Changemaker Spotlight: Soul Eubanks of APEX Advocacy

Transcript

Soul Eubanks: I would say it really started when I was 13 and I read the book Autobiography of Malcolm X. That kind of introduced me to the concept of not eating animals.

What I realized as I was being introduced to veganism when I saw animals suffering, I thought about all the injustices that I saw happening to Black and brown people. And once I made that connection from animals being slaughtered, that's when I realized that I had to actually take a stance against the exploitation of animals, because I didn't feel it was morally consistent for me to advocate against one form of oppression while contributing to another form of oppression.

When I was doing activism, and when I started to participate in a variety of actions, I started to notice that there wasn't an intentional effort from the animal rights community to include people of color. So what I decided to do was start my nonprofit, which is called APEX Advocacy. APEX stands for Animal Protection Equality Intersectionality. We also make sure that the people that are doing the work for our organization are people of color. Ultimately, we want our ideas and our initiatives to be centered and thought of by people that haven't necessarily had the equity in the movement to share their ideas and execute what they feel is impactful for animals. We can't ignore the things that impact us as individuals and how that actually perpetuates violence and oppression in our society.

So right now we have an initiative called No Backyard Slaughter where we are trying to eliminate slaughterhouses from Black and brown communities. Imagine living next door to a slaughterhouse where you can hear the gunshots, you can hear the animals being killed. So we've been working with the community on a pressure campaign against the county, but now we're also trying to approach the city council with a proposal to transition the slaughterhouse into a plant-based company.

And we have a variety of initiatives that we work on. We work on a Black Vegan Everything campaign showcasing Black-owned vegan businesses, and we have a global majority caucus where we create space for advocates of color.

The thing that gives me hope about the future of the animal rights movement is the young generation of activists that I'm seeing take center stage and propel the movement into places where I think that we are probably not even prepared to see the movement go because I don't think it's gonna be too many more generations where contributing to animal abuse and exploitation will be the norm.