Vegans exploring the abolitionist approach to animal rights

ARCO's Abolitionists, a community of vegan abolitionists has been relaunched!

If you are vegan and open minded to the abolitionist approach than you are more than welcome. If you aren't so much interested in discussing animal rights but just want to add a vegan recipe, image, link or other resource that is fine as well.
We also started a gallery to add vegan images of all sorts. Whatever can help with vegan outreach/education is welcome!

If you are unfamiliar with ARCO's Abolitionists read the Mission Statement:

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ARCO has created a new forum to further the abolitionist movement.

We aim to spread an ethic of respect for all living beings. In particular, we believe all sentient animals have the right to be treated as individuals, rather than as objects. To breed and use non-human animals for any reason is to violate their rights of self-ownership.

The “unnecessary suffering” of domesticated animals can only end when we identify the source of the fundamental wrong. That fundamental wrong is the idea of “ownership” of other animals. To end that suffering, we must change the paradigm.

We directly challenge the prevailing notion of welfarism as a possible road to abolition, finding it instead to be a grave impediment. We call for an ethic of respect and non-violence, to be realized without compromise, person by person. To this end we use only vegan outreach and anti-speciesist education, as indicated by abolitionist theory.

ARCO’s Abolitionists is meant to foster communication among isolated pockets of abolitionists -- to help keep the vision true, the application consistent, and the methods effective. Abolition is the order of the day.

If you call yourself a vegan abolitionist please register and share some of your opinions and ideas.
As ARCO's Abolitionists is a private forum what means we would first like to know a little bit about you. So to get your account activated an introduction is needed. To make it easy for you we even put a introduction questionnaire together.

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As ARCO's Abolitionists is a private forum what means we would first like to know a little bit about you. So to get your account activated an introduction is needed. To make it easy for you we even put a introduction questionnaire together.

We'd like to know a little bit about you as well Why not post an introduction with a bit about what your goals are, what training you are doing (or want to do). We don't even ask for a questionnaire to be filled out

I hope you do not mind but I am not a bodybuilder. So I don't have a training schedule. I do hope that is not needed to be a member of this forum. In the other hand I am interested in growing some muscles. I have a feeling I have the least of all members here So I do hope to gain something from this forum. That with being always interested what other vegans do...

You don't have to be a bodybuilder, anyone wanting to gain some fat &/or lose some fat or even just interested are pretty welcome. From a vegan point of view looking the best you can is probably the best advert you can have for being vegan. Let's face it if people think you go vegan & look ace you'll get more people interested in the lifestyle.
The reason we first started the site was actually an off-shoot of the Brighton Animal Rights Campaign website when I first started training & wondering if there were any vegans who lifted or I was the only one in the world
We actually ended up getting more people asking about training than the group so we started a separate site, then started this forum quite recently.
If you want to add some muscle mass it's pretty easy. For just a recreational lifter who's doing it for health you'd need to add some food (unless you are already overweight, then start moving towards a sensible dietary plan). Say you are eating 3 meals right now (Breakfast, dinner, tea), simply add in a couple of snacks like a bag of nuts or a sandwich mid-morning & mid afternoon. You can start at home doing bodyweight stuff 3 times a week doing push-ups, get a cheap doorway chin-up bar & do negative pull-ups (that is use a chair to get up there, then slowly lower yourself under control), some bodyweight squats or lunges. Depending on your age & health level I'd also include some cardio as well you can do a bit of jogging, or once you get going include some sprinting if you like. Once you get going you can join a gym or buy some dumbbells if you prefer home training & carry on from there.
It's really simple & for 30 minutes a few times a week you can look a whole lot better & if you're campaigning it's much better to look fit & healthy as it puts across the right message about the diet.
If you need any help at all I'd be happy to help you out starting off. Just think about what you want to achieve, whether that be fat loss, muscle gain or whatever & we can easily knock you up a quick training plan to get you into shape for summer time

Excuse the semantic gripe but anyone who's an ethical vegan (OK virtually anyone who's an ethical vegan) ultimately wants to see a vegan world and is therefore actually an abolitionist. The vast majority of vegans who think multiple approaches are still needed in the short term to appeal to the more close minded meat eaters (IOW welfarist measures) are still abolitionists in that they still have the same long term goal of world wide veganism. And a sizable percentage of vegans are open to the possibility that such a nuanced approach (different types of appeals for the many different types of people) may work better than one single approach. Clearly a ton of people have simply closed their minds to animal rights.

The OP title makes it sound like there are bunch of vegans out there that don't ultimately want to see worldwide veganism, when in fact that isn't the case. There are just differences of how to get there and the people who want to only use one simplistic approach (the so called 'abolitionists') want to make it sound like everyone else doesn't have the same end goal.

Futhermore IMO, the term 'vegan' means there's an ethical component. Otherwise the term is 'dietary vegan'. So 'ethical vegan' basically means 'vegan' and the term 'vegan abolitionist' is just redundant.

...in my humble opinion calling it redundant is putting it nicely. More exact, people who put it that way are either trying to divide ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE )
or don't even understand the arguments being made by vegans who suggest a more nuanced 'multi-pronged' approach.

Sorry if this difference of opinion comes across as rude or confrontational. That is not my intention. I've tried in vain to discuss this subject in the past online. Anyway, I'd rather not say more on the subject. People who want to call themselves 'vegan abolitionists' may feel free, but keep in mind you are just needlessly dividing and antagonizing your fellow vegans. You really should find some other term, like 'monolithic vegan activist' or 'one single naive approach to vegan activism'. OK, that's making fun, sorry. Ultimately people always frame it such that those they disagree with are made to look bad. Like 'pro-life'. (anti-life) And in this case the rhetoric is such that apparently every ethical vegan who thinks some welfarism might help create a tiny wedge in the average close minded meat eaters mind must not have the end goal of world wide veganism and thus isn't an abolitionist. </end rant>