We use the expression “non-human animals” not to insult any human beings but to recognize and respect the numerous ways in which we are all connected with what or whom we dismiss as “animals.” For all our differences from other species, we are all also animal bodies united in our struggles for survival, for sustenance, and for shelter. We share with non-human animals significant commonalities that evolutionary scientists no longer regard as distinctively “human”: cognition, social communication, playfulness, capacity for suffering, and even a sense of justice. At Podrska we thus question the human-animal divide and the violence done against “the animal” in the name of the “human.”

In speaking of human beings as “human animals” we join hands with and other decolonial thinkers and activists like Aph Ko and Syl Ko as well as food justice pioneers like Lauren Ornelas who speak up for both human animals and non-human animals. Like them, we believe that both human and non-human animals should not be exploited and that we can fight for both causes at the same time.