Meet Dallas Rising:
ARC's Program Director

Chances are, if you’re involved in the Twin Cities’ animal rights and rescue communities, you recognize her dedicated and hard-working face. Dallas is the Program Director for ARC, and we're thrilled to have her with us! “It’s more than a job to me,” Dallas said. “It’s a calling.”

Dallas went vegetarian in the 4th grade, after she made the connection that eating animals meant they were being killed. By 15, she had dropped the cheese and dairy products too, and become a vegan. In high school, she started an animal rights group that worked to get veggie burgers in the lunchroom and vivisection out of the classroom. Dallas was also on the first open rescue team in the United States. She investigated egg-laying facilities, a turkey farm, and helped to rescue 11 hens from a 1.5 million-bird facility.

Dallas has been active in many local and national animal groups and in addition to ARC, she currently volunteers for Support Vegans in the Prison System.

A big part of her decision to work for ARC was her belief in animal abolitionism, rather than animal welfarism. As an abolitionist, it was vitally important to work for an abolitionist organization, like ARC, whose values regarding animals, are in line with hers. She explains: “I am of the belief that it is critical that we not compromise our values as animal rights activists in the name of a short term "victory" for the animals.

Running campaigns based on getting universities or restaurants to go cage-free, for example, is a hot trend in our movement right now. But in the end, I think it is wrong to give the impression that cage-free eggs or meat labeled "free range," are okay to purchase and eat. Whether directly or indirectly, any promotion or endorsement of this "happy meat" is not only a betrayal to the animals (who are still kept in horrible conditions, transported in the same way that most farmed animals are, and end up being slaughtered in the same brutal, violent ways that all farmed animals are), but also to consumers who are concerned about the way farmed animals are treated. We cheat both parties when we stop short of advocating for anything other than veganism.”

Dallas is also aware of the divide these different philosophies are causing in the animal rights community: “This [abolitionism] is not a very popular attitude to have right now in our movement's history. It took me a while to get over feeling like the bad guy for "raining on a cage-free parade,” but I am unwilling to compromise my values in the name of a short-term gain. I would rather march forward toward total liberation, no matter how slowly, than to perpetuate the myth that any animal products can be produced in a humane way. They cannot. Period.”

Dallas tries to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved in animal issues, be active, and feel satisfied with their involvement. She focuses much of her work with ARC on educating and involving young people. She firmly believes that if young people are given the opportunity and education to make the connection that eating animals means killing them, they will make the choice not to eat them. “Kids are naturally compassionate.”

Dallas understands the huge challenges in our culture when it comes to educating people about compassion toward animals. But she also has great hope. “We are pulled in to being complacent and unconscious. But, if you think about who you really want to be, most people don’t want to be contributing to cruelty.”

For Dallas, the best way to get the animal rights message across is to ask people if they really want to know. “If they say yes, then they will listen.” She favors a more relaxed approach to animal rights education, and feels it is extremely important to be approachable and available for people.

ARC History

Some highlights of past ARC campaigns include persuading the University of Minnesota Medical School to stop conducting live dog labs for first year medical students, successfully suing the University of Minnesota for access to records concerning the use of animals in research, persuading the Animal Humane Society to discontinue using a gas chamber for euthanasia, persuading several local school districts to recognize students’ rights to non-animal alternatives to dissection, breaking the story that caused the Make-A-Wish Foundation to ban hunting trips, providing information to local media which was the basis of a televised undercover investigation about companion animals stolen for research and the dog auctions that sell these animals, persuading a nationally known annual conference on spirituality to serve only veg meals, and funding the first mobile spay/neuter unit in Minnesota devoted to the spaying and neutering of feral cat colonies. Most recently, ARC helped pass a historic ban on pound seizure in Minnesota (pound seizure allowed any animal in a publicly funded shelter for more than five days to be claimed by a laboratory for experimentation).

For first-person accounts of the early history of animal rights in our community, read
ARC History and History of an Activist.

Animal Rights Coalition Board of Directors