Which makes a bigger difference?

Advocacy for shelter reform, or direct rescue?

If you want your local animal control agency to become a No Kill, or life-affirming, shelter, what’s the most important, effective thing you can do? Lots of people would tell you that if you want to save lives, you have to do direct rescue. Create or join a nonprofit rescue, and save animals from pounds and shelters. Few would advise you to achieve shelter reform through advocacy. Many rescuers, pound and shelter volunteers, and shelter managers refer derisively to advocates as keyboard warriors. But I think advocacy is by far more effective and has a bigger impact than direct rescue.

Not to draw a moral equivalence, but imagine the phenomenon of the Underground Railroad without the abolitionist movement. Imagine a movement to directly rescue human beings from enslavement without a movement to advocate for the end of slavery.

Imagine a movement to help individual people in need, without a corresponding movement to advocate for more just and equitable systems so that people can meet their needs. A bunch of Go Fund Me’s but no movement for tax reform or universal healthcare or living wages. Oh, wait…

Advocacy is essential to reform.