THL Spotlight: Janet Martinez

Transcript

Janet Martinez: Hi, my name is Janet Martinez, and I am the Los Angeles Field Organizer with the Humane League.

So I grew up in Los Angeles, mainly in East Hollywood. When I was growing up, I had one dog. His name was Golden, he was a golden retriever, and I always considered myself an animal lover growing up, but I soon enough I did learn that I loved and respected some. And what really transformed my views with animals was learning about the Yulin Festival in China. Learning about how some cultures eat dogs and cats made me reflect on who I was eating here in the US. And I started to look into what was going on in slaughterhouses and factory farms, and I never looked back after that.

From there, I started to get involved in the animal rights movement as well. I had my first internship with The Humane League as a grassroots outreach intern, and I loved it so much. And from there I continued to volunteer, to intern, and I had my first job in the animal rights movement with Animal Equality as a tour crew member doing the I-Animal virtual reality tour.

And now, I am the Los Angeles Field Organizer with The Humane League, and a big part of my role is to recruit, train, and retain volunteers. One of my favorite parts is to actually empower our volunteers to become leaders in the movement. And what we do together is we win campaigns, we hold corporations accountable to end the abuse of animals raised for food.