've created,
which is so incredible?
(29:53):
Well, I think that is the beauty of Connect for Animals
is that we are accepting and welcoming to everybody
no matter at what level you are in this movement,
in our movement.
And that's what's so important is because when you talk
about, you know, going to a documentary,
everybody is vegan, it's the tribe, we're all together.
(30:13):
I don't want to underestimate the power of that.
No, we don't want to be watching traumatizing videos,
et cetera, but the power of having like-minded people,
especially in our movement, because there are so few,
even if you're a vegan who's been vegan forever,
it's still really hard for me to find like-minded people
right in my own town, and I live in a fairly big city.
(30:35):
And so that is, it is a provocative question,
and it is a little tough to address
because it's so multifaceted.
When we talk about the movement and, you know,
pro-animal advocacy, you know, we have people coming from,
I'm just against circuses, I'm against puppy mills,
I'm against, you know, animal testing,
and they have these niches, and I think, again,
(30:56):
that's why we're trying to be this clearinghouse.
And I don't want to say we're trying to do too much
or be too big, because we really do want to plug people
into where, you know, the pieces of the movement,
the pieces of the action
that they really want to get involved in.
And what happens is it is an organic process
where people meet somebody else,
(31:16):
or maybe they come on board, they're like,
I'm against puppy mills, connect for animals,
let me go here, let me find an event.
But what happens is they're on the platform,
they meet other people,
they find an event that's maybe tangentially related,
and they, wow, why not?
Why shouldn't I do that?
You know, it kind of expands people's, you know,
(31:37):
you have to be open-minded anyhow
to be able to want to do this,
but it kind of expands their horizons in a way.
And I think that that's the beauty of what we do
by, you know, having all of these different options,
these different actions, these different events.
We tag the events so that you,
if you are only interested in a certain type of event,
(31:59):
you can do that.
You know, I'm only interested in doing impactful events.
I'm only interested in socializing.
You can do that.
And I've kind of run out of where,
I'm gonna need somebody else from the team to step in
and help me out with this
because I'm going in too many different directions.
But-
No, you're great.
And I want to say for those just joining,
we're talking about this fantastic new app.
(32:20):
I downloaded it, filled it out,
and I'm gonna use it like crazy.
It's right there.
It's got three little birds.
Connect for animals.
There it is.
It's free.
It's a nonprofit, correct?
It's 100% nonprofit.
501C3, yep, absolutely.
Yeah, 501C3.
And this is just like,
on Shade TV is a nonprofit.
(32:41):
This is a nonprofit.
And it's using high tech to get the message out.
We're in the 21st century.
We've got to go high tech.
We've got to use every single technology available.
So if you're just joining us, here it is.
Have you heard about the amazing new platform
for animal rights events?
Connect for animals is a user-friendly platform
where you can find and share animal rights events
(33:01):
in all of North America.
It's perfect for people who are trying
to find activism opportunities or share their own.
You can even find lectures, meditations,
and conferences on their website.
Empower the hundreds of thousands of people
who care deeply about Indian factory farming,
but aren't sure where to start.
We're building a community
where anyone can learn about this movement,
discover events and organizations,
(33:23):
and find ways to get involved.
By the way, in an article
on some pro-meat industry publication,
(33:45):
Unchained TV was declared a threat.
I was thrilled.
I was like, oh, I'm so flattered.
So you could probably-
It's a badge of honor, right?
Is to be called out on one of those websites.
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly.
I'm sure that's in your future as well.
Let's break down some of the things you do specifically,
which I thought was great.
We've talked about the blog,
(34:06):
but here you can take courses.
Can you tell us about this?
Gadita, what is this course part?
So Connect for Animals,
in addition to allowing for you to find local events
and take action, it also is a hub for tons of resources.
(34:27):
So if you're interested in getting involved,
you can find access to a hub of available online courses,
job openings, you name it.
Anything that you need to basically equip yourself
with the type of advocacy you want to lead.
You can go to Connect for Animals
(34:48):
and search on the website or the app
and find the types of resources you need.
And again, it's just like the amazing work of the team,
just pulling together all of these incredible
existing resources that are available
and then centralizing them
so that somebody who's new to the movement,
somebody who's seasoned and has been doing it for some time,
(35:10):
they just have to go to one specific place
and they can have access to all these available things
out in the world.
Now there's also the events per city.
And I thought this was really good
being in Los Angeles myself, I popped on Los Angeles,
but you have, I'd look like hundreds of cities
around the world.
(35:30):
So Stephen, tell us how this works
and how do you find out all the events?
Because like I said, I literally cannot keep up
with all the events in LA alone.
There's something happening every single night
and there's some that I get on Eventbrite and Partiful
and Signal and, you know, I mean,
(35:52):
I get them through all these different platforms
that are coming at me, of course, Facebook as well.
How are you gonna be able to track all these?
It's a big old messy process.
And actually, Jeannie helps a ton with this.
This is really like one of her big domains,
but I'll give a little bit of background
into maybe some of the infrastructure that we have
(36:13):
that helps with it.
So first of all, we do not have 100% of all events.
That is our goal.
Our goal is to have every relevant event
that is related to ending factory farming and veganism,
to have it on Connect for Animals
so that people can find those things in their cities,
but they can also find the events that are happening online.
That's our North Star when it comes to events.
We do not have it because like you said, there are so many.
(36:36):
Some of them only exist in Signal chats,
WhatsApp groups, et cetera.
But we have built out some technical infrastructure
to automatically pull in as many events as we can
from relevant organizations.
We have a list of hundreds of different
animal advocacy organizations and local groups.
We try to automatically pull in
as many of those events as we can.
(36:57):
We are subscribed to basically every newsletter
on the planet as well.
And so this is where Vini helps out every single week,
goes through our inbox, looks through those newsletters,
looks for events, adds them to the platform.
And then people can submit their events as well.
So we have a lot of people who either work at
or volunteer at other animal advocacy organizations
(37:17):
or groups, nonprofit groups, as well as grassroots groups,
who will come and add their events to Connect for Animals
because they know that it's going to be on the platform
and that we're gonna send it out to our email newsletter.
And so we get events from all these different places
and it's our job to make sure that they all look clean,
that the data is good, that there's nothing inappropriate,
(37:39):
that it's all relevant, that if there's any duplicate events
that we go through and we take care of those.
It's a big old messy process.
Jeannie helped with a ton of that.
Jeannie, do you wanna give any more insight
into how we do it?
Yes, but thanks to Steven and the tech team,
we have something called scrapers that go.
(37:59):
And once we've pulled a group
and we know that they have regularly occurring events,
these scrapers will go in and they will actually
pull these events and fill out as much information
as they can.
And one of my jobs is to go into these events
that have been pulled automatically
and make sure that they're tagged correctly,
that like you were saying,
that has everything that is valid and needed
(38:20):
and filled out on the event.
So that whenever it pops up,
it's a clean event that anybody can click on.
So yeah, we go through, we do.
If we have all the groups,
we are following nearly everything that's out there.
We try to pull it in,
but there is so much more to be done.
And the city, the LA one is,
(38:42):
that's something that we've just been starting on.
So if you are from a certain city,
if you're from San Antonio and you go in
and you're like, gosh, there's no events at all,
it's coming.
It will be here, but we're building, building.
And there's so much in the background that's happening.
So just be patient or be like,
hey, I can add my own events.
All you have to do is create an account.
It's very simple, it's very easy.
(39:03):
And we're always looking to create partnerships
with pro animal groups that have their own media people
that are willing to go in and drop in their events,
make sure that they're on the platform.
And we love that too.
So Amira St. John says, I just downloaded the app.
I look forward to checking it out.
Excellent.
And you know, it takes about five minutes
to fill out the app so that it's successful.
(39:26):
And I know personally from running Unchained TV,
which is our TV streaming network,
that's also an app on the phone.
When people say they're gonna do it later,
doesn't happen that often.
Doesn't happen, yeah, yeah.
So do it now, people.
Just download it.
It's very easy.
You just go to your app store.
I did it.
And you just put in Connect for Animals in the app store.
(39:48):
It's free.
You just hit download.
And then you fill out some little information
about your city, your name, blah, blah, blah,
so that they can target.
Like let's say we just had somebody comment,
I'm gonna look for events in Chicago.
So let's take your app through that now.
So he's in Chicago, he's interested.
What does he do?
(40:09):
Aside from obviously download the app.
You can download it online.
You can also download it on your phone.
That's the easiest, obviously.
Go ahead.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, I mean the best thing to do, right,
is first of all, when you sign up,
make sure that you're subscribed
to the weekly Events Digest email newsletter.
(40:29):
We've had that going.
People love that because we send the events,
including local events.
So if you live in Chicago,
when you sign up, fill out your location,
say like I live in Chicago,
sign up for that Events Digest newsletter.
Every week, those events,
virtual events and conferences
and local events in your area,
straight to your inbox,
or at least as many as we know about, right?
(40:50):
So that's the biggest thing.
And fill out your location,
subscribe to the Events Digest newsletter.
Every week you'll get those.
And then on the platform itself, on the app,
when you go to your homepage,
you scroll down, you'll see those events in your area.
You'll see events in Chicago.
You'll see people who live in Chicago.
You'll see some of the local Chicago animal rights
or animal advocacy or vegan groups,
(41:12):
meetup groups and nonprofit groups and things like that.
So really, that's the biggest thing
is enter your location,
sign up for the newsletter,
and then you can go to the homepage,
scroll down, you'll see things.
And if you go to any of the other pages,
like you go and look at events specifically,
because you entered your location,
it'll show you those virtual events,
but it'll also show you the local events in your area.
And so it's really just as simple as that.
(41:34):
And then just keep up with it
anytime that you're interested in going to an event.
You can look through the email,
you can go to the app,
go online to the website,
connectforanimals.com.
So that's pretty much it.
Yeah, and how are you going to interact with social media?
Because so many people don't really use websites anymore.
(41:55):
They're just DMing each other.
And so how do you plan on handling that?
Should I throw that over to Katika?
Yeah, thanks, Jane.
I think to start,
and then I'll let Stephen take this one,
but I think to start,
this is something that between social media
(42:18):
is really like an amplification
of what's happening on the app.
So we definitely leverage it to,
if there are particular events that are of interest
or things that we really feel like should be highlighted,
it's a great channel for doing so.
But most of the information would be centralized on the app.
So that's like your first place to go
(42:38):
if you really want to get the specific information
that's relevant to you and your profile
in terms of your location and interests
and things like that.
But then we can definitely use that information
and push it out on various channels
as we see opportunity to get more people excited
and involved in different events.
(42:59):
Now, not everything is an event or a course.
Like sometimes, for example,
we will debut a new video.
We just wrapped up Vegan Creator Con,
the first two-day conference for vegan social media creators.
When I say we wrapped,
I was there videotaping and participating,
and I did a panel,
(43:19):
but it was done by the woman
who does Vegan Street Fair, Jessica Cruz.
It's a breakthrough.
I learned so much in this two days,
and we did a video.
Is there any way,
is there any portal within your organization
to publish videos about events?
Yeah, that's a great question.
(43:41):
And the way that I think about this, right,
sort of nerdy math brain,
is like different types of information
that people might want to know.
So people want to know about events
that are happening in their area,
about campaign actions.
People might want to know about organizations
they can volunteer for,
about courses they can take.
But then there's this big category
of just resources or videos or content.
(44:03):
Right now, the best place to find that stuff
is we have a resources page
where people can go to find some of that,
but it's focused mostly on the courses,
on some self-care and like burnout prevention,
resources and things like that.
So that's not something that we do
too much of right now,
is sort of this broader resource
and video and like content thing.
(44:24):
I know that there are other websites
that will try to host more of this,
or like on social media.
I know that people are constantly
reposting each other's things
and sharing things.
In the future, there might be space for us
to help surface some of this
really great content better.
It's just from a technical
and like a user perspective,
it's a difficult thing to do.
And we decided that we wanted to focus
(44:44):
on a few of these other things first,
like events, actions, groups, profiles.
So maybe in the future,
but right now, not so much.
We're focusing on these other features
that we've been developing.
Yeah, and you don't have to play the whole,
you can just have a link.
Like there could be a way to add links,
but let me ask you about sanctuaries.
Now, we have all been in this movement
(45:07):
for a long time.
And I remember when I started,
there were maybe three sanctuaries.
There was farm sanctuary,
there was animal play.
I mean, there were a small number.
Now there are hundreds.
And I think it's one of the greatest resources
is to, where are all these sanctuaries?
How can people visit?
Is that something that you're considering adding
(45:28):
and whoever wants to take it?
Yeah, I can, I'll talk to that really quick.
And by the way,
we were talking about social media earlier.
I do wanna give a quick shout out
to our social media manager, Hemena,
who manages our Instagram and our LinkedIn pages,
does a great job with those.
So social media is not really my realm,
but thankfully we have somebody who it is her realm.
So when it comes to sanctuaries,
(45:49):
we currently tackle that in having sanctuaries
listed as groups on Connect for Animals.
And so we have a lot of sanctuaries on the platform.
There are probably a ton that we do not have.
So if your favorite animal sanctuary is not listed,
then there's a way through Connect for Animals
that you can suggest a new group.
(46:10):
And so if you go to the groups page,
or if you're on your home page,
sanctuaries would be groups
and they're tagged with the animal sanctuary tag.
And so the best place to see that
would just be to go to the groups,
search by tagged as animal sanctuaries
and search in your location,
which I think it probably automatically
does filter down to your location specifically.
(46:33):
So that's the best way currently.
It would be nice to have a map of them.
I know that there are some websites.
There's a website that I don't know too well.
So I might get it wrong,
but Global Federation of Sanctuaries or something like that.
And there's a website called Open Sanctuary as well,
which provides resources.
I don't know if they provide a map per se.
But we do have that list,
even if not in like a map format necessarily.
(46:56):
And just listing that group as a link,
then it includes it.
That's the great thing about links
is that you could just add on and on and on and on.
And I just think it's very fascinating.
Like I said, I've even thought about doing this years ago,
but ran headlong into a whole bunch of issues that came up.
(47:21):
And my idea was just like a next door.
Like the reason being is that I have found
that there's a bunch of vegans in my neighborhood
and people who care about animals and animal rights,
not just dogs and cats.
Although I have two dogs and a cat,
so I care about them too.
And I stumbled upon these people.
(47:41):
And I was like, damn, if I'd only known they existed,
I could alert them to protests, meetups,
let's support a vegan restaurant
that's struggling, blah, blah, blah.
And the problem I ran into is that how small
the demographic and the area you're going to pick,
(48:02):
because you don't wanna get into a situation
where people can figure out where somebody else lives.
So how do you balance the privacy issue
with providing information to a particular locale
so that it's effective for that organization?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I'm happy to tackle this one unless anyone else wanted to,
(48:25):
but we take this very seriously.
And so just in general, user privacy, data privacy,
these are things that are very important
and they matter a lot to users
of online platforms like this.
So in general, we don't wanna know where people live.
We don't wanna know your address.
We give people the ability to add their location
at the city level, essentially, which we think is,
(48:48):
I think people might be able to input their zip code as well
if they wanna get down to a specific section of a city.
Like I used to live in Denver, for example,
and different zip codes can help you narrow in
on these different neighborhoods.
But there's not a place to enter your address.
We don't wanna know.
We don't wanna necessarily show any of that to other users,
but we want people to be able to enter their location
in a way where they can say,
(49:09):
hey, what's going on in my city
or what's going on in my zip code,
like my part of that city, right?
And so as time goes on, we'll see if people like that.
So far, and it doesn't get us
into any of these user privacy issues
about people having their addresses exposed
or things like that, while still giving people
(49:30):
that functionality that they want that's location-based.
And as time goes on, maybe we can update that.
But for right now, I think that that's kind
of a good compromise.
And then we let users do what they want to at that point.
If they wanna go to an event and meet people
and get to know people that way and share their phone number
and share where they live to hang out for potlucks
or for doing projects together or things like that,
(49:51):
that's kind of on the user side at that point.
But for right now, we try to stay away to just let people.
What about protests?
Because obviously mobilizing people to attend protests,
there's actually a protest coming up in a couple of days
here in Los Angeles against a supermarket
(50:11):
that allegedly uses animals from a factory farm
where cruelty has allegedly,
extreme cruelty has been documented.
I'll say that much.
I won't give it away.
But can you mobilize people to attend protests?
Yes, so protests are frequently listed
(50:31):
on Connect for Animals.
I know that, so by default, all of the events
on Connect for Animals are public.
So we do that so that people can find them from Google
and things like that.
So if people are searching for vegan events,
like they can come across,
kind of like you would on Eventbrite, right?
You can find specific events.
There are certain protests
(50:52):
that people are comfortable making public.
And I know that within the activism space,
there are certain protests that people
maybe don't necessarily want to make public
for whatever reason,
just because they want to have the element of surprise
or they're afraid of something negative happening
if it's made public ahead of time.
And so those types of protests currently
do not really live on the platform so much
(51:12):
because things are public by default.
In the future, there might be a way
to have some of those types of protests
that are private by default or things like that.
But for right now, yes,
there are protests on Connect for Animals
from different organizations that host them,
kind of happening all over the country.
So Jeannie and I, every week,
(51:33):
get to see all the events that are happening
everywhere across the US.
And frequently, pretty much every weekend, some weeks,
lots of protests in different cities
for different causes, different campaigns.
So yeah, it's very inspiring.
Well, I think this is so exciting.
Now, I'm urging everybody who is watching
(51:53):
and who will watch, just Connect for Animals.
Take a moment.
The animals cannot speak for themselves.
And there you are.
Connect for Animals, I signed up.
It's very easy.
And now I have the ability to add things
that are happening in our movement,
(52:14):
in Los Angeles, and globally.
I mean, there's a really important,
for example, I just got a notice this morning,
PCRM is having a Friday talk about new changes
in government to end animal testing,
and it's a breakthrough.
I'm registering for that.
That's something I think would be fantastic
(52:35):
for everybody to register for.
It's not directly connected to factory farming,
but it's all connected.
When one animal is abused, they say,
if one person is abused, we're all abused.
So it's part of that general umbrella.
And I wish you guys the best.
I think it's absolutely fantastic.
(52:55):
And this is the time when I talk about Unchained TV
at the end of our broadcast,
because there's a lot of commonalities.
We're also using an app.
You can also download it on your phone,
and it's on your TV behind you.
You can do Amazon Fire Stick, Roku device, Apple TV device.
It's on every Samsung TV, on every LG TV.
(53:17):
It's also on the phone.
You can just download it for free.
It takes 10 seconds.
Go to Unchained TV, right there.
2,000 videos, including this one's gonna be on,
and you can text the videos.
The great thing is when you get it on the phone,
somebody says, I could never give up cheese.
We have a whole category of all these vegan cheeses
(53:37):
that you could send to them.
You just go, boom, send it to them.
So I could never give up dairy, boom.
There's hundreds of videos about dairy alternatives,
and the list goes on and on.
So I hope that while you're having your download app day,
you include Unchained TV as well as Connect for Animals.
We're all trying to do the same thing.
(54:00):
We're using technology, in Unchained TV's case,
as the world's only vegan streaming network,
to change hearts and minds,
get out of the vegan echo chamber,
and reach people who need this information.
So it's a vegan Netflix.
Okay, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained, Unchained TV.
(54:20):
Your life will change, it's just that easy.
Unchained TV has all sorts of content for everybody.
Unchained TV changed my life.
Unchained TV is crushing it.
I love Unchained TV.
Unchained TV is my go-to.
Unchained TV, who knew?
Unchained, baby, yes!
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