How often do we zoom out to take collective responsibility for our impact as a human species on the voiceless nonhumans? What is constantly being sacrificed in exchange for our leisure, our luxury, our consumption? The inherent abuses of capitalism and the supremacist mindset do not value life.

A stark reality that a corporation has rights in the court, while animals have the same rights as a car or a couch. This is the core of our insentience and our inanimacy which merit our Taker culture.

This week we interview Kevin Schneider, an attorney and the Executive Director of the Nonhuman Rights Project. Founded in 1996 by attorney Steven M. Wise, the Nonhuman Rights Project works to secure legally recognized fundamental rights for nonhuman animals through litigation, advocacy, and education.

Their mission is to change the legal status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere “things,” which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to “persons,” who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty and those other legal rights to which evolving standards of morality, scientific discovery, and human experience entitle them.

Since 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed lawsuits on behalf of non-human animals in captivity – including four chimpanzees and three elephants, so far – seeking a writ of habeas corpus. The organization is fighting for the autonomy of our more than human kin as we face the need for multi species liberation.

♫ Music is "Silence Returns" by Beau and "Arms length away" and "Matilda" by Izaak Opatz.