An expanded number of animal rights organizations will gather in Los Angeles this weekend for the 14th annual National Animal Rights Day, an event that honors the billions of animals killed by humans every year and advocates for the end of factory farming.
The Los Angeles event, one of more than 160 being held worldwide, will begin at noon Sunday on the north lawn of Pan Pacific Park, 7600 Beverly Blvd.
Global animal rights organizations Animal Save Movement, Anonymous for the Voiceless and We The Free are joining NARD for the first time, in what organizers are calling “the biggest animal rights collaboration in history.”
“There is power in numbers and showing a unified front for animals, especially in a time with so much division,” Parker Do, lead organizer for the Los Angeles event, told City News Service. “We are so excited for NARD14 and to show the public we are united in creating a better future for animals and the planet.”
As in past years, volunteers dressed in black will hold the bodies of dead animals as attendees observe moments of silence. Those animals — who died on their own and were donated by various farms that raise animals for human consumption — serve to represent all non-humans killed for food, clothing, medical experiments and other reasons, and will later be cremated or buried.
The solemn memorial will be followed by a celebration featuring speakers who will give testimonials about the life experiences that led them to stop eating and wearing animals.
NARD14 will also have several nonprofit booths where the public can learn about strategies to end animal suffering and activists can learn how corporate campaigning, school organizing and integration with the environmental movement can help end factory farming — which, along with killing animals for clothing and using them for medical experiments, Anonymous for the Voiceless calls “history’s largest and longest-standing injustice.”
Organizers said the gathering will also feature some “unique performances” in the celebration portion of the event, including a vegan puppet show.
Activists from the four global organizations will be joined by animal-loving celebrities. Past guests have included musician Moby and actors Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Alexandra Paul, Donna D’Errico and Debra Wilson.
The annual ceremonies also include the reading and signing of The Declaration of Animal Rights, which was drafted in 2011 and which NARD organizers would like to see turned into global law one day. The first of its nine tenets declares that non-human animals too have a “right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of their Happiness.”
“As most animal suffering is at the hands of food, entertainment, and science companies, individuals can exercise the power of boycott and abstain from products that harm animals,” Do said. “Luckily, in 2024 there are a wealth of resources and impressive alternatives that can help people move away from animal products.”
Do told CNS that this year’s collaboration began with the international leads of all four organizations workshopping how to best integrate the different outreach strategies into a single display.
“The information was then shared with organizers in all cities who met together to make the collaboration work with the unique resources and communities in each region. In Los Angeles, our organizers reached out to LA Animal Save and the Animal Alliance Network, two chapters of the global Animal Save movement, and Anonymous for the Voiceless’ two Southern California chapters,” he added. “They attended their events to get a scope of what posters, messaging, and volunteers each group has and worked together on marketing initiatives.”
NARD events will be in more than 160 cities around the world on Sunday. The Los Angeles gathering and one in San Diego are the only two West Coast NARD events among the 14 in the United States.
Aylam Orian, the Los Angeles actor who founded NARD in 2011, credits a 2010 trip to Madrid with inspiring him to form the NARD movement. He saw the group Animal Equality conducting a small, silent demonstration with laptops showing the deaths of animals at factory farms to passersby, and a light went off.
That prompted Orian — whose credits include “We Were the Lucky Ones,” “Fatma,” “Stargate Origins,” and the CBS shows “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “Code Black” — to gather various animal rights groups in New York for a meeting, including PETA and Mercy for Animals, wondering “How can we join forces and create one big day like this, like in Spain, where we leave our differences aside (and) everybody harness their energy toward this one goal of representing animals?” he explained in a 2017 interview with the Green Party’s animal rights committee.
Asked in 2021 what he hopes non-vegans might take away from the gathering, Orian told CNS: “That all forms of mass-confining, abusing, and then mass killing of animals are detrimental to human health, to the planet, and of course, to the welfare of these trillions of animals. They have rights of their own, which are no different than the basic rights that humans claim to have.”
More information about the worldwide gatherings can be found at thenard.org.